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.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Sunday, April 03, 2011
The Adventurer (1917)
This past weekend's screenings of the Silent Clowns Film Seriesincluded 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.
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.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Muybridge and the Illusion of Motion
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 outsidethe 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.
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 outsidethe 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.
Monday, March 07, 2011
The Wrong Door (1904)
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”.
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”.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Upstream (1927)
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”).
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”).
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Return to the Kingdom of Shadows
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 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.
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 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.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
True Grit (2010)
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 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.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Edison's "A Christmas Carol" (1910)
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.
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.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The Red Spectre
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
David Lean's BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1946)
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.
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.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Mysterious Cafe (1900)
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).
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).
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Recent Trends in DeMille Scholarship
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 ultimately, I think, too easy. DeMille's 1956 version of "The Ten Commandments" stills draws 'em in every year when it is shown on TV. 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 plansfor 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.
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 ultimately, I think, too easy. DeMille's 1956 version of "The Ten Commandments" stills draws 'em in every year when it is shown on TV. 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 plansfor 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.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
"Monsieur Verdoux" (1947)
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.
***
Added 1/10/15: This really is Chaplin's most accomplished talkie, even if there is a drastic shift in tone during the final moments. I found myself deeply moved by the scenes between Chaplin and Marilyn Nash, especially when he invites her to his home as a test case for his traceless poison and has a change of heart after hearing about her devotion to her dead husband. There is a quiet tenderness to this scene that ranks among the best moments in any of Chaplin's films.
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.
***
Added 1/10/15: This really is Chaplin's most accomplished talkie, even if there is a drastic shift in tone during the final moments. I found myself deeply moved by the scenes between Chaplin and Marilyn Nash, especially when he invites her to his home as a test case for his traceless poison and has a change of heart after hearing about her devotion to her dead husband. There is a quiet tenderness to this scene that ranks among the best moments in any of Chaplin's films.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
"So's Your Old Man" (1926)
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.
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.
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.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Chaplin, Carl Davis and the Movies
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!"
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!"
Thursday, July 22, 2010
"The Circus"
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.
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.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Mr. Flip
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.
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.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Why Mrs. Jones Got a Divorce (1900)
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.
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.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
Edwin S. Porter made a number of films that bridged both the “actualitie” and “narrative” approaches. Working for the Edison company, he is often recognized as the pioneer of narrative storytelling in American cinema, with films like “The Great Train Robbery” and “Life of an American Fireman” (both 1903) serving as the models from which longer, more complex narrative films emerged in the coming decade. The narrative approaches in these films, however, can be traced back to the work being done by the British filmmakers, particularly of the “Brighton school”, in films such as “Daring Daylight Burglary” and “Fire!”
One of Porter’s most interesting works, from a purely formal standpoint, is a film that borrows from another tradition-the trick films of Melies, de Chomon and Zecca. “Dream of a Rarebit Fiend”, from 1906, is a film that, in many ways, typifies the kind of borrowing that was taking place during this time in the development of new cinematic techniques and styles. Porter may have been borrowing, but he was certainly borrowing from the best. This film provides an interesting glimpse at a “road not taken” in the cinema, for within just a couple years, D.W. Griffith and other filmmakers would be shaping the medium to an even more narrative-centered approach that left films like “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend” appearing to embrace a nearly surrealistic sensibility. It borrowed from the comic strip panels of Winsor McCay, and blended this with the narrative influence of the British, and the formal innovations of the trick film pioneered in France and Britain.
The film opens with an elegant, top-hatted gentleman (dressed all in white), sitting at a table in a restaurant and stuffing his mouth with large portions of Welsh rarebit. He drinks glass after glass of wine from the bottle sitting at the right of the table, and eventually takes a drink of water, which he promptly spits out. Taking another drink of wine, he helps himself to more rarebit, slopping it onto his plate then eventually lapping it up right off the serving ladle. He shovels the last of it into his mouth and takes one last drink of wine. The framing of the medium shot gives the viewer all the information they need, and avoids cutting in for close-ups or anything that would disrupt the flow of the action. Porter holds this medium shot for the duration of the scene, and it works effectively by focusing on the grotesque, exaggerated comic performance aspects.
The next shot finds the man leaving the restaurant at dark, and stumbling down the staircase, obviously a little the worse for wear. This shot gives way to a second shot, in which a lamppost is seen swinging back and forth like a pendulum. On top of this is superimposed a shot of the city streets spinning around. The gentleman stumbles into the frame, making his way to this swinging lamppost and trying to clutch on for dear life as he falls and stumbles about. He waves his handkerchief around frantically, calling for help. A passing policeman hauls him offscreen. This scene is remarkable for the amount of motion that Porter manages to suggest by having the superimposed elements working together. Although presented as a long shot of the lamppost (which allows the viewer to enjoy the physical humor and trick effects without interruption), the scene itself is made up of two separate composite elements which add greatly to the illusion of the hallucinations being experienced by the gentleman.
The next scene is again framed as a long shot of the room, although this time, the camera placement is at a diagonal that allows the corner of the room to serve as a focal point in the middle of the screen. The gentleman, arriving home, stumbles tipsily around his bedroom. The character leaves the shot twice during the course of this scene, with suggested action taking place off-screen. The first instance is when he exits, dressed in his top hat and tails, and returns, dressed in his pajamas. The second instance occurs right after he has gotten into bed and, unable to settle down, exits, and returns with a handkerchief tied around his face.
Porter continues holding this long shot as the next part of the scene begins. First, the man’s shoes are seen to move off-screen. He sits up, looking at this occurrence, perplexed. This is followed by even more unusual happenings-the furniture in the room moves about the frame and finally disappears, courtesy of trick photography. Puzzled, the man looks about the room, then lies back down to go to sleep.
Now, Porter cuts in for a closeup. The man is seen lying in bed, asleep, his head resting on the pillow. Above his head are superimposed different visions that are haunting him: a pot of Welsh rarebit, out of which pop three little demons carrying a pick-ax, a hammer, and a pitchfork, which they use to pound away at the head of the sleeping man, who reacts in pain. Awaking in panic, the vision disappears, but the man pulls the sheet over his head to try to escape the hallucinations. Porter very economically uses the framing of the close-up as a way to capture both the man’s pained physical reactions, and to allow for the use of double-exposure to create the illusion of the demons who are haunting his sleep.
The next shot reverts to the exact same set-up as before: the diagonal, long shot of the bed in the corner of the room. Now, the man lies under the bed covers, but almost immediately, it begins rocking and shaking about, as if he were possessed by some kind of demon (indeed, the shot is reminiscent of the scenes of the bed shaking and lurching about in William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” from nearly 70 years later!) Finally, the bed lifts itself about a foot in the air and begins spinning around and around, before finally taking flight out the window.
In a brilliant double-exposure shot, Porter shows the bed flying above the city. The use of the moving scenery creates the illusion of a traveling shot. The bed, set against the dark night sky, is shown to be moving over a cityscape, with the man holding on to the bed after the sheets blow off. Sitting up in the bed, the man grabs at an invisible steering wheel, positioning himself as if he were driving a car, and proceeds to navigate this phantom bed through the air before lying back down. Eventually, he is lifted up off the bed by the wind, and holds onto the headboard as he is held adrift in a horizontal position. Losing his grip, he floats backward to the footboard, which he grabs on to at the last moment. He kicks his legs about in the air in panic, just as the bed is seen passing over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Next, Porter returns to a static, long shot of a building top, over which the bed is seen flying. The bed rises up out of the frame, but the man is seen falling toward the top of the building. Porter next cuts in for a closer medium shot of the building top, with the man, in his pajamas, caught on the weather vane, which turns around and around until he finally drops off. Returning to the long shot, Porter shows the man falling into the city streets. He returns to the diagonal, establishing shot of the bedroom as the man comes crashing through the ceiling and landing in his bed. The signs of destruction disappear as the man awakes, shooting out of bed. The man sits on the edge of his bed, panicked and trembling, as the film ends.
Formally, Porter uses a very economic shot sequence, only going in for close-ups, or changing angles, when necessary to introduce a better vantage point for the viewer, or to allow for the depiction of necessary visual information. As a trick film, the “dream structure” of its narrative places it in contrast to the films of Melies, Zecca and others who embraced the ability of film to depict the impossible. In this sense, Porter seems to be contextualizing (and justifying) his trick effects within the context of a dream world in which anything is possible. Even the scenes in which the man stumbles about the street are explained away as a hallucination. From a narrative standpoint, it’s much more simple than some of Porter’s earlier efforts, but at the same time, reflects the story’s origins in the cartoon panel strips of Winsor McCay. Indeed, the film can be seen as a kind of photographic comic strip in the way that it is structured both formally and in terms of narrative. As Lloyd Fonvielle has noted, "Because movies were a new form, novelties, they fell into story frames that audiences were already familiar with -- newspaper cartoons and comic strips, which could be read in less than a minute, and vaudeville skits, which lasted about ten minutes" (Fonvielle, "Visual MicroFiction"). It makes for an interesting comparison with the current vogue for films based on comic books, which also involve a narrative, but with an emphasis on the moments of spectacle that are integral to the visual nature of the comic strip. This borrowing from a the highly visual medium of the comic strip, which viewers of the day would have been familiar with, places this film (and others like it) as a kind of ancestor of the comic book films that currently draw on an existing audience, familiar with the techniques and narrative structure of that format. When viewed in this context, it makes clear that Porter was working with an eye toward capturing the formal qualities of that medium and integrating it into the narrative structures he had helped to develop earlier in the decade, while borrowing uniquely cinematic techniques from the European pioneers working at the same time. In this sense, “Dream of a Rarebit Fiend” stands as an example of the wide range of influences at work in early cinema.
One of Porter’s most interesting works, from a purely formal standpoint, is a film that borrows from another tradition-the trick films of Melies, de Chomon and Zecca. “Dream of a Rarebit Fiend”, from 1906, is a film that, in many ways, typifies the kind of borrowing that was taking place during this time in the development of new cinematic techniques and styles. Porter may have been borrowing, but he was certainly borrowing from the best. This film provides an interesting glimpse at a “road not taken” in the cinema, for within just a couple years, D.W. Griffith and other filmmakers would be shaping the medium to an even more narrative-centered approach that left films like “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend” appearing to embrace a nearly surrealistic sensibility. It borrowed from the comic strip panels of Winsor McCay, and blended this with the narrative influence of the British, and the formal innovations of the trick film pioneered in France and Britain.
The film opens with an elegant, top-hatted gentleman (dressed all in white), sitting at a table in a restaurant and stuffing his mouth with large portions of Welsh rarebit. He drinks glass after glass of wine from the bottle sitting at the right of the table, and eventually takes a drink of water, which he promptly spits out. Taking another drink of wine, he helps himself to more rarebit, slopping it onto his plate then eventually lapping it up right off the serving ladle. He shovels the last of it into his mouth and takes one last drink of wine. The framing of the medium shot gives the viewer all the information they need, and avoids cutting in for close-ups or anything that would disrupt the flow of the action. Porter holds this medium shot for the duration of the scene, and it works effectively by focusing on the grotesque, exaggerated comic performance aspects.
The next shot finds the man leaving the restaurant at dark, and stumbling down the staircase, obviously a little the worse for wear. This shot gives way to a second shot, in which a lamppost is seen swinging back and forth like a pendulum. On top of this is superimposed a shot of the city streets spinning around. The gentleman stumbles into the frame, making his way to this swinging lamppost and trying to clutch on for dear life as he falls and stumbles about. He waves his handkerchief around frantically, calling for help. A passing policeman hauls him offscreen. This scene is remarkable for the amount of motion that Porter manages to suggest by having the superimposed elements working together. Although presented as a long shot of the lamppost (which allows the viewer to enjoy the physical humor and trick effects without interruption), the scene itself is made up of two separate composite elements which add greatly to the illusion of the hallucinations being experienced by the gentleman.
The next scene is again framed as a long shot of the room, although this time, the camera placement is at a diagonal that allows the corner of the room to serve as a focal point in the middle of the screen. The gentleman, arriving home, stumbles tipsily around his bedroom. The character leaves the shot twice during the course of this scene, with suggested action taking place off-screen. The first instance is when he exits, dressed in his top hat and tails, and returns, dressed in his pajamas. The second instance occurs right after he has gotten into bed and, unable to settle down, exits, and returns with a handkerchief tied around his face.
Porter continues holding this long shot as the next part of the scene begins. First, the man’s shoes are seen to move off-screen. He sits up, looking at this occurrence, perplexed. This is followed by even more unusual happenings-the furniture in the room moves about the frame and finally disappears, courtesy of trick photography. Puzzled, the man looks about the room, then lies back down to go to sleep.
Now, Porter cuts in for a closeup. The man is seen lying in bed, asleep, his head resting on the pillow. Above his head are superimposed different visions that are haunting him: a pot of Welsh rarebit, out of which pop three little demons carrying a pick-ax, a hammer, and a pitchfork, which they use to pound away at the head of the sleeping man, who reacts in pain. Awaking in panic, the vision disappears, but the man pulls the sheet over his head to try to escape the hallucinations. Porter very economically uses the framing of the close-up as a way to capture both the man’s pained physical reactions, and to allow for the use of double-exposure to create the illusion of the demons who are haunting his sleep.
The next shot reverts to the exact same set-up as before: the diagonal, long shot of the bed in the corner of the room. Now, the man lies under the bed covers, but almost immediately, it begins rocking and shaking about, as if he were possessed by some kind of demon (indeed, the shot is reminiscent of the scenes of the bed shaking and lurching about in William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” from nearly 70 years later!) Finally, the bed lifts itself about a foot in the air and begins spinning around and around, before finally taking flight out the window.
In a brilliant double-exposure shot, Porter shows the bed flying above the city. The use of the moving scenery creates the illusion of a traveling shot. The bed, set against the dark night sky, is shown to be moving over a cityscape, with the man holding on to the bed after the sheets blow off. Sitting up in the bed, the man grabs at an invisible steering wheel, positioning himself as if he were driving a car, and proceeds to navigate this phantom bed through the air before lying back down. Eventually, he is lifted up off the bed by the wind, and holds onto the headboard as he is held adrift in a horizontal position. Losing his grip, he floats backward to the footboard, which he grabs on to at the last moment. He kicks his legs about in the air in panic, just as the bed is seen passing over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Next, Porter returns to a static, long shot of a building top, over which the bed is seen flying. The bed rises up out of the frame, but the man is seen falling toward the top of the building. Porter next cuts in for a closer medium shot of the building top, with the man, in his pajamas, caught on the weather vane, which turns around and around until he finally drops off. Returning to the long shot, Porter shows the man falling into the city streets. He returns to the diagonal, establishing shot of the bedroom as the man comes crashing through the ceiling and landing in his bed. The signs of destruction disappear as the man awakes, shooting out of bed. The man sits on the edge of his bed, panicked and trembling, as the film ends.
Formally, Porter uses a very economic shot sequence, only going in for close-ups, or changing angles, when necessary to introduce a better vantage point for the viewer, or to allow for the depiction of necessary visual information. As a trick film, the “dream structure” of its narrative places it in contrast to the films of Melies, Zecca and others who embraced the ability of film to depict the impossible. In this sense, Porter seems to be contextualizing (and justifying) his trick effects within the context of a dream world in which anything is possible. Even the scenes in which the man stumbles about the street are explained away as a hallucination. From a narrative standpoint, it’s much more simple than some of Porter’s earlier efforts, but at the same time, reflects the story’s origins in the cartoon panel strips of Winsor McCay. Indeed, the film can be seen as a kind of photographic comic strip in the way that it is structured both formally and in terms of narrative. As Lloyd Fonvielle has noted, "Because movies were a new form, novelties, they fell into story frames that audiences were already familiar with -- newspaper cartoons and comic strips, which could be read in less than a minute, and vaudeville skits, which lasted about ten minutes" (Fonvielle, "Visual MicroFiction"). It makes for an interesting comparison with the current vogue for films based on comic books, which also involve a narrative, but with an emphasis on the moments of spectacle that are integral to the visual nature of the comic strip. This borrowing from a the highly visual medium of the comic strip, which viewers of the day would have been familiar with, places this film (and others like it) as a kind of ancestor of the comic book films that currently draw on an existing audience, familiar with the techniques and narrative structure of that format. When viewed in this context, it makes clear that Porter was working with an eye toward capturing the formal qualities of that medium and integrating it into the narrative structures he had helped to develop earlier in the decade, while borrowing uniquely cinematic techniques from the European pioneers working at the same time. In this sense, “Dream of a Rarebit Fiend” stands as an example of the wide range of influences at work in early cinema.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Parody or Homage?: Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie"
Hot off the success of his two critical and box-office smashes, BLAZING SADDLES and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, Mel Brooks next turned his satirical sights on the golden age of comedy, creating a silent movie for the present day, titled-appropriately enough-SILENT MOVIE. Filming in color and widescreen, but with only a musical soundtrack and a few selected sound effects, Brooks sought out to make the first silent comedy in 40 years, loaded with cameos and filled with the kind of sight gags and physical humor that had worked for Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. Problem is, that type of humor doesn’t really work for Brooks and company.
As audacious as the idea sounds, it’s important to keep in mind that Brooks was the reigning box office comic of the time, and especially after going against conventional wisdom and shooting his previous smash hit, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, in black and white, he pretty much had free reign. SILENT MOVIE, however, is a textbook example of what can go wrong when a comic artist, working with material ill-suited to them, is let loose with no one to tell them “no”. That’s not to say the film is a complete failure; in fact, there are a couple of memorable moments, but not nearly enough to sustain itself for feature-length. Whereas Brooks’ previous two films had been parodies, SILENT MOVIE, however, is set up as both a parody as well as a kind of homage to the great silent clowns. This creates a kind of tension, where Brooks seems to want to send-up the style by over-playing everything in the form of parody, but at other times, seems to want to move toward doing contemporary gags in a “straight” silent format.
The basic problem, so obvious it hardly needs mentioning, comes down to a clash of comedy styles: Brooks, trained in the Borscht Belt humor of the Catskill resorts where he got his start, and the verbal humor of the Sid Caesar programs for which he wrote sketches during the 1950s, is all wrong for this kind of material. It’s rather remarkable that such a brilliant comedian didn’t recognize this as a basic problem; or rather, if he did, that he didn’t abandon the project outright. The silent clowns, and their modern day counterparts like Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis, were schooled in a very different form of humor, in which physical comedy routines were crafted and timed with the same skill and precision that comics like Caesar devoted to the verbal joke. Brooks seems to think that visual and physical comedy instead involves a total lack of subtlety, mixed with forced and obvious sight gags, and-worst of all-inserting way too many verbal jokes into the film in the form of intertitles! His contemporary, Woody Allen, seems to share the same misconception about the art of silent comedy, once calling it the “checkers” in comparison to the “chess” of talking comedy.
Brooks took the leading role this time around, a move that others have noted marked a step down in his work. Perhaps because he was unable to stay behind the camera (and Brooks is certainly one of the sharpest and most stylish comedy directors of the past forty years), the film has a fairly flat look to it and seems awkwardly staged much of the time, with the co-starring performances of Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise too often hurt by takes running too long, and action stretched out to unnecessary lengths (the scene in which the three of them, dressed in suits of armor, attempt to meet with Liza Minnelli in a studio commissary, is almost painful to watch). The problems with the editing are a real surprise, given that Brooks has unquestionably the finest editorial eye of any comic filmmaker working since the post-war era.
If the film works as a satire at all, it’s not as a satire of silent comedy (which, in itself, seems a very puzzling concept to attempt at all). Rather, the film does work to some extent as a satire of contemporary (1976) Hollywood. The opening title reads: “Hollywood: The Movie Capital of Greater Los Angeles”, which is even more bitingly funny today than it was in 1976. The problem is Brooks doesn’t take it far enough. Perhaps afraid of being accused of biting the hand that fed him, Brooks’ satire of the corporate conglomerate Gulf and Western (here called “Engulf and Devour”) is muted by the fact that the characters are played in such an over-the-top fashion (one bit has Harold Gould, in a state of fury, literally frothing at the mouth and barking like a dog!) Whereas Jerry Lewis had the nerve to really rip Hollywood to shreds in films like THE PATSY and THE ERRAND BOY, here, Brooks seems too enamored of Tinseltown in order to really do it any serious damage. He pays loving homage to the town when he really should be taking a sledgehammer to it. What’s perhaps most ironic about SILENT MOVIE is the fact that it feels dated, not because it’s silent, but because its so clearly a product of its time. It almost seems to have more in common with such period films as BUGSY MALONE or even WON TON TON, THE DOG WHO SAVED HOLLYWOOD. The lineup of cameos adds to this feeling.
The plot has Brooks, aided by Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise, setting out to sign every major star in Hollywood to appear in their silent movie, making it a hit and thus saving the studio, Miracle Pictures (“If it’s a good one, it’s a miracle…”) from being taken over by the corporate entity of Engulf and Devour. The “guest stars” do a good job kidding their own star images; particularly memorable is Burt Reynolds as the very picture of the vain, macho leading man, even stopping to admire himself in the mirror on his way downstairs in the morning. Reynolds, a delightful light comic, has some of the film’s best scenes, despite the intense over-playing of Brooks, Feldman and DeLuise. James Caan has a fun scene with the guys in which they attempt to sign him while in his rickety trailer, which threatens to tip over at the slightest provocation. Anne Bancroft shares a hilarious and energetic tango with Brooks. Only Minnelli seems wasted, as she has little to do other than watch as Brooks and the gang stumble about in suits of armor. One of the most fun is Paul Newman, resting up in a hospital after a racecar accident, and attempting to elude Brooks and company on a motorized wheelchair chase to and fro across the hospital grounds. These moments, far from seeming gratuitous, actually prove to be some of the film’s most fun moments, because it’s always a delight to see stars poking fun at themselves, and they all seem to be having a genuinely good time in the process. Special mention needs to be made of the film’s most surprising cameo-the brilliant and poignant Marcel Marceau, who does a pantomime of struggling to walk across a windy room in order to answer the phone. (I won’t spoil the topper to this sequence, because it’s so totally unexpected and unprecedented in the art of mime, that it really deserves to be seen in order to fully appreciate the surprise).
A major flaw in the comedy itself is that Brooks and his writers seemed to mistake silent comedy for cartoon comedy. Whereas the best silent comedy involved a subtle working with characters and situations, Brooks seems intent on creating a kind of live-action Looney Tune, with absurd cartoon humor running throughout (especially the bizarre and ludicrous steamroller gag outside of Burt Reynolds’ house). The image of the trio stacked on each others’ shoulders to create a “tall man” effect is nowhere near as funny as it could be. Apparently, Brooks shot a scene with Buster Keaton’s wife, Eleanor, in which they re-created the telephone booth bit that she and Buster had performed years earlier, but this scene was left on the cutting room floor, supposedly because a shadow cast by the camera equipment rendered it unusable. One gag that comes close to being brilliant occurs in the scene where Brooks and company visit studio chief Sid Caesar in the hospital following a heart attack, and Feldman and DeLuise turn the heart monitor into a game of Pong, which has a visible and quite dramatic effects on Caesar. It’s a good moment, crossing into the surreal, and taking advantage of a new medium (the video game) within the silent film medium
Then there are the unfunny gay jokes that Brooks is so relentlessly fond of. While it’s certainly misguided to look for sensitivity in comedy of any kind, there’s a big difference between the delightfully and sharply-written characterizations of Roger DeBris and Carmen Giya in THE PRODUCERS, and the running gag in SILENT MOVIE, in which the three male leads repeatedly find themselves piled on top of each other as two passing women shout at them, “Fags!” This type of humor is better suited to less clever comics, and it’s disappointing that Brooks falls back on this kind of thing again and again in his work when he can’t think of anything more original. The scene in James Caan’s trailer feels inspired by the brilliant cabin scene in Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH, in which the cabin, teetering on a precipice, appears ready to plunge itself and its occupants to their doom at the slightest motion. The difference, of course, is that Brooks’ scene lacks the suspense and “thrill” comedy of Chaplin’s (to say nothing of Chaplin’s brilliant comic panic). In Brooks’ scene, there is no real impending danger, other than the trailer falling two feet on one side. It does finally tip over, but Brooks is unable to find a suitable topper to end the sequence on, so instead, as all the guys tumble on top of on another, the two passers-by once again shout homophobic slurs at them. As much as some silent comedy strikes us as insensitive today, it was never mean-spirited like this. (Another cheap joke, albeit an amusing one, occurs when Harold Gould unveils a picture of Bernadette Peters-who is being sent to seduce Brooks-to his all-male board of directors, and asking their collective opinion, they respond without uttering a word, as the table rises off the ground several inches!) Other gags, including such adolescent humor of reading through intertitles of DeLuise’s need to use the bathroom, to Marty Feldman getting whacked in the crotch by a blind man’s cane, Harold Gould speaking before the board of directors with his fly unzipped, and DeLuise getting a can of Coke shot into his groin by an out-of-control vending machine, are so juvenile as to barely require further comment.
The film ends with the kind of all-out chase-and-action sequence that Harold Lloyd would have handled brilliantly. The device of using the malfunctioning Coke machine, while hardly too clever nor terribly funny, makes for some good moments as the bad guys are bombarded with exploding soda cans! The film ends with the triumphant premiere of the silent film (wishful thinking on Brooks’ part, perhaps!) The cast lines up, marching in time, to Morris’ “Silent Movie March” (which sounds remarkably similar to the theme Morris composed for the TV series, “Coach”, with Craig T. Nelson).
This is a good time to mention that, for a silent film, SILENT MOVIE is surprisingly reliant on music. John Morris composed 87 minutes of wall-to-wall notes, interspersed with sections of silence and moments carried more by sound effects (such as in the hospital sequence). Even though Brooks essentially drives home the point that SILENT MOVIE is the first silent film since Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES, it misses the point that silent comedy did, in fact, live on into the sound era. Its most notable practitioners were, of course, Laurel and Hardy, who’d actually started in the medium itself and continued to work in that tradition throughout the rest of their careers. Jacques Tati found perhaps the most ideal blend between balancing the use of sound with a visual style of comedy, creating a body of comic work that is unequaled in world cinema. More recently, Rowan Atkinson had a great deal of success with his TV program, “Mr. Bean”, which is perhaps the closest comedy of recent years to the mischievous fun of the world of silent comedy. But in SILENT MOVIE, the score-which really is integral to the overall film-feels uninspired and flat at times. Visually, it’s one of Brooks’ dullest films, too, despite the occasionally bright color patterns. He worked here with cinematographer Paul Lohmann, who’d shot NASHVILLE the year before for Robert Altman and would work with Brooks again the following year on HIGH ANXIETY. In his work with Brooks, Lohmann’s compositions feel somewhat unbalanced, but this may be due to a general feeling of scenes seeming under-rehearsed and even poorly timed (a detriment in this kind of comedy). One has to wonder how much ad-libbing was involved. The screenplay is credited to Brooks, Rudy DeLuca, Ron Clark and Barry Levinson (from a story by Clark)-none of them comedy writers terribly noted for their sense of visual comedy.
Taken as a whole, SILENT MOVIE is an interesting experiment, but it fails to live up to its potential, which in itself is a problematic statement, as this style of comedy is clearly ill-suited to Brooks’ strengths as a comic artist that it’s difficult to say just what “potential” the project ever had. This is no slight against Brooks, as the same point would apply if Chaplin were to have tried his hand at doing a film consisting of purely verbal comedy. As a cinematic experiment, it’s a kind of metaphor for the idea that “you can’t go home again”. Major work had been done in the field of visual comedy in the work of Laurel and Hardy, Jacques Tati, and Jerry Lewis in the forty-five years since the transition to sound. Here, Brooks creates a copy of a form, then, rather than bringing anything new to it (other than perhaps certain jokes which would have never gotten past the censors in the silent era!)
Still, the film has the best fly-in-the-soup gag ever committed to film.
As audacious as the idea sounds, it’s important to keep in mind that Brooks was the reigning box office comic of the time, and especially after going against conventional wisdom and shooting his previous smash hit, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, in black and white, he pretty much had free reign. SILENT MOVIE, however, is a textbook example of what can go wrong when a comic artist, working with material ill-suited to them, is let loose with no one to tell them “no”. That’s not to say the film is a complete failure; in fact, there are a couple of memorable moments, but not nearly enough to sustain itself for feature-length. Whereas Brooks’ previous two films had been parodies, SILENT MOVIE, however, is set up as both a parody as well as a kind of homage to the great silent clowns. This creates a kind of tension, where Brooks seems to want to send-up the style by over-playing everything in the form of parody, but at other times, seems to want to move toward doing contemporary gags in a “straight” silent format.
The basic problem, so obvious it hardly needs mentioning, comes down to a clash of comedy styles: Brooks, trained in the Borscht Belt humor of the Catskill resorts where he got his start, and the verbal humor of the Sid Caesar programs for which he wrote sketches during the 1950s, is all wrong for this kind of material. It’s rather remarkable that such a brilliant comedian didn’t recognize this as a basic problem; or rather, if he did, that he didn’t abandon the project outright. The silent clowns, and their modern day counterparts like Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis, were schooled in a very different form of humor, in which physical comedy routines were crafted and timed with the same skill and precision that comics like Caesar devoted to the verbal joke. Brooks seems to think that visual and physical comedy instead involves a total lack of subtlety, mixed with forced and obvious sight gags, and-worst of all-inserting way too many verbal jokes into the film in the form of intertitles! His contemporary, Woody Allen, seems to share the same misconception about the art of silent comedy, once calling it the “checkers” in comparison to the “chess” of talking comedy.
Brooks took the leading role this time around, a move that others have noted marked a step down in his work. Perhaps because he was unable to stay behind the camera (and Brooks is certainly one of the sharpest and most stylish comedy directors of the past forty years), the film has a fairly flat look to it and seems awkwardly staged much of the time, with the co-starring performances of Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise too often hurt by takes running too long, and action stretched out to unnecessary lengths (the scene in which the three of them, dressed in suits of armor, attempt to meet with Liza Minnelli in a studio commissary, is almost painful to watch). The problems with the editing are a real surprise, given that Brooks has unquestionably the finest editorial eye of any comic filmmaker working since the post-war era.
If the film works as a satire at all, it’s not as a satire of silent comedy (which, in itself, seems a very puzzling concept to attempt at all). Rather, the film does work to some extent as a satire of contemporary (1976) Hollywood. The opening title reads: “Hollywood: The Movie Capital of Greater Los Angeles”, which is even more bitingly funny today than it was in 1976. The problem is Brooks doesn’t take it far enough. Perhaps afraid of being accused of biting the hand that fed him, Brooks’ satire of the corporate conglomerate Gulf and Western (here called “Engulf and Devour”) is muted by the fact that the characters are played in such an over-the-top fashion (one bit has Harold Gould, in a state of fury, literally frothing at the mouth and barking like a dog!) Whereas Jerry Lewis had the nerve to really rip Hollywood to shreds in films like THE PATSY and THE ERRAND BOY, here, Brooks seems too enamored of Tinseltown in order to really do it any serious damage. He pays loving homage to the town when he really should be taking a sledgehammer to it. What’s perhaps most ironic about SILENT MOVIE is the fact that it feels dated, not because it’s silent, but because its so clearly a product of its time. It almost seems to have more in common with such period films as BUGSY MALONE or even WON TON TON, THE DOG WHO SAVED HOLLYWOOD. The lineup of cameos adds to this feeling.
The plot has Brooks, aided by Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise, setting out to sign every major star in Hollywood to appear in their silent movie, making it a hit and thus saving the studio, Miracle Pictures (“If it’s a good one, it’s a miracle…”) from being taken over by the corporate entity of Engulf and Devour. The “guest stars” do a good job kidding their own star images; particularly memorable is Burt Reynolds as the very picture of the vain, macho leading man, even stopping to admire himself in the mirror on his way downstairs in the morning. Reynolds, a delightful light comic, has some of the film’s best scenes, despite the intense over-playing of Brooks, Feldman and DeLuise. James Caan has a fun scene with the guys in which they attempt to sign him while in his rickety trailer, which threatens to tip over at the slightest provocation. Anne Bancroft shares a hilarious and energetic tango with Brooks. Only Minnelli seems wasted, as she has little to do other than watch as Brooks and the gang stumble about in suits of armor. One of the most fun is Paul Newman, resting up in a hospital after a racecar accident, and attempting to elude Brooks and company on a motorized wheelchair chase to and fro across the hospital grounds. These moments, far from seeming gratuitous, actually prove to be some of the film’s most fun moments, because it’s always a delight to see stars poking fun at themselves, and they all seem to be having a genuinely good time in the process. Special mention needs to be made of the film’s most surprising cameo-the brilliant and poignant Marcel Marceau, who does a pantomime of struggling to walk across a windy room in order to answer the phone. (I won’t spoil the topper to this sequence, because it’s so totally unexpected and unprecedented in the art of mime, that it really deserves to be seen in order to fully appreciate the surprise).
A major flaw in the comedy itself is that Brooks and his writers seemed to mistake silent comedy for cartoon comedy. Whereas the best silent comedy involved a subtle working with characters and situations, Brooks seems intent on creating a kind of live-action Looney Tune, with absurd cartoon humor running throughout (especially the bizarre and ludicrous steamroller gag outside of Burt Reynolds’ house). The image of the trio stacked on each others’ shoulders to create a “tall man” effect is nowhere near as funny as it could be. Apparently, Brooks shot a scene with Buster Keaton’s wife, Eleanor, in which they re-created the telephone booth bit that she and Buster had performed years earlier, but this scene was left on the cutting room floor, supposedly because a shadow cast by the camera equipment rendered it unusable. One gag that comes close to being brilliant occurs in the scene where Brooks and company visit studio chief Sid Caesar in the hospital following a heart attack, and Feldman and DeLuise turn the heart monitor into a game of Pong, which has a visible and quite dramatic effects on Caesar. It’s a good moment, crossing into the surreal, and taking advantage of a new medium (the video game) within the silent film medium
Then there are the unfunny gay jokes that Brooks is so relentlessly fond of. While it’s certainly misguided to look for sensitivity in comedy of any kind, there’s a big difference between the delightfully and sharply-written characterizations of Roger DeBris and Carmen Giya in THE PRODUCERS, and the running gag in SILENT MOVIE, in which the three male leads repeatedly find themselves piled on top of each other as two passing women shout at them, “Fags!” This type of humor is better suited to less clever comics, and it’s disappointing that Brooks falls back on this kind of thing again and again in his work when he can’t think of anything more original. The scene in James Caan’s trailer feels inspired by the brilliant cabin scene in Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH, in which the cabin, teetering on a precipice, appears ready to plunge itself and its occupants to their doom at the slightest motion. The difference, of course, is that Brooks’ scene lacks the suspense and “thrill” comedy of Chaplin’s (to say nothing of Chaplin’s brilliant comic panic). In Brooks’ scene, there is no real impending danger, other than the trailer falling two feet on one side. It does finally tip over, but Brooks is unable to find a suitable topper to end the sequence on, so instead, as all the guys tumble on top of on another, the two passers-by once again shout homophobic slurs at them. As much as some silent comedy strikes us as insensitive today, it was never mean-spirited like this. (Another cheap joke, albeit an amusing one, occurs when Harold Gould unveils a picture of Bernadette Peters-who is being sent to seduce Brooks-to his all-male board of directors, and asking their collective opinion, they respond without uttering a word, as the table rises off the ground several inches!) Other gags, including such adolescent humor of reading through intertitles of DeLuise’s need to use the bathroom, to Marty Feldman getting whacked in the crotch by a blind man’s cane, Harold Gould speaking before the board of directors with his fly unzipped, and DeLuise getting a can of Coke shot into his groin by an out-of-control vending machine, are so juvenile as to barely require further comment.
The film ends with the kind of all-out chase-and-action sequence that Harold Lloyd would have handled brilliantly. The device of using the malfunctioning Coke machine, while hardly too clever nor terribly funny, makes for some good moments as the bad guys are bombarded with exploding soda cans! The film ends with the triumphant premiere of the silent film (wishful thinking on Brooks’ part, perhaps!) The cast lines up, marching in time, to Morris’ “Silent Movie March” (which sounds remarkably similar to the theme Morris composed for the TV series, “Coach”, with Craig T. Nelson).
This is a good time to mention that, for a silent film, SILENT MOVIE is surprisingly reliant on music. John Morris composed 87 minutes of wall-to-wall notes, interspersed with sections of silence and moments carried more by sound effects (such as in the hospital sequence). Even though Brooks essentially drives home the point that SILENT MOVIE is the first silent film since Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES, it misses the point that silent comedy did, in fact, live on into the sound era. Its most notable practitioners were, of course, Laurel and Hardy, who’d actually started in the medium itself and continued to work in that tradition throughout the rest of their careers. Jacques Tati found perhaps the most ideal blend between balancing the use of sound with a visual style of comedy, creating a body of comic work that is unequaled in world cinema. More recently, Rowan Atkinson had a great deal of success with his TV program, “Mr. Bean”, which is perhaps the closest comedy of recent years to the mischievous fun of the world of silent comedy. But in SILENT MOVIE, the score-which really is integral to the overall film-feels uninspired and flat at times. Visually, it’s one of Brooks’ dullest films, too, despite the occasionally bright color patterns. He worked here with cinematographer Paul Lohmann, who’d shot NASHVILLE the year before for Robert Altman and would work with Brooks again the following year on HIGH ANXIETY. In his work with Brooks, Lohmann’s compositions feel somewhat unbalanced, but this may be due to a general feeling of scenes seeming under-rehearsed and even poorly timed (a detriment in this kind of comedy). One has to wonder how much ad-libbing was involved. The screenplay is credited to Brooks, Rudy DeLuca, Ron Clark and Barry Levinson (from a story by Clark)-none of them comedy writers terribly noted for their sense of visual comedy.
Taken as a whole, SILENT MOVIE is an interesting experiment, but it fails to live up to its potential, which in itself is a problematic statement, as this style of comedy is clearly ill-suited to Brooks’ strengths as a comic artist that it’s difficult to say just what “potential” the project ever had. This is no slight against Brooks, as the same point would apply if Chaplin were to have tried his hand at doing a film consisting of purely verbal comedy. As a cinematic experiment, it’s a kind of metaphor for the idea that “you can’t go home again”. Major work had been done in the field of visual comedy in the work of Laurel and Hardy, Jacques Tati, and Jerry Lewis in the forty-five years since the transition to sound. Here, Brooks creates a copy of a form, then, rather than bringing anything new to it (other than perhaps certain jokes which would have never gotten past the censors in the silent era!)
Still, the film has the best fly-in-the-soup gag ever committed to film.
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