Interview with filmmaker Russell Sheaffer

I recently had a chance to interview experimental and documentary filmmaker/scholar Russell Sheaffer about his latest film, MASCULINITY/FEMININITY. I've known Russell since our time together in NYU's Cinema Studies graduate program. Since we both share backgrounds in film production and theory, with an interest in how the two disciplines can work together, I've long been interested in his work, which he now continues in his doctoral studies at Indiana University, exploring the subject of gender through combined media production and theoretical approaches.

Russell's work has screened at such prestigious venues as MoMA, UCLA, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Torino GLBT Film Festival, Boston LGBT Film Festival, and the Anthology Film Archives. A short film that he co-wrote and co-directed with James Franco, MASCULINITY & ME, was featured in Franco's solo exhibition, "The Dangerous Book Four Boys", in New York and Berlin.

In this interview, Russell discusses his latest project, MASCULINITY/FEMININITY, and his ideas on combining film theory and practice:

MATT BARRY: Can you tell us a little about how the project of MASCULINITY/FEMININITY got started?

RUSSELL SHEAFFER: MASCULINITY/FEMININITY started back when I was at NYU with you. I was in a class that Chris Straayer was teaching, which was on the body writ large. James Franco and I had been in some classes together and were in this seminar and were given the chance to collaborate in lieu of a paper – a traditional academic paper. We took some questions that James had been asked by Esquire that were really loaded heteronormative understandings of what masculinity is and what it means to become a “masculine” male. Like, “what’s the greatest example of manhood you've ever seen?” and these bull shit things.

We crafted our own responses to them, shot them, and then sort of amalgamated them together into this 22-minute piece. When we finished the film, it played in James’ solo show at the Clocktower in New York, and then in Berlin and all over the place. I decided I wanted to expand on the themes that we were ruminating over and try to craft a larger piece that was really interested in the opportunity for praxis that we had been given -- asking scholars, filmmakers, theorists, and artists of all different kinds to take these questions as a starting point and really perform anything that they wanted, because in my mind gender is all about a performance in one way or another.

So, in a very loose way, I wanted to give people these questions – totally loaded questions – as a prompt that would allow them to perform however they wanted.

MB: As far as the actual production, could you just talk a little bit about how you've used Kickstarter and crowd-sourcing and that process? For a project that doesn't have the conventional theatrical, “indie film” outlets that one typically has – for something that is basically an academic project and has an academic focus – could you explain how you go about the pre-production process on something like that?

RS: In terms of pre-production, that is something that is difficult in a lot of ways. How do you fund raise? How do you budget for something that will likely never make money? We’ll be really lucky if we make the budget back for the film. But I think that films like this are really important as exercises in combining ways of thinking and as ways to confront people with experiences that counter how they’re used to seeing images. So I've really focused on really strategic budgeting, really working like a lot of micro-budget people do where any expense you don’t need gets cut – sleeping on friends’ couches whenever you can, using frequent flyer miles to pay for crew travel, all of that kind of stuff is really important to budgeting. But then Kickstarter is a really great way, too… it is a really great way to bring together a community that wants to see something like this made that wouldn't be produced otherwise. 50 people, 100 people, 200 people can really make the difference in seeing something like this get made. We raised something like $7,500 and the big thing that I knew we couldn't do unless we raised that money was actually shoot on Super 8 – get the stock, develop it, transfer it – all of that is a somewhat expensive process. That money from the community made the aesthetic of the whole film possible.

MB: When you first proposed the idea of doing the videos at NYU as an alternative to the written paper, were there any particular challenges that you had in convincing them to let you do that?

RS: I think there are some reservations overall, like thinking about the academic institution as an institution that cranks out a product that it understands and that it can manage – the University can really conceptualize what a paper looks like, what a manuscript looks like, what a peer-reviewed journal essay or article looks like and what that contributes to the field in some way. I think it’s difficult for some departments, some individuals to conceptualize how a film operates similarly when there isn't the regimented, peer-reviewed system that we use for writing.

NYU and Chris Straayer in particular seemed really receptive to a blending in a way that I think a lot of people aren't. So it didn't seem like that much of a stretch for Chris to get into the mindset that it’s equally important to actually create that cultural product as a way to critique it, as a way to talk about it, to think through what it does and how it breathes. I think it’s a really amazing and unique opportunity to encounter people who think that way, and NYU seemed like one of those places where a lot of the faculty are able to think in that way.

IU [Indiana University] has been similar in that respect, of really being supportive of people who think about their disciplines in fresh ways. The Department of Communication and Culture was founded as a way to become interdisciplinary, to combine rhetoric and performance and ethnography and film and media studies all in to one giant department. It’s sort of foundational to them to be able to think outside of the box in the way that you do scholarship. Now, the powers-thatbe at Indiana University are planning a huge “media school” merger that I’m not particularly sure about. There is a huge push for “professionalization” and, while I understand that drive, I think it’s really important that they maintain a mindset that says, “yes, media making can be a critical, scholarly act.”

MB: Right. Talking about filmmaking in academia, it’s always interesting to me because it’s sort of logical to me to think in terms of both production and theory, because when you have the backgrounds in both, one side is always informing the other. With more traditional programs that are more focused, more separated into one or the other, I know it’s a lot harder to find people who are receptive to these ideas. I’m curious when you first became interested in merging the two disciplines and seeing how you could combine them to get ideas across on both sides?

RS: I don’t know if there was a specific moment. I think, like you, I come from a place where I did film studies as an undergrad, thinking about film criticism and cultural theory and then immediately after I graduated I started working on documentaries and other peoples’ films. Somehow, in my brain, it was just a logical connection, it was obvious that the two inform each other. If you can’t think about the ways that images are constructed, and how they work, and the cultural politics that surround them, you have some pretty lacking movies. If you can’t think about the way that films are produced, you have some pretty lacking criticism.

It’s important that those two things come in dialogue with each other. Obviously there are a lot of people who don’t feel that way, that really disagree. But it just seems like that’s the way my brain works. Then, getting to NYU, there were actually professors who were thinking that way, like it was obvious that you could make a film and it could be just as valid a scholarly pursuit as anything else. I think really cemented that idea in my brain that these two things can work together even when academic departments say that they can’t. It’s something that we need to push for and we need to be thinking about as artists but also as scholars.

MB: To get back to MASCULINITY/FEMININITY, you have some really interesting subjects featured in the film. Could you talk about some of the people you have in there and what it was like working with them?

RS: I have learned from academic experience and production experience that if you want something, you just have to ask for it. It’s not always just going to magically materialize, but people seem really receptive when you’re willing to let them know what you’re doing and ask for their help. I made a list where I asked myself, “if I were going to make a film where I ask a bunch of people to perform gender in one way or another, who would those people be?” I sent out emails and amazingly, maybe 90% of people were really receptive to the idea, or super into the concept of the amalgamation of theoretical work and production work, and thought that the questions I was asking were just as bull shit as I thought they were -- they were really excited to do it.

I’d been trying to get the project off the ground for a while and Monika Treut, who is a really phenomenal German filmmaker that made a movie called SEDUCTION: THE CRUEL WOMAN, which is one of my favorites, was at IU for a semester. I was telling her about the project and she was immediately like, this is great - we should make questions for women and do all these different things. We immediately started thinking, “what questions would you ask ‘women’ that were equally as ridiculous as those that we have for ‘men?’” So Monika signed on, and then I emailed Barbara Hammer…and once Barbara Hammer was on board, it was just like a snowball. Once Barbara Hammer was involved, everybody was excited, which is great. It was super, super gracious of Barbara to donate an hour of her time. She was like, yeah, this is great – come to New York and let’s do this. That led to so much: B. Ruby Rich, Carolee Schneemann, Susan Stryker, and so many other really amazing scholars and artists. Everybody who’s involved has been really excited, gracious, and willing to donate an hour of their time and do something wild and different.

MB: Could you talk briefly about your decision to shoot on Super 8? I thought that was interesting because it’s a format you don’t see used a lot, even with people shooting on film.

RS: Yeah, I’m really interested in Super 8 as a medium. A lot of what I do with production work is really medium-specific. When I’m shooting on 16mm, there’s a reason I’m shooting on 16mm. When I’m shooting on Super 8, there’s a reason I want to shoot on Super 8. With this film in particular, from the very first moment that James shared the questions from Esquire with me, it seemed like such a flimsy understanding of what gender was. It’s such a minuscule way of thinking about it.

To me, Super 8 is a way, theoretically, to embrace that in the medium, to embrace the idea that an understanding of gender like these questions do, is really flimsy, it falls apart, it doesn't work right. When you throw these reels, these Kodak reels, into the old 1960s cameras that we’re using, they literally jam more than half the time. So we’ll have no idea when we’re shooting, really…but I think it’s a really important theoretical exercise to embrace the idea that the film stock is going to fail, that gender as a solid construct is bound to fail, and that it’s the sort of flimsy construction that produces difficult-to-decipher images. Super 8, to me, seemed like a really obvious choice when thinking through the sort of content we were dealing with and the theoretical frames that we were embracing.

MB: It’s interesting, I remember at the Orphan Film Symposium there was some footage run from the Kinsey archives, and talking about the fragile nature of Super 8 brings to mind how a lot of these films that depict different aspects of gender and sexuality more broadly are in danger of being lost to time because of the fragile nature of these prints. Going through the Kinsey archives, I imagine you've come across some films that really shatter the traditional notions of gender and sexuality from different periods in which they were produced.

RS: Yeah, the work that I’m doing right now here at IU is really looking at… stag films – sexually explicit films – that were produced before 1930. The Kinsey has almost 60 films that they think were produced before 1930. It’s really fascinating to me to look at the way that people are encountering their bodies, obviously in a time that’s separated from us right now, but also in the ways that things are really very similar. Particularly, I’m really interested in the way that these films screened, trying to chart out how sexually explicit material circulates, especially in the early years of the 20th century. There’s mind-blowingly incredible material in the Kinsey that is just sitting there waiting to be accessed and thought about and preserved. It’s an incredible resource for that kind of stuff.

MB: I've always found it fascinating because of how much it goes against the mainstream media depictions of sexuality, beyond just the issue of gender, but in general it just shatters so many notions that the mainstream media would depict. And it reminds me in many ways of what you’re doing in looking at these questions that James Franco was asked by Esquire, and going against mainstream conceptions and really examining everything. I think there are some interesting parallels there.

RS: I think so, too. I think that people, when they encounter really early stag, in a certain way it’s like an immediate rupture for them. The idea that people were filming sex acts in 1920 is somehow difficult for a lot of people to grasp. And I think that breaking down the questions in a similar way is an attempt at rupturing that really normative train of thought that says: gender is like this, sex is like this, time is like this, you know, that everything is in a nice straight line.

MB: Can you describe what kind of life a film like MASCULINITY/FEMININITY can expect to have once it’s released out into the world?

RS: We’ll be working to get it out to festivals for sure and I’m working on alternate installation and text-based versions, too, but the film has always been interested in engaging with theory in a way that I think will be really productive in university settings. Once the project is done, we’ll start taking it around to universities, getting people in dialogue with it, getting people in dialogue with the theories that the performers are drawing on, sharing their own ideas in conversation with the performances in the film. I think the biggest goal for MASCULINITY/FEMININITY is to get people to engage with this way of thinking.

For more information on Russell's films, please check out his website, Artless Media, "like" the official MASCULINITY/FEMININITY page on Facebook, and watch the official trailer here.

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Masculinity/Femininity - Official Trailer (HD) from Russell Sheaffer on Vimeo.

Early Scorsese: It's Not Just You, Murray! (Martin Scorsese, 1964)

Martin Scorsese's second student short, made during his time in the MFA Film program at NYU, represents a big step up stylistically from his first effort. It's Not Just You, Murray! is a throwback to the freewheeling, wisecracking Warner Bros. gangster movies of the '30s, but imbued with a sense of style that is clearly influenced by the French New Wave and the Italian cinema of the period. Watching Murray one gets the sense that Scorsese was already quickly discovering the kinds of themes and characters he would return to throughout his career. There are shades of both Mean Streets and Goodfellas in the film. More than that, it represents a major achievement for the then-22 year old film school student on the cusp of becoming one of the most important American filmmakers to emerge in the years since the 1960s.

Postmortem Bliss (2006)

I first saw Postmortem Bliss, a film by Floria Sigismondi, as part of the Hermes shorts program on Turner Classic Movies in the fall of 2006. The film explores addiction through prescription medication and how over-medication numbs the emotional experience.

Sigismondi is a visual artist and director of music videos, with Postmortem Bliss her first narrative short film.

I have a special memory of seeing this moving film at a time in my own life when I was beginning to make short films again myself after a hiatus. It's a great example of how a short can be just as rich and complex as any feature-length film.

The Ten Steps (2004)

The Ten Steps is a supernatural horror from Ireland that starts with a simple premise (a young girl at home babysitting her brother while her parents are at dinner) and proceeds to go in a chilling direction that will make your hair stand on end.

I first saw this film as part of the Manhattan Short Film Festival, at the Senator Theater in Baltimore in 2005. I never forgot the film, and was glad to see it's available for viewing online.

Brewster's Millions (Allan Dwan, 1945)

George Barr McCutcheon’s old comic chestnut is given a fresh rendering in this 1945 version directed by Allan Dwan. Monty Brewster (Dennis O’Keefe) returns home from the service with plans to marry his sweetheart (Helen Walker), but his transition to civilian life is thrown into chaos when he finds out he stands to inherit 8 million dollars – provided he can spend a million dollars in two months and have absolutely nothing to show for it. Monty soon finds that a million is not as easy to blow through as he thought, and the money starts to have unexpected consequences.

Dwan keeps the comic proceedings moving at a frenetic pace, which at times seems to move as fast as HIS GIRL FRIDAY. The real fun comes in watching Brewster’s various spending schemes constantly go awry in unexpected ways. Dennis O’Keefe holds the zaniness together with his solid leading performance, sustaining a high level of nervous comic energy and anxiety, and ably supported by the likes of Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, John Litel, Joe Sawyer and Mischa Auer. Allan Dwan demonstrates his versatility with this fast and funny farce that has been filmed probably a half dozen times over the years with everyone from Fatty Arbuckle to John Candy.

Early Scorsese: What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

This is the earliest circulating film by Martin Scorsese. It was produced at NYU film school, and represents an interesting example of what Scorsese was able to accomplish with the tools available to him at that time. It stands in interesting contrast to Spielberg's AMBLIN' which, while not a student film, was a similar "calling card" short designed to showcase his talents. Whereas the Spielberg film feels largely slick and impersonal, at least today, Scorsese's film school effort has distinctive touches that set it apart from the mainstream cinema of the period.

Early Spielberg

AMBLIN' is generally regarded as Steven Spielberg's first professional directorial effort. The short film was produced by an independent producer, and Spielberg used the film as a "calling card" short. What's interesting about AMBLIN' in terms of Spielberg's body of work is that - for as much as it's held up as an example of his early genius for filmmaking - it is so atypical. The story involves a young man traveling through the American Southwest who hooks up with a young woman, also traveling the highways and biways of the deserts in search of freedom.

Visually, the film is gorgeous, shot by Allen Daviau, with whom Spielberg would collaborate again in the future. Daviau's cinematography captures the ambience of the Southwest desert with a palpable intensity. (On a side note, circulating copies of the film tend to be very poor transfers that fall far short of doing justice to Daviau's cinematography, but one can look past the flaws in the transfer to see what he was doing).

The problem is, for all the stunning visuals, the story is actually rather shallow, and feels artificial in some respects. AMBLIN' is a film that is ostensibly rooted in the counterculture of the late 1960s, and yet it does not feel like it was made by a director with any particular convictions about the political or cultural climate of the period. When the film hinges on this subject matter, its lack of anything particularly profound to say about it becomes a problem. The available clips from Spielberg's earliest childhood film productions, and his ambitious 1964 effort FIRELIGHT, seem to foreshadow his mature work much more directly than AMBLIN' does.

That said, AMBLIN' is an admirable effort, if an impersonal one. It demonstrated with certainty that Spielberg could direct a Hollywood-style production, and served to propel him in to new opportunities for studio directing work.

Show Girl in Hollywood (1930)

SHOW GIRL IN HOLLYWOOD is an interesting transitional talkie, perhaps most notable today for its glimpses behind the scenes of Warner Bros. studio in the early days of sound, but also as an example of the kinds of films about Hollywood that tell the tale about the high price to be paid for stardom.

The plot finds James Doyle (Jack Mulhall) backstage at the closing night of his first play, "Rainbow Girl", which has been a total flop. Jimmy's girlfriend, show girl Dixie Dugan (Alice White) joins him at a nightclub to drown their sorrows, but she catches the eye of visiting Hollywood director Frank Beulow (John Miljan), a sleazy womanizer who promises Dixie the moon if only she'll come out to Hollywood and let him make her a star. Against Jimmy's wishes, she takes Beulow up on his offer. Once she arrives in Tinseltown, however, she finds that Beulow is full of hot air and has pulled this stunt with lots of naive showgirls with dreams of making it big. The studio chief, Mr. Otis (Ford Sterling), goes so far as to fire Beulow for his reckless false promises.

Then Dixie meets Donny Harris, aka Mrs. Frank Beulow (played by Griffith star Blanche Sweet in a moving performance). Donny is washed up and over-the-hill at age 32 (!) and lives in a mansion with 20 rooms, most of which, she confesses, she's had sealed off as she can no longer even afford to have them dusted.

Dixie, meanwhile, struggles to find work, and is ready to call it quits, when Mr. Otis decides to make "Rainbow Girl" as the studio's next project, and calls Jimmy in New York to secure the motion picture rights to his story. Jimmy comes West to consult on the production and to push for Dixie to have the lead role, which she understudied for on Broadway. Everything comes together as planned. Dixie has the lead, and she gets Donny Harris a strong supporting part that will serve as her comeback role.

Then Frank Beulow re-enters the picture, and in an effort to sabotage his former employer's production, convinces Dixie, with more empty promises, to quit the production to make more prestigious pictures for him. Dixie's star tantrums and erratic behavior bring the production to a halt, causing her, Jimmy and Donny to all be fired. Dixie and Jimmy plan to return to New York, but Donny is in despair over her lack of opportunities. She attempts to take her own life, but is rescued by Dixie at the last minute, who now realizes the full implications that her selfish and delusional behavior have had on those around her.

This is the stuff of pure Tinseltown legend, and the film never takes itself too seriously except, interestingly, in the subplot dealing with Blanche Sweet's character. We never really fear that things won't work out for Dixie and Jimmy, or that Frank Beulow won't get his comeuppance. But there is a moment, near the end, where it appears that Donny may very well not live to see the film's joyous conclusion.

The "girl goes to Hollywood to be a star" trope had been around at least since the early '20s, and even earlier if you account for A GIRL'S FOLLY (1917), which was set in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Early films such as SOULS FOR SALE (1923) dealt with the overwhelming effect Hollywood has on those who make the trek to the West coast to break into movies, while others, such as THE EXTRA GIRL, ELLA CINDERS and SHOW PEOPLE, played mostly for laughs, still hinted at the enormous struggle and sacrifice behind every star. Similarly, during the 30s, such stories alternated between the darker, cynical type like WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? and A STAR IS BORN, and comedies such as BOMBSHELL, but at the heart of these stories was the emotional toll paid for the price of stardom.

SHOW GIRL IN HOLLYWOOD is the first such film from the talkie period, and unlike in some such films, the stakes are never quite as high for Dixie Dugan as they might otherwise have been. In A STAR IS BORN, we know that if Esther Blodgett gives up and returns home to her midwestern farm, she will never be the same. With Dixie Dugan, on the other hand, we can imagine her returning to life in New York and continuing to work as before on the Broadway stage.

Director Mervyn LeRoy also lavishes much attention on the process of film-making. Most interesting is the "I've Got My Eye on You" number, which shows the filming of a musical number exactly as it was done in 1930, complete with the orchestra playing off-camera, and tantalizing glimpses inside the camera and sound booths (inside the latter, we see the soundtrack being cut on a giant wax disc). Apparently, this sequence was originally shot in 2-color Technicolor, but only survives in black and white. There are also various glimpses at the sound stages and backlot of the Warner Bros. studio which should be of special interest to film buffs.

Alice White makes an appealing lead, but she seems to lack the dramatic range necessary for getting the most out of her character. She handles the cute, perky qualities just fine, but seems rather out of her league during some of the big dramatic moments. Her temper tantrum, in which she trashes her dressing room, rings false, and doesn't seem to be consistent with the character we've been watching up to that point. The awkwardness of her emotional qualities in some ways works to her advantage during the scene in which Donny Harris has tried to take her own life, and Dixie pours out her apologies for her selfish behavior. There's a real sense of vulnerability and weakness that comes through in this moment, contrasted with the older, wiser Sweet's sense of calm acceptance.

Silent film actor Jack Mulhall turns in a good performance as Dixie's playwright boyfriend, combining the right touches of sympathy and earnestness. And John Miljan seems to have fun with his part as the slimy director, delivering his performance in a slightly over-the-top manner and relishing the sleazy qualities of his character. Silent comedy veteran Ford Sterling provides some good comic relief in the sympathetic role of studio chief Otis, proving that he was quite adept at handling dialogue, and is even allowed a few cutaway reaction shots that contain a much more toned-down version of his frantic mugging from the Keystone days. Cameo appearances include Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler, Loretta Young, Noah Beery, and Noah Beery Jr. (plus an early appearance by Walter Pidgeon as the emcee at the film premiere).

The real stand-out , however, is Blanche Sweet, whose performance of the strong, proud and yet ultimately fragile former star is incredibly moving, especially considering that Sweet was herself already an industry veteran of more than 15 years by the time this film was made. She even sings a song, "There's a Tear for Every Smile in Hollywood", which is about the incredible odds and high price to pay for becoming a star, but also brings to mind all the former stars who had since burnt out among changing fads, fashions, and technology. It's hard not to watch Sweet sing this song without feeling the melancholy in her voice.

SHOW GIRL IN HOLLYWOOD is an interesting time capsule of Hollywood at that transitional moment when the medium had to re-invent itself and new stars like Dixie Dugan were born, paying the same price as Donny Harris had years earlier.

Room 237: A Review

I finally had a chance to catch up with the new doc, ROOM 237, at the IFC Center in New York City this afternoon. I was intrigued by its premise ever since reading about it -- a group of enthusiasts share their individual and often extremely quirky "takes" on the meaning behind Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, THE SHINING. Given my deep respect and enjoyment of Kubrick's work, and THE SHINING in particular, it certainly caught my attention. And when I heard about the premise, I knew I had to see the film, although I was skeptical as to the level of analysis it would actually contain.

I should say upfront that I have an aversion to arcane literary analysis (with its need to find "meaning" in everything) applied to film analysis. That said, it's not really fair to apply this criticism to ROOM 237, because while the individual analyses do fall victim to the need to prescribe "meaning" to seemingly every element in the film, it's far from any kind of scholarly criticism and more of the "armchair critic" variety. (And I can't help worrying that the uninitiated will come away from the film with an overheated vision that this kind of discussion is what goes on in an academic film studies department!)

There's much to enjoy here for Kubrick enthusiasts, so I'll get out of the way first what didn't work for me. We never see the individuals' faces, only hearing their disembodied voices over a wide variety of clips. As a result, we never get to know any of these folks, and how their backgrounds, interests, etc. inform their ideas and points of view. The clips are another issue. While it obviously makes sense to include large amounts of footage from THE SHINING itself, there are too often cutaways to other films (some by Kubrick, some not) that struck me as largely irrelevant and there to fill up visual space while the commentators are expounding on their various theories. Director Rodney Ascher divides the film into nine "sections", each dealing with different aspects of the film, though it seemed he faced some real structural challenges that were never quite overcome.

The theories themselves range from the intriguing (one commentator makes a good case that the film is a metaphor for the massacre of American Indians, though given the fact that it's mentioned within the film itself that the hotel is built atop an Indian burial ground, this isn't as revelatory as he seems to think it is), others are less convincing (one commentator seems to offer little more than a play-by-play of the action that's happening on screen, with absolutely no indication as to why it's worth mentioning in the first place). And one commentator, in particular, sees the film (and seemingly the entire remaining body of Kubrick's work) as a giant "confession" to participating in the moon landing hoax! Toss in a bit about Barry Nelson's paper tray erection (trust me, you'll just have to see the film for further explanation), and it becomes difficult to take seriously.

It's theories like the latter that take the film into a territory that serious film buffs might find tiresome. While reading into the minutiae of visual details in the film might make for an interesting parlor game, theories about the moon landing hoax and other such nonsense suggest that THE SHINING has, for some individuals, become a kind of tabula rasa onto which they can project their own obsessions and ideas.

There is a kind of infectious earnestness that each of the commentators brings to the table, however, that makes it hard to dismiss the ideas outright. Sure, some of them might strike us as absurd, but they're presented in such a way that we're at least willing to entertain them. And there are some fun tidbits here and there, my favorite being the discovery that the magazine Jack Nicholson is reading in the lobby following his job interview is a copy of Playgirl!

ROOM 237 fails to address a much more interesting question (to me, at least): what is it about the movies, and about a film like THE SHINING in particular, which leads to so many theories being put forward to explain the "real" meaning behind it? And what compels someone to find such meaning in a film? We get just a tantalizing glimpse of this toward the end of the film, when one of the commentators reveals that he's been unemployed for quite a while, has a son of his own, and even half-jokingly notes some parallels between his own life and THE SHINING.

Given Stanley Kubrick's penchant for creating complex, challenging films and refusing to provide easy explanations or answers to his audience, I suspect he's smiling somewhere now, knowing that we're still discussing, analyzing and picking apart THE SHINING nearly 35 years since it first appeared.

Continued Look at the Chaplin-Keystone Comedies (Final Part)

HIS TRYSTING PLACES
HIS TRYSTING PLACES sees Chaplin in one of his rare domestic comedies. As the film opens, we find him happily married to Mabel Normand - well, perhaps not happily - but it's certainly presented as a believable marriage compared to the cartoonish pairings of Chaplin with Phyllis Allen that we've seen in previous films. The film opens with a lengthy sequence in which Charlie tries to read the paper, while Mabel tends to the baby. There's plenty of comic business, with Charlie absentmindedly placing his foot on the open flame of the stove. Chaplin stages this entire scene from the same shot, without closeups or cutaways, reminiscent of the way in which he shot another domestic scene more than 30 years later for the opening of MONSIEUR VERDOUX.

Some of the most delightful moments in HIS TRYSTING PLACES comes not from the overly comical parts, but rather the charming shots of Mabel playing with the baby. However, the highlight is an extended sequence in which Charlie goes to a cafe and eats next to Mack Swain, who noisily slurps his soup, while Charlie reacts. Watching the two master clowns doing something as simple as eating a meal becomes a richly-developed string of gags, culminating in a food-throwing match that ends with Charlie kicking Swain backward off his stool and knocking down the other patrons in a domino effect. (The scene also contains one of the rare moments of actual pie-throwing in a Chaplin comedy).

The second half of the film finds Charlie accused of infidelity, after his wife finds a note in his coat (belonging to Swain), arranging an illicit tryst. After a few moments of frantic domestic violence, including breaking an ironing board over his head, Charlie is thrown out of the house. He wanders into a park, where he finds himself on a park bench next to Swain's wife (played by Keystone's house battle-ax, Phyllis Allen). However, Mabel has also taken the baby to the park, and when she spies Charlie on the bench with Phyllis, launches into an attack. Meanwhile, when Phyllis finds the baby's bottle in Charlie's coat, which she's mistaken for Swain's, she too suspects her husband of infidelity. Soon, everything is explained, until Charlie absent-mindedly hands Phyllis the note belonging to her husband, which lands him in even more trouble. The film ends on a charming shot of Charlie, Mabel and baby.

HIS TRYSTING PLACES takes the usual Keystone farce comedy and gives it a human edge, rather than playing the material in the broadest, cartoonish way possible. There's a real tenderness to the scenes with Charlie and Mabel, which makes it all the funnier when she explodes on him after suspecting him of having an affair. Chaplin is given the chance to engage in some of broad mugging, which he uses to good effect here (particularly the moment after the ironing board is cracked over his head). There is also a clever bit of choreography in the park, as Mabel swings punches at Charlie, and he ducks down into a trashcan each time to narrowly avoid being hit.

The film also represents Chaplin's growth as a director. The shot choices are very economical, particularly in the early scenes in the house, and in the cafe with Mack Swain. In both of these cases, the shots indicate how Chaplin was already maximizing composition and camera placement to heighten attention on the performers and their bits of business within a scene. HIS TRYSTING PLACES was probably the last really strong comedy Chaplin would direct at Keystone. His final two efforts would exhibit signs of a hurried and rushed quality that suggest his mind was already looking forward to his coming work with Essanay.

GETTING ACQUAINTED
A slight park comedy, this film represents another re-visiting of material that Chaplin had already dealt with earlier in his tenure at Keystone. In this case, however, there isn't enough to really warrant a return to the park setting, which he'd already used to better effect in films such as TWENTY MINUTES OF LOVE and CAUGHT IN THE RAIN. GETTING ACQUAINTED, on the other hand, re-hashes the farce elements of those earlier films, with Charlie dodging cops and jealous suitors. This film also has Charlie married to the hatchet-faced Phyllis Allen, a silly plot device that draws on the obvious contrast in size between the two and feels forced compared to the expert domestic humor of the proceeding short, HIS TRYSTING PLACE. There is a nice panning shot toward the end, as Mack Swain and Charlie are led off by a cop after bidding farewell to their wives. It's the kind of shot that could have easily been broken into two or three static shots, but shooting it this way keeps the viewer's attention on Chaplin.

Overall a not terribly inspired effort, though to be fair, coming as it did at the end of an incredibly prolific year, Chaplin was no doubt finding himself increasingly suffering from the limitations of the Keystone methods of production.

HIS PREHISTORIC PAST
HIS PREHISTORIC PAST alternately feels like a weak, throwaway effort, but at the same time, a film designed to allow for a little experimentation. As Chaplin's final short film for the Keystone company, he was no doubt eager to wrap up his contractual obligations and move on to greener pastures. HIS PREHISTORIC PAST is neither a particularly inspired or funny comedy, but it gives Chaplin the chance to indulge in some cartoon-like humor, playing a caveman complete with his derby, cane, and slapshoes. The whole film is framed as a dream sequence (though many copies of the film omit the scene in the very beginning in which Charlie is seen falling asleep on a park bench). Chaplin has fun with the concept - stuffing his pipe with fur from his pelt, striking a flint stone against the back of his leg to light it, flirting with pretty cave girls in grass skirts, etc. When King Mack Swain finds Charlie flirting with his favorite wife, he challenges him to a hunting contest during which Swain is kicked over the edge of a cliff. Charlie proclaims himself king, and immediately begins to take advantage of the king's harem. However, Swain regains consciousness and conks Charlie on the noggin with a big rock, waking our hero up as he's roused from his sleep by a cop.

Though it's not without some fun moments here and there, HIS PREHISTORIC PAST is simply too protracted, with too many needlessly drawn out scenes that go nowhere, particularly those in which Charlie flirts with the women of the king's court, and those with the king's rather effeminate jester performing a silly dance routine.

TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE
As the first feature-length motion picture comedy, TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE represents landmark in the history of film and more specifically within the art of comedy. Produced and directed by Sennett, it is something of an anomaly in Chaplin's Keystone filmography, in that it was made over a period of about 14 weeks, and thus does not represent a clear chronological development as Chaplin's other films do. Also, Chaplin does not appear in his unusual makeup, but rather with a shorter mustache, and a straw hat, suggesting a more dapper character than usual. The plot is a parody of standard melodrama topes involving the virtuous country girl corrupted by the big city. As with most Keystones, it derives its humor from combining farce comedy with slapstick.

The film tells the story of a simple country girl (Marie Dressler) who's seduced by a big city con man (Chaplin) into taking her father's money and fleeing with him to the city. Once there, Charlie takes the money and ditches Tillie, hooking up with his partner in crime Mabel Normand. Lost and alone, Tillie tries her hand at different jobs, and even gets arrested, before it's revealed that her uncle has died in a mountain-climbing accident and left her a fortune. When he sees this in the papers, Charlie suddenly re-appears in her life, and the two move into the uncle's mansion. When the uncle turns up alive, he is horrified to see what has become of his mansion, and chases his niece, along with her high society guests, out into the streets, six-shooters a-blazing.

Adapted by Hampton Del Ruth from the play "Tillie's Nightmare" (by Edgar Smith and A. Baldwin Sloane), this six-reel comedy was quite an undertaking, and represented a risk on the part of Mack Sennett. It was unsure if audiences would sit through six reels of slapstick comedy. The film was a wild success, however, and even though Chaplin was nominally a supporting player in the film, it was probably TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE, more than any other comedy he made for Keystone, that really launched him into superstardom (a position that would be solidified the following year with his work for Essanay). Marie Dressler lends her larger-than-life screen presence to a role that calls for grotesque mugging, frantic gestures and slapstick falls, and extreme, wild reactions to everything going on around her. Dressler was an incredibly gifted performer who really found her niche with the arrival of talking pictures, appearing in memorable parts in such films as MIN AND BILL, DINNER AT EIGHT and TUGBOAT ANNIE. Although she was a star on the stage at the time that TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE was produced, it would take another 15 years or so before she would reach her peak in motion pictures.

In addition to Chaplin and Dressler, TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE also presents Mabel Normand in a fine role, displaying the range of her comic skills as Charlie's long-suffering partner in crime and love interest. The film is a virtual "who's who" of most of the major Keystone clowns, including Mack Swain, Chester Conklin, Charley Chase, Slim Summerville, Charles Murray, Phyllis Allen, Edgar Kennedy, Minta Durfee, Hank Mann, and Al St. John in various supporting parts (Roscoe Arbuckle and Ford Sterling are conspicuously absent, though there is a character in the party sequence toward the end of the film made up to look like Sterling). Because Sennett still owed his exhibitors short subjects during the weeks that TILLIE was in production, the cast had to film their parts on alternate days so that they would be available to work on the studio's regularly-scheduled output as well.

The picture can be difficult for modern audiences to sit through, who aren't accustomed to the style of knockabout slapstick, especially when sustained over feature length. Later feature-length comedies, such as Mabel Normand's MICKEY, Chaplin's THE KID, or any of the features Arbuckle made for Paramount, combined elements of "genteel" humor to balance the moments of slapstick and vulgar humor. TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE may have represented a path not taken by future feature-length comedies, but it was certainly crucial in laying the groundwork and developing the art of screen comedy.

Unlike the rest of the Keystone product at that time, which was distributed by Mutual, TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE was distributed on a states' rights basis, and had it premiere a few days before Christmas 1914 in Los Angeles. It would turn out to be a starmaking role for Charlie Chaplin.

By this point, Chaplin was gearing up for bigger and better things at Essanay, where he would continue to develop his art with greater creative control and freedom to work at a pace more suited to his approach. His year at Keystone had seen Chaplin's meteoric rise to superstardom, and the formative works he made there had allowed him the opportunity to learn the craft of directing and performing for the screen.

The Trouble with Harry (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)

Coming between the frothy cinematic confection of TO CATCH A THIEF and the lavish, suspenseful remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY easily gets lost in the shuffle. A droll, quirky and off-beat film from the Master of Suspense, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY is actually a pleasant little black comedy, with some charming performances set against gorgeous production values (especially the location shots of Vermont in the fall).

Despite the darkness of the premise (a dead body is found and several innocent people believe they are responsible), THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY displays Hitchcock's penchant for comedy which was really present in his films all along. The film is aided by strong performances all around, including veterans Edmund Gwenn and Mildred Natwick, and newcomer Shirley MacLaine.

THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY ultimately feels like a throwback to Hitchcock's earlier, British films, which often reflected a more diverse approach from their director in the days before he became so strongly identified with the suspense film. The comedy recalls moments of films such as THE FARMER'S WIFE and RICH AND STRANGE, with their emphasis on quirky characters and charming domestic humor. The humor won't be to everyone's taste, but to those who like their comedy on the dark side, it works.

While the film can be considered something of a low-key, minor work coming between much larger and commercially mainstream efforts, one still clearly detects the assured hand of a master filmmaker working at his peak period of creativity.

Continued Look at the Chaplin-Keystones, Part 3

THOSE LOVE PANGS
This is a good example of Chaplin dealing with subject matter that he'd worked with earlier in his tenure at Keystone, and giving a fresh spin on the material using what he'd learned in the intervening months. The premise is very simple: Chaplin and Chester Conklin play a couple of love-starved fellows on the search for pretty girls to flirt with.

It begins in a boarding house, where Charlie and Chester take turns flirting with a young woman. When Chester beats him to it, Charlie responds by sticking him in the rear with a fork. While this kind of material had been played to death in numerous earlier Keystones, Chaplin imbues it here with an inventiveness and subtlety not usually seen before. Before sticking Chester with the fork, he makes a number of subtle gestures with the utensil to emphasize its sharpness (all photographed in close shot). Similarly, when Chester retaliates in-kind, Charlie has the foresight to move himself away from the doorway to avoid the inevitable retribution.

It's little bits of business like this that make this otherwise standard stuff amusing here. The film then moves outdoor to a park, where Charlie runs afoul of a jealous boyfriend after he catches Charlie flirting with his girlfriend. Charlie is so love-sick that the sight of Chester flirting with a girl he's met is enough to drive him to jumping in the lake, but he's stopped at the last moment by a cop. Just when the viewer is expecting the situation to devolve into a fracas with everyone ending up in the lake, the scene shifts to another location. Charlie and the two girls he's met go into a little movie theater, where they are tracked by Chester and another jealous lover. In a memorable closing, Charlie is thrown through the movie screen.

Though it's a simple pleasure and not a laugh riot, THOSE LOVE PANGS represents a step forward for Chaplin in terms of performance and cinematic technique.

DOUGH AND DYNAMITE
If THE NEW JANITOR had marked a new highpoint for Chaplin the performer and director, DOUGH AND DYNAMITE reinforces that he was making strides with each new film. Frequently cited as perhaps the funniest of the Chaplin-Keystone comedies, DOUGH AND DYNAMITE is a two-reeler, giving greater "breathing room" to develop the comedy.

Its setting is a bakery, where Charlie is a waiter. When we first see him, he is clearing plates away, and thoughtlessly dumps the scraps from one plate onto a diner's plate. He has some fun playing directly to the audience when flirting with a pretty girl and comparing her suggestive walk to a sign reading "Assorted French Tarts". There's plenty of slapstick in the kitchen involving fellow waiter Chester Conklin, whom Chaplin had worked so well with in his previous film. The two clearly have a lot of fun playing off of eachother, and it's little wonder that Chaplin would employ Conklin again later in his career, so memorably as the mechanic in MODERN TIMES and as a barbershop customer in THE GREAT DICTATOR.

Here, the two demonstrate extraordinary timing together, perhaps best seen in a gag where Charlie is washing dishes and, rather than waiting till Chester is ready to take them and dry them with a rag, lets them repeatedly fall to the floor, breaking. It's a simple gag, not terribly clever in itself, but the way in which Chaplin and Conklin performs it makes it far funnier than it normally would be. Of course, each mishap is followed by slapping, shoving and general roughhousing. Like the interplay with John Rand in THE PAWNSHOP, it seems that Charlie and Chester find fighting to be as good a way as any to keep themselves entertained at work.

As a result of a pay dispute, the bakers go on strike. Charlie is all too willing to helpfully put on an apron and take over for them, causing one of the bakers to threaten him with a knife. This is not the last time Charlie is shown to value his own job over the cause of the striking workers. There's a similar plot device in the Mutual comedy BEHIND THE SCREEN, when Charlie's fellow stagehands go on strike, and a prop men's strike figures in the plot of THE CIRCUS, leaving Charlie to fill in and make a disaster of the magician's act.

Charlie and Chester fill in for the striking bakers, leading to a great sight gags such as Charlie carrying an over-size sack of flour on his back like a beast of burden, which he drops down into the cellar, crushing Chester. Later, Charlie has to balance a large tray of desserts on his head with almost superhuman precision. He does a remarkable job keeping the tray steady, but when one of the rolls drops to the floor, he absent-mindedly bends over to pick it up, causing the rest of the pastries to follow. There's also some fun with the trap door leading to the cellar, especially when Charlie gets his head stuck in the doors, with Chester mightily trying to pull him out. Chaplin would get more comic mileage out of the trap door setup in the later BEHIND THE SCREEN.

There's trouble when the striking bakers decide to blow up the bakery with dynamite in revenge. They stick the dynamite into a loaf of bread, which is sent into the shop and placed in the oven. Meanwhile, Charlie and Chester flirt with the various waitresses and, eventually, with the manager's wife. An argument breaks out between Charlie and the manager but is put to an end when the dynamite inevitably goes off, allowing Charlie to make his escape.

What's remarkable is how the second half of the film is structured so that the audience has a pretty good idea of how it will end (the inevitable explosion), but takes its time getting there, allowing for some extended comic interplay between Chaplin and Conklin. The two-reel format gives the film a relatively relaxed pacing compared to the frenetic pace a one-reeler would have demanded. Even with the longer format to work in, Chaplin is still eschewing unnecessary farcical plot twists, and is instead focusing on the inherent comic ideas offered by the set-up.

GENTLEMEN OF NERVE
Like THOSE LOVE PANGS, GENTLEMEN OF NERVE returns to a familiar setting and premise - misunderstandings at a racetrack - and breathes new life into the material. It also features a stellar cast, including Mabel Normand, Mack Swain and Chester Conklin.

At the auto races, Chester (here playing "Mr. Walrus") delivers a swift kick to burly Mack Swain when he catches him flirting with his girlfriend, Mabel. But no sooner do they take their seats than Chester begins flirting with hatchet-faced Phyllis Allen. We next meet Charlie (playing "Mr. Wow-wow", probably an homage to the Fred Karno show). He agrees to help Swain sneak into the races, but has quite a time getting his mammoth frame through the opening in the fence.

Eventually, Charlie and Mabel find themselves together in the stands, and wander off to look at the cars. It's particularly fun seeing Chaplin interact with the real racecar drivers, being scared off by a propeller-driven car, and doing his trademark skidding run on the racetrack. When Chester comes across Charlie and Mabel flirting in the stands, Charlie kicks Chester into the crowd of bystanders, where he is led off by the police, and the film ends on a charming two-shot of Charlie and Mabel playfully smiling and laughing at the chaos that has gone down. It's a rare moment for a Keystone comedy but points in the direction that both Chaplin and Mabel Normand would go with their work.

The film has clear similarities with other Keystone films taking advantage of "public" events as a backdrop for the comedy, such as KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE, MABEL'S BUSY DAY and A BUSY DAY, but is more polished in its blending of the comedy into the setting. Chaplin makes use of an excellent cast here, giving each performer plenty to do. Unlike in the previous "event" films, the performers never seem overwhelmed by the backdrop.

In his remaining Keystone comedies, Chaplin would continue to re-visit similar ideas and situations, many of which were standard plots at Keystone. Rather than feeling repetitive, these later efforts provides us with an interesting glimpse as to how he handled the material at various stages of his cinematic development.

HIS MUSICAL CAREER
Often compared to Laurel and Hardy's THE MUSIC BOX because of its premise of delivering an unwieldy piano up a flight of stairs, HIS MUSICAL CAREER is also of interest for its class-consciousness theme that Chaplin would return to again and again in his work.

Charlie and boss Mack Swain are given orders to deliver a piano to a Mr. Rich at 666 Prospect Street, and re-possess a piano from a Mr. Poor at 999 Prospect Street. Predictably, confusion ensues. The fun comes in seeing Chaplin and Swain in a prototypical version of the "David and Goliath" dynamic between boss and worker that he would explore several times again. He would return to this in the Essanay comedy WORK, where boss Charles Insley forces Charlie to pull the work cart like a mule, even whipping him when he doesn't move fast enough. In THE FLOORWALKER, THE FIREMAN, BEHIND THE SCREEN and THE COUNT, all made at Mutual, Charlie would play opposite burly Eric Campbell as the brutal boss, with Charlie always causing Campbell some kind of pain and coming out on top despite his disadvantage in size.

When the pair inevitably deliver the piano to the wrong address, they have to move it up a flight of stairs. It's impossible to watch this sequence now and not be reminded of the celebrated THE MUSIC BOX. But whereas Laurel and Hardy's piano seems to take on a life of its own, tormenting the two protagonists on almost mythic levels, the piano in HIS MUSICAL CAREER is simply cumbersome and unwieldy, its comic potential lying more in the physical difficulties of such a situation. Eventually, they get it up the stairs, with Charlie bringing the piano into the house by carrying it on his back while the residents take their time in deciding where to put it.

Next, they arrive at the home of Mr. Rich, believing they are to re-possess his piano for failure of payment. Finding no one home, they let themselves in. The irate Mr. Rich arrives, and when he demands to know where they are taking his piano, he gives them a swift kick that sends Mack, Charlie and the piano rolling down an incline and into the lake.

There is some very clever physical comedy in this film, especially the great sight gag of Charlie single-handedly carrying the piano, and throwing his back out, leaving him unable to stand upright. There is another moment when the cart carrying the piano becomes top-heavy, causing the mule, pulling the cart, to be lifted into the air. And the final shot, of the piano careening out of control as it zips down the sidewalk, is a strong topper to the slapstick that has come before.

HIS MUSICAL CAREER demonstrates Chaplin's talent for exploring the inherent comic possibilities in a simple set-up. He had really proven the effectiveness of this method back in KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE, where he got such mileage out of the simple premise, compared to the heavy plotting of the previous film, MAKING A LIVING.

Chaplin would make three more shorts for Keystone, and would also see the release of TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE, before the year was out, solidifying his place as a comedy superstar.

Continued Look at Chaplin's Keystone Comedies, Part 2

THE MASQUERADER
One of the strongest Chaplin-Keystones, THE MASQUERADER is notable as one of the times Chaplin performed in drag (quite convincingly) on film. The story is slight: Charlie is an actor at Keystone, and after botching a scene, is fired. He returns, in drag, playfully flirting with director Charlie Murray, in an effort to demonstrate what a good actor he really is. However, when his cover his blown, the irate director and the rest of the cast and crew give chase through the studio, which ends with Charlie being knocked down into a well during a brick-throwing battle.

Despite its relatively slight plot, THE MASQUERADER features one of Chaplin's best performances up to this point, particularly in his female impersonation. The film's opening scene has a gentle charm to it, with Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle in their dressing room engaging in some comic byplay. It's impossible to watch this scene and not get a sense of the respect and admiration these two men must have had for each other.

THE MASQUERADER is also notable as one of the Keystone comedies that looks behind the scenes of the studio. Chaplin had explored this territory before in A FILM JOHNNY, and would return to it again in his first comedy for Essanay, HIS NEW JOB, and perhaps most memorably in the later Mutual comedy, BEHIND THE SCREEN.

Something I hadn't noticed before this viewing: during the scene on the film set, there is deep focus shot that shows another company working on an adjoining stage in the background. It's little moments like these that make these "behind the scenes" Keystone comedies such an interesting glimpse into the workings of the studio.

HIS NEW PROFESSION
In HIS NEW PROFESSION, we see Chaplin using the closeup very effectively to capture the subtle facial gestures of his performance. The opening scene (which is often misattributed to RECREATION for some reason) is a good example of this, with more nuanced facial gestures that the kind of grotesque mugging he demonstrated in earlier films such as BETWEEN SHOWERS and A FILM JOHNNY.

The premise finds Charlie, enjoying a relaxing afternoon in the park, recruited to look after Charley Chase's uncle, laid up in a wheelchair and suffering from gout so that Chase can spend some time alone with his girlfriend. Predictably, the old man is subject to all kinds of abuse; then Chase finds Charlie flirting with his girlfriend after almost rolling the uncle off the end of a pier, and chaos ensues as all involved get into a fight.

The film features some uncharacteristically cruel and mean-spirited humor, or at least a more extreme version of the brash, vulgar behavior we see of Charlie in these early films. Aside from the aforementioned physical abuse of the invalid uncle, there's the moment when Charlie, desperate for some quick change to get a drink, steals a crippled beggar's sign and collection cup to help raise the money by placing them with the uncle, fast asleep in his wheelchair.

THE ROUNDERS
One of the few times in his career in which Chaplin was actively "teamed" with another comedian, this is also one of the best. Chaplin shares the screen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, playing a couple of inebriated gents ("Mr. Full" and "Mr. Fuller") who get into no end of misadventures in their intoxicated state. After domestic disputes with their respective spouses, the men head out on the town.

Chaplin's drunk act is comparable to his fine work in ONE AM and CITY LIGHTS, displaying a wonderfully precise performance that trades careful and deliberate physical comedy for roughhouse knockabout. His partnering with Arbuckle results in some particularly inspired clowning, their perfectly mis-matched sizes creating a strong comic contrast. A scene in which the drunken Charlie wreaks havoc in a cafe especially looks forward to the similar scene in CITY LIGHTS. It's easy to see Chaplin here developing material that he would expand and refine later on.

Unlike many of the Keystones which end quite abruptly (to be fair, this could be the result of battered prints), THE ROUNDERS ends with a fitting denouement, as the two inebriates, having been found out by their wives, dive into a lake, and fall asleep in a canoe, which sinks under their weight as they obliviously doze off.

THE NEW JANITOR
And with THE NEW JANITOR, Chaplin becomes The Little Fellow. There had been strong hints of things to come in the films leading up to THE NEW JANITOR, from the dual identity mixup of CAUGHT IN A CABARET, to the "domestic" farce of MABEL'S MARRIED LIFE, to the nuanced performance of HIS NEW PROFESSION and THE ROUNDERS.

THE NEW JANITOR reveals what really separated Chaplin from the other clowns at Keystone: an emphasis on performance. Whereas other comics emphasized physical humor defined, in some cases, by a recognizable "type" (Arbuckle's size, Conklin's Walrus mustache, etc.), Chaplin reveals in THE NEW JANITOR an absolute total control over his performance, and introduces a new element of pathos to the comedy.

His byplay with brash, obnoxious elevator boy Al St. John early on establishes Charlie as the underdog, with the janitor forced to climb several flights of stairs after being refused a spot on the elevator. Rather than immediately attacking St. John in retaliation, Charlie seems to accept his station, however reluctantly, showing real signs of fatigue as he reaches the top of the stairs, suggesting that perhaps this is not the first time this has happened.

Chaplin then introduces another familiar element: the crooked boss. By making authority figures immediately suspect, Chaplin is again drawing a contrast between his character and those around him. He may be a poor janitor, but he does not resort to the crooked shenanigans of the more well-off upper management. It seems the manager owes a large gambling debt, and the audience immediately suspects he will be using company funds to pay it off.

There is a wonderful bit of business as Charlie enters the boss's office, knocking on the door to attract the boss's attention after he has already entered, before proceeding to accidentally spill trash on the floor while emptying out the wastepaper basket. Some wistful comic romance is introduced in the form of a pretty office girl, whom Charlie admires from across the room before absent-mindedly brushing her bottom with his feather-duster.

The crooked Luke Connor (Glen Cavender, later so memorable as the Yankee Captain Anderson in Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL) shows up at the office to collect the gambling debt. The boss promises him the money by close of business that day. Meanwhile, the oblivious Charlie is fired after accidentally spilling some water on the company president. Rather than retaliating with a kick to the stomach or a brick to the face, the scene is punctuated with only mild humor, instead emphasizing Charlie's disappointment at being let go. Chaplin remarkably blends some very funny pratfalls with the pathos of the situation, demonstrating his ability to move deftly between the two extremes in the same scene.

The boss, meanwhile, is absconding with the money to pay off his debt, when he is caught in the act by the office girl, who hides in the office to phone the police. The boss catches her, however, and begins to physically manhandle the girl, finally holding her at gunpoint. Charlie hears the commotion, and makes his way back up the stairs to the office, where he bravely confronts the thieving boss.

Charlie fires a warning shot out the window to get the attention of the police. However, when the officer shows up, he immediately suspects Charlie is the culprit, kicking him out into the hallway. The girl tells them the truth, showing Charlie to be a hero. The boss is led away by the police, while Charlie is given a reward by the grateful company president.

This ending reveals a move away from the wild slapstick finales typical of Keystone. Chaplin again heightens the audience's concern for his character by having him momentarily falsely suspected of the embezzlement, which also emphasizes the class concerns that were such an important part of Chaplin's mature work - the assumption being that the well-dressed, middle class boss couldn't possibly be guilty of theft, while Charlie's little janitor is proven to be of stronger character and integrity.

THE NEW JANITOR was the best film Chaplin had made up to that time, and demonstrates clearly the directions he would go as a mature artist, and its sharp contrast with the other product of the Keystone studio demonstrated his need for further creative control and independence.

A Continued Look at Chaplin's Keystone Comedies

More than a year ago, I had begun writing reviews of the one- and two-reel comedies that Charlie Chaplin made for the Keystone studios, during the incredibly productive year of 1914, when he turned out no fewer than 35 comedies for the company, including the landmark feature film TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE. (The previously published notes can be found by clicking on the label "Chaplin at Keystone", either at the footer of this post or in "labels" column on the right-hand side of the page).

Initially intended to be little more than notes of my impression of each film after watching them (on DVD, courtesy of the "Chaplin at Keystone" set produced by Flicker Alley), I found myself getting into greater and greater detail in writing about each short, which slowed the pace considerably. Combined with the fact that the amount of time I had to watch the films was becoming limited because of other commitments, I put this series on hold. However, I recently picked up where I left off watching the films last year, and have decided to resume posting my reactions to them, albeit in much shorter form, and combining several films in a single post.

These are not meant to be comprehensive critical essays on the films, nor are they production histories, but rather just brief impressions upon revisiting the formative work of this comic genius.

LAUGHING GAS
This is a particularly brutal little comedy that finds Charlie working as an assistant to Dr. Pain - though just what it is he does beside flirt with the pretty female patients is unclear. When a patient fails to wake up from the laughing gas, the dentist sends Charlie to the local pharmacy to pick up something to help revive him. While there, he proceeds to get into a fight with burly Mack Swain. A brick-throwing battle ensues, which knocks out Swain's teeth as well as those of innocent passerby Slim Summerville. Both men show up at Dr. Pain's office to have their remaining teeth fixed, and chaos ensues when Swain finds that his attacker was the dentist's assistant.

No stranger to dental surgery myself, dental humor is always good for some laughs with me - W.C. Fields' THE DENTIST being perhaps my favorite example, though Laurel and Hardy got some great mileage out of the situation in both LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING and PARDON US. More recently, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom had a wonderful dental scene together in THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN. And of course Steve Martin's turn in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is worth a mention. Here, Chaplin employs some painful looking processes to extract the broken teeth, straddling the poor patient and twisting the teeth out of his head with a massive set of pliers.

Overall, the whole film feels very much like a vaudeville routine, and it's easy to imagine this kind of thing being played on the stage, where the humor might come alive more with the exaggerated painful gasps and screams of the patient.

THE PROPERTY MAN
This seems to be one of the more celebrated Chaplin-Keystones, giving him ample room to play around behind the scenes of a vaudeville theater. He has some fun with the various theatrical types who come in, including a strong man by the name of Garlico. Their scenes together play like something of a dry-run for his interplay with Eric Campbell in the later BEHIND THE SCREEN, with the burly Garlico bossing around Charlie's property man and being on the receiving end of some of his more violent mishaps.

It's also slightly reminiscent of Keaton's later (and more sophisticated) THE PLAYHOUSE, right down to its set of performing twins. Chaplin's comedy plays out mostly behind-the-scenes, at least until he makes his way on stage and begins wrecking the performances. Finally, a hose is turned on the stage and eventually onto the audience (which includes a cameo by Mack Sennett as a typically wild and incredulous spectator).

THE PROPERTY MAN has been criticized for its meanness, particularly in regard to Charlie's bad treatment of the decrepit, elderly stage hand (who more than once ends up pinned under a heavy trunk). This is the sort of brash vulgarity and - even for its time - "insensitive" humor that Chaplin was exploring during his year at Keystone. Of course, he would later move away from this sort of outright aggressiveness, but traces of it remained in his mature work and were all the funnier precisely for the fact that they came out on much less frequent occasions.

THE FACE ON THE BARROOM FLOOR
Now this is a real deviation from the usual Keystone formula. A parody of the popular poem by Hugh Antoine D'Arcy, which tells of the downfall of an artist jilted by the model he loves when she falls for another man, the film must have seemed strange to audiences at the time. While it never goes nearly as far as later parodies of melodrama such as Fields' THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER, there is a similarly strange quality to the film in that the story is largely played straight, punctuated only periodically by bits of slapstick or other comic business designed to yank the carpet out from underneath the dramatic proceedings. Rather than playing with form as Fields did in THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER, Chaplin gives us a more or less straight send-up of the original work, perhaps more similar to Fields' affectionate kidding of that hoary old melodrama "The Drunkard" in THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY.

Structurally, the whole thing is told in flashback (the intertitles retaining the text of D'Arcy's poem), with Charlie, the broken down artist, telling his tale of woe to the other barflies in the corner tavern. The ending contains some trademark slapstick as he drunkenly attempts to scrawl the girl's face with chalk on the floor of the bar, drawing only a hilariously amateurish smiley face before being tossed out on his rear.

Perhaps not one of the funniest Chaplin-Keystone efforts, but an interesting effort and an attempt to do something different, reminiscent of the kind of parody Chaplin would explore again the following year with his BURLESQUE ON CARMEN.

RECREATION
One of the crudest and most disposable efforts from his year at Keystone, RECREATION feels very much like a "filler" film. In fact, it was released on a split-reel with a travelogue about Yosemite. Charlie flirts with a girl in the park, running afoul of her sailor boyfriend (appearing to be the same actor in the exact same costume and makeup who played the passed-out drunken sailor at the bar in THE FACE ON THE BARROOM FLOOR). A fracas ensues, the police intervene, and all involved end up in the lake.

Watching this one on the DVD set, the first thing that hits you is what awful shape the first few minutes of the source print are in, before switching to another source print of positively stunning quality. It's an excellent reminder of the need for proper preservation, as well as a reminder of how great these films can look when properly preserved and presented, compared to the atrocious dupes on public domain editions that have been making the rounds for years.

RECREATION is the kind of crude, throwaway effort that can sometimes, as Theodore Huff said of the later BY THE SEA, possess a certain "impromptu charm". RECREATION, however, feels rushed and sloppy, like an effort cranked out solely to satisfy a release schedule. These were clearly the kinds of production circumstances that Chaplin would react against when he achieved independence.

The Films of John Waters: Mondo Trasho (1969)

There's a tension at work in MONDO TRASHO: Waters the narrative filmmaker at odds with Waters the underground filmmaker. An example of defying formal expectations and conventions occurs with some seemingly insignificant scenes that seem to go on forever (Mary Vivian Pearce waiting for a bus, as Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" plays on the soundtrack in its entirety). Clearly we are in a very different world here than even something like PINK FLAMINGOS or FEMALE TROUBLE, with their emphasis on moving the story forward in each scene. But MONDO TRASHO is not concerned with plot. It's rather a series of vignettes strung together around the loose thread of the blonde bombshell (Pearce) and her extraordinarily dramatic day around Baltimore City.

Following the aforementioned bus sequence which opens the film, the Bombshell goes to the park, where she encounters a foot fetishist who proceeds to sexually assault her (while the Bombshell has a fantasy hallucination in which she imagines that she's Cinderella!) From there, she is struck by hitand-run driver Divine, distracted by the sight of an imagined nude hitchhiker (Mark Isherwood). Divine then takes the Bombshell to a mental hospital, where they witness a weird topless tap number performed by one of the inmates (Mink Stole), who is then raped by the other lunatics. Next, they find themselves in the laboratory of the deranged Dr. Coat Hanger (David Lochary), who grafts chicken feet on to the Bombshell's legs. Finally, Divine and the Bombshell end up in a pig sty, where Divine dies a garish death before a vision of the Virgin Mary appears to them.

This plot description is probably making the film sound more coherent than it actually is, however. MONDO TRASHO plays out something like a bad dream or hallucination, and indeed the plot structure in some ways seems to be influenced by THE WIZARD OF OZ, with its main character leaving her humdrum world and going on a strange journey with other characters she meets along the way (not as unlikely as it may sound, given Waters' love for that film). From what can be gleaned from accounts of Waters' first three short films (HAG IN A BLACK LEATHER JACKET, ROMAN CANDLES and EAT YOUR MAKEUP), MONDO TRASHO would seem to be an extension of the basic approach he took with those earlier films - loose narrative threads stringing together a series of episodes, infused with a less conventional approach to the storytelling than he would later pursue.

There's also the shock value. MONDO TRASHO's credits are superimposed over shots of a man, dressed in executioner's garb, cutting the heads off of chickens on a chopping block, whereupon their bodies proceed to flutter around for several seconds. All of this is shot in graphic closeup, with Waters assaulting the viewer with this disturbing imagery right out of the gate. But Waters seems less interested in the political implications of the material than earlier underground filmmakers. The shock value of MONDO TRASHO seems more geared toward pushing the envelope for what audiences will sit through rather than through making any kind of political statement. It is more akin to a carnival sideshow, in which the primary attraction is to indulge one's appetite for the shocking and taboo for its own sake.

Not that this is necessarily a criticism of the film, mind. Only that Waters was much more successful at this kind of thing in future endeavors, especially once he was able to incorporate his trademark dialogue to balance the shock with wit. As Waters has said, there's good bad taste, and bad bad taste, and in a recent interview made the point that for shock value to be truly effective it has to have wit. Watching MONDO TRASHO, one misses clever, hysterical dialogue and the casual, off-hand asides that make his films beginning with MULTIPLE MANIACS so memorable.

All that said, MONDO TRASHO is not as concerned with the gross-out factor as PINK FLAMINGOS, FEMALE TROUBLE or DESPERATE LIVING. Instead, Waters seems to be making a film that is intentionally jarring in its formal and aesthetic component, letting some scenes run far past any length that would seem necessary, and assaulting the viewer with one hallucinatory episode after the other. In every film after this one, he would move closer and closer toward conventional technique (with nods to classic Hollywood) and more formal polish. Indeed, Waters' mature work depends to a large degree on how successfully he is able to re-create the look and feel of the classical models which he is satirizing (Sirkian melodramas in POLYESTER, '50s rock musicals in CRY-BABY, and so on).

In this sense, MONDO TRASHO represents what I think is the end the first period of Waters' filmography. Without having the early shorts available for review, this can remain only conjecture, but I think it's a fair assessment based on the accounts of those early shorts as provided by Waters in his 1981 book Shock Value. If MONDO TRASHO is any indication, this first period reflects Waters working under a strong influence of the underground film aesthetic, almost as concerned with subverting form as much as with subverting sensibility.

The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955)

THE BIG COMBO represents both director Joseph H. Lewis and cinematographer John Alton working at the height of their respective powers.

Cornel Wilde stars as Lt. Diamond, a self-righteous young officer hell-bent on taking down mob kingpin Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) who is so powerful he never has to get his hands dirty, thus his record is squeaky-clean and is considered untouchable. Diamond is obsessed with Mr. Brown's girlfriend, driven by an apparent savior complex to "rescue" her from the sadistic kingpin. Yet Diamond's obsession extends to Mr. Brown himself - his need to knock him off his throne is motivated less by a desire for law and order, and more by a desire to get what he can't have.

Conte's Mr. Brown is a chillingly sadistic character - and also appealing in a very unsettling way. He humiliates and berates aging gangster Joe McClure (Brian Donlevy), and keeps his girlfriend an emotional prisoner. Brown is always one step ahead of the police and, when McClure attempts to take his own revenge against his sadistic boss, Brown is again one step ahead, reminding McClure who's boss by turning his own hired killers against him. The scene where Brown taunts Diamond by pointing out that he's everything that Diamond wants to be, but can't, sums up his appeal and power.

Brown is finally betrayed, allowing Lt. Diamond to turn the tables on him and reducing him to a scared, panicked wreck like a deer in headlights. But it feels inauthentic because Mr. Brown is simply a much more interesting character than the bland Diamond. Still, Lewis' direction plunges us right in to this cynical, topsy-turvy world and never lets up, aided by Alton's stylish cinematography that conjures up an appropriately shadowy atmosphere, resulting in some iconic imagery.

Visual Storytelling

Of the many reasons I'm so fascinated by silent film, one of the most important aspects of the medium is what it can still teach film makers about structuring a story with images. The idea of "telling stories with images" is one of the most oft-repeated ideas we hear about film's capability, but still, the image remains the foundation on which the grammar of film was constructed.

Henri Langlois, archivist at the Cinematheque Francaise, famously ran silent films without musical accompaniment, arguing that the images constituted their own visual rhythm. While historically dubious, Langlois' approach of totally silent presentation does at least invite the viewer to be more conscious of the structure of the images in telling a story. I once sat through a screening of Josef von Sternberg's UNDERWORLD at NYU without musical accompaniment, and while I found the experience less than ideal, it did force me to consider the visual information in the film that much more closely since I didn't have the music to cue responses.

One of the most important lessons I ever learned about filmmaking occurred during my time in film school. At the time, the program I attended emphasized shooting on film as opposed to video, which was a great learning experience on a number of levels as I'd find out. As a kid, I had taught myself the basics of moviemaking through repeated experimentation using the family video camera, mostly imitating and copying techniques that I had seen in my favorite films. Because the video camera recorded in color and sound, I took those elements for granted. But when I got to film school, I found that I'd be shooting on 16mm using a Bolex. Working with a group, we were given a number of assignments that required us to use different techniques.

For the two projects I directed, the first presented a great challenge for me for two reasons. For one, the lack of sound meant that whatever I needed to convey had to be done so purely through the image. For another, the project required me to create two separate films using the exact same shots - only arranged in a different sequence - to achieve a different effect. Think the Kuleshov experiment.

This gets at the larger challenge I faced with the assignment. Given that I am inclined toward narrative filmmaking, my approach was to try and tell two very similar stories, albeit ones that reverse the beginning and ending shots of each other, thus making one a "comedy", and the other a "tragedy" (I use both terms very loosely, though). I considered my work on this project a personal failure, because the non-linearity of the narrative didn't feel authentic, and the story was not clearly conveyed enough by the shots, which I had to keep intentionally ambiguous so that they could be re-arranged for different purposes.

With my second project, however, I was given the assignment to shoot a film consisting of takes shot from a variety of angles (closeup, medium, wide, etc.) In other words, classical style. For this project, I decided to draw on my knowledge of silent film, and comedy in particular. Shooting at 16 fps, I created a slapstick comedy that drew on the techniques of silent comedy filmmakers. I was not setting out to merely re-create a silent comedy but to use the pure visual storytelling of the silent, black and white image to tell a quick, comic story entirely through images. The narrative was much more clear given the linearity of its presentation, and the shooting of takes from a number of different angles forced me to maximize the information I would convey through each one, and to pay close attention to the sequence in which they were arranged to convey each point. The result was THE WRONG HOUSE, a simple comedy that I considered my best work up to that point.

What I took away from the project, above all else, was an appreciation for what it really means to tell a story with images. I also came away with a much higher appreciation for the elements of sound and color. Though there are good arguments to be made for shooting on video (as that is quickly becoming the industry standard, and because of the low cost makes experimentation much more feasible), I realize I would not have come to appreciate these elements in quite the same way had it not been for forcing myself to strip them away in the first place.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

A late-Golden Age classic of the Hollywood studio era, THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE contains many of the best elements of the old studio system with the emerging director-based models of the post-war period. Released in 1948, it benefits from the resources and star power available at Warner Bros., but also demonstrates the distinctive touch of its director, John Huston; the best, if you will, of the old and new models of filmmaking coexisting at the time.

Three down-on-their-luck Americans, stranded in Tampico, Mexico, join forces and set out to find gold off in the hills. The cast of characters includes the desperate and paranoid Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart in what I consider to be his finest performance), the honest and earnest Curtin (Tim Holt) and the seasoned old Howard (played by the director's father, Walter Huston). They eventually strike gold, but in the process of collecting it to bring back, the group is undone by their growing paranoia.

Working from the novel by B. Traven, the story - which takes just over two hours to tell - builds to several intense moments in which Humphrey Bogart's Dobbs proves to be his own worst enemy. The final confrontation between Dobbs and the bandits he has twice battled previously in the film has a sort of poetic irony about it, as the gold that Dobbs has stolen from his companions is blown off in the Mexican winds.

The casting of Walter Huston as the seasoned old prospector proved to be inspired, bringing both a sense of impish charm and world-weary cynicism to the role. Director John Huston wisely moved the production out of the studio and took some of the scenes on location in Mexico, broadening the visual scope and adding an extra dynamic in terms of how the characters interact with their surroundings.

Max Steiner's score has all the majesty and bombast that one associates with the great symphonic scores of period, but thankfully does not seem at odds with Huston's more naturalistic visual approach to much of the material. Bogart's performance moves into a sort of high stylization as the film nears its climax, with his paranoid and grizzled prospector descending into the depths of madness that the human mind is capable of. The film's ending, particularly with the pack mules carrying the gold, and the showdown between Bogart and Holt, is reminiscent of Erich von Stroheim's GREED, which explored similar ideas in the way that the lust for gold leads to the deterioration of his protagonist's mind and soul.

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE holds up as a remarkable piece of filmmaking from Hollywood's Golden Age, and for me ranks among the greatest American films of all time. I would go so far as to call it one of the few perfect films, in that every aspect of its production comes together just right to produce an unforgettable experience.

WINGS, Wellman and Versatility

Last Saturday night I had the pleasure of attending a screening of WINGS, most famous today for being the first film awarded the Best Picture Oscar at the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Seeing it projected in a restored 35mm print, at the landmark Loew's Jersey theater (an authentic 1929 movie palace) was quite an experience.

The film was hosted by William Wellman, Jr., son of director William A. Wellman and an actor in his own right. It was fascinating to hear his stories of the production of WINGS, some of which I had heard before in interviews with his father in documentaries such as THE MEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES and HOLLYWOOD. But his account of the film's production history, and especially how some of the more difficult shots were pulled off, was a fascinating glimpse into silent era filmmaking.

Watching the film on the Loew's 50 foot screen was a breathtaking experience. The scale on which the film was made (with the cooperation of the US government, who provided men, artillery, and other resources to the production) is difficult to conceive of, only because films are made so differently now. There are still films that depict large-scale events, to be sure, but how many of them are actually executed on such a large scale? Add to this the fact that stars Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen were actually given flying lessons, in order to shoot their own scenes from the air, and you begin to realize that this kind of filmmaking is really only tangentially related to the way films are made today. It's an almost entirely different experience.

What's remarkable to me, in thinking about the man who made this incredible film, is the versatility which Wellman brought to his films as director. While I have only been able to see a portion of Wellman's filmography (he directed something like 80 films over his 30-plus year career), I am constantly struck by the variety of subjects and genres he tackled. To think he was only 29 when he made WINGS is staggering, especially when you consider the strong opposition he was facing from the far more experienced and older Paramount studio executives. It's certainly a testament to the belief Wellman had in both the production and in himself, no doubt stemming from the fact that it reflected his own experience as a flyer and was an intensely personal project for him.

And yet, when I look at his filmography, I think, here is a man who clearly had a much larger perspective than could be reduced to single genres or star vehicles. Take THE PUBLIC ENEMY, which Wellman directed just four years after WINGS. A seminal film in the early gangster genre, it's an intense, focused character study tracing a young hood's development into career criminal. Or A STAR IS BORN, which remains one of the boldest films ever made about the motion picture industry, especially when you consider it was made at a time when Hollywood was most certainly not interested in anything self-critical.

But it was Wellman's very versatility that demonstrates how a film like A STAR IS BORN could be made in 1937 Hollywood. The key was the same one that allowed Wellman to create personal works within the factory-like studio system. Because A STAR IS BORN has all the dressings of a "Classical" studio film, it can make its point within a traditional "rising star" narrative, which makes the ideas being explored all the more subversive (compare this with the hostility with which Billy Wilder's SUNSET BLVD. was met 13 years later). Similarly, Wellman was able to inject his personal vision into films because he worked within the system. At first glance, his films may "look" no different than those of other directors. But when you realize the highly structured system under which Wellman was working, and look more closely at recurring themes that he explored, his versatility becomes even more impressive. Not to mention the fact that he made at least a half-dozen films that are now widely regarded as "classics" among the whole of world cinema.

And this was something else that his son emphasized when speaking about WINGS: that Wellman enjoyed working, enjoyed the process of making films. The studio system, whatever its faults, was the ideal place for a director like Wellman, who was able to keep working and exploring his ideas within the classical framework of Hollywood genre films, star vehicles, and so on.

WINGS, then, sums up perfectly what Wellman was able to accomplish so well. Even though the film was a grand-scale epic spectacle, a Best Picture winner, and commercial triumph, beneath all of that is the perspective of an intensely personal artist, a man drawing on his own life experiences and telling a story that was deeply important to him. The film, like the best films from Hollywood's classic period, manages to convey those ideas while also transcending them, creating a work that still moves and thrills everyone who sees it, a film that is both universal and timeless.

Although staged, there are glimpses of Wellman directing on-set in this trailer for A STAR IS BORN:

Mabel's Married Life (1914)

One of the better Keystone efforts up to its time, MABEL'S MARRIED LIFE begins with a familiar premise: In Echo Park, burly Mack Swain abandons his wife on a park bench in order to flirt with pretty Mabel Normand, who is married to the top-hatted (and inebriated) Chaplin. A rivalry ensues, and Charlie plays spoilsport by telling Swain's wife of her husband's shenanigans. Of course, Charlie and Swain bond over alcohol in the local bar afterward, until another fight breaks out that ends with Charlie kicking the customers backward through the saloon's swinging doors.

But then the film turns interesting. Mabel purchases a mannequin that resembles Swain in physique and wardrobe. Charlie, the worse for wear, returns home and is confronted by the dummy, which he takes for Swain. He proceeds to order it of his apartment, and but he is defeated by the dummy, which keeps spring back into place, knocking him down, each time he throws a punch to it or delivers a kick. The film (or at least surviving copies of it) end rather abruptly, presumably as Charlie realizes it is only a dummy and makes amends with his wife.

It is this character by-play in its second half that makes MABEL'S MARRIED LIFE a memorable film. The flirting-in-the-park opening is basically a re-tread of similar situations in so many previous Keystones, and Chaplin still seems to have some remnants of Ford Sterling's performance style in his appearance here (including the use of the top hat), but the scenes in which he is confused and confounded by the dummy in his inebriated state are pure Chaplin.

The direction, by Chaplin, demonstrates his keen eye for composition, getting the maximum amount of information across in each shot, with little cross-cutting to interrupt the physical comedy. MABEL'S MARRIED LIFE also pointed to the cute (though sometimes violent) domestic comedy that Chaplin and Normand would explore in future films such as HIS TRYSTING PLACE.

The Eagle (1925)

Rudolph Valentino remains one of the really instantly recognizable names in film history, even to those with only a fleeting interest in the subject. His reputation as a romantic idol of the silent screen is well entrenched even after almost 90 years since his untimely passing.

However, like certain other icons of the silent screen, including Theda Bara and Mary Pickford, Valentino’s individual films are not always as well remembered as they might be. Aside from THE SHEIK (1921), perhaps his most famous role (even though its 1926 sequel, SON OF THE SHEIK, is probably an even better film), Valentino is not known specifically for one “great” film.

If any one Valentino film can be cited as the strongest in his body of work, it would have to be THE EAGLE, directed by Clarence Brown in 1925 for United Artists. A delicious blend of romantic comedy and period adventure, it provided Rudolph Valentino with a strong story and production values, as well as a role tailor-made to his screen image. The moments of comedy allowed Valentino to display the full range of his acting talents, and he delivers one of his most natural, relaxed performances in this film.

This “Russian Robin Hood” story tells the adventures of Lt. Vladimir Dubrovsky, a Cossack in the Czarina’s army. After bravely rescuing Mascha (Vilma Banky) and her aunt when the horses pulling their carriage get out of control, the Czarina (Louise Dresser) recognizes his valor and the young lieutenant is summoned to the Czarina’s chambers. When he refuses the Czarina’s romantic advances, Dubrovsky is ordered to be shot. He escapes, however, and learns from his dying father that a local tyrant, Kyrilla (James A. Marcus), is spreading terror across the land. Dubrovsky then learns that the object of his desire, Mascha, is Kyrilla’s daughter, and poses as her tutor to infiltrate their home and seek revenge for the death of his father.

Aside from THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921), which had been directed by Rex Ingram, THE EAGLE represents a rare collaboration between Valentino and a particularly distinctive director, in this case Clarence Brown. Brown would later become one of MGM’s most reliable house directors, but he had a distinctive eye for visual detail, something which is present in THE EAGLE. Most famous is the celebrated tracking shot in which the camera pulls back across the entire length of a banquet table, requiring extreme precision and careful choreography of both actors and equipment.

The production itself is quite sumptuous, with staggering sets designed by William Cameron Menzies (some of which look like they could have been reused the following year in THE DUCHESS OF BUFFALO). The film’s cinematography, by George Barnes, provides some excellent innovations (such as the above-mentioned tracking shot) along with well-lit nighttime interiors inside Kyrilla’s castle. The costume design, by an uncredited Adrian, supplies the production and cast with just the right period flavor.

Sadly, THE EAGLE was to be the second-to-last film for Valentino before his untimely death. It’s particularly ashame since both this film and his next, THE SON OF THE SHEIK, rank among the very best he ever made, and it would have been interesting to see what vehicles Valentino would have starred in during those final glory days of the silent era.

THE EAGLE (United Artists, 1925). Produced by John W. Considine Jr., directed by Clarence Brown. Screenplay by Hans Kraly from the story by Alexander Pushkin. Photography by George Barnes. Sets, William Cameron Menzies.

Cast: Rudolph Valentino,  Louise Dresser, Vilma Banky, James Marcus, Albert Conti, George Nichols, Carrie Clark Ward.

Sherlock Holmes Baffled

The first screen presentation of Arthur Conan Doyle's celebrated supersleuth, SHERLOCK HOLMES BAFFLED is a strange use of the Holmes character. Instead of presenting any kind of mystery, the film is instead standard trick fare from the period, with Holmes baffled by a crook who appears and disappears throughout the scene.

Interesting only as the earliest Sherlock Holmes film, it's really not even an "adaptation", since it bears absolutely no resemblance to any of Doyle's stories. There's no need for the character to be Sherlock Holmes, either, as there is no indication as to who he is, other than in the title.

As it is in Life (1910)

AS IT IS IN LIFE is one of the hundreds of films directed by D.W. Griffith in that incredibly rich and innovative period of his tenure at Biograph, from 1908 to 1913. It is also one of the most singularly beautiful works he created during this time, demonstrating his especially sophisticated use of depth and movement within the frame.

The story itself is unremarkable: a poor father finds work at a pigeon farm, after being forced to beg and explaining that he has a daughter to feed. He is reunited with an old sweetheart, whom he intends to marry. Upon realizing that he can't support both a wife and a child, he sacrifices the relationship in order to take care of his daughter.

Years later, the daughter returns home from school and greets her aging, worn father, vowing to care for him in his old age. However, when she falls in love with a young man, it tears her relationship with her father apart. Feeling broken and betrayed, the father goes away. Later the boy and girl are married, and the girl - now a mother - is reunited with her father, who rejoices over his new grandchild.

With its conventional plot, AS IT IS IN LIFE would not be held in particularly high regard today for its narrative advances or character development. It is, however, remarkable for its use of a location, in this case the California Pigeon Farm, which Griffith uses to visually breathtaking effect. Indeed, the film seems to have been built around the fact that Griffith and company had access to film at the pigeon farm. With its seemingly hundreds of birds flying and fluttering around in the background, Griffith achieves a total sense of movement within these shots.

Similar to reports that audiences at the first Lumiere screenings in 1895 were as impressed with the moving foliage in the background as they were with the foreground action, AS IT IS IN LIFE is most interesting for its use of background motion. The pigeons add a real sense of depth to each shot as well, as we see them grouped from the foreground all the way in to the background.

There is a recurring image that is particularly effective. It is repeated twice, to show the passage of time. It occurs for the first time when the father and his young daughter are walking together on the grounds of the pigeon farm, with the father pushing a wheelbarrow full of seed. The birds flutter and fly out of their way. This is repeated later in the film, when the daughter, now grown, has returned from school, and walks alongside her father as before. Both times, the relationship between the two actors and the pigeons takes on a strong sense of proportion, allowing them to interact rather than keeping the birds merely as background figures.

Given that it was released in 1910, which was the year that Griffith first took his company to film in Los Angeles, AS IT IS IN LIFE represents the almost immediate opportunity that Griffith and others spotted in Southern California as a filming location. Although using rural New York, New Jersey and Connecticut was still certainly a viable option in 1910, this film is evidence of the potential that Los Angeles offered to the fledgling medium.

Natural Enemies

"Dark" doesn't even begin to describe NATURAL ENEMIES.

This 1979 film, which can be viewed in its entirety here, is a psychological drama that never cuts corners. Hal Holbrook stars as Paul Steward, a late-middle aged magazine publisher trapped in a state of mental and emotional hell. Based on a novel by Julius Horowitz, it places its protagonist in a crushing environment (New York City in the late 1970s) and examines his total loss of humanity.

On the surface, Paul has a comfortable life, with a wife (Miriam, played by Louise Fletcher), three children, a home in Connecticut, and running a successful science magazine. However, he's become obsessed with a series of news stories detailing recent murders involving married men who - suddenly, and without any explanation - take the lives of their families before killing themselves.

NATURAL ENEMIES starts from here, and depicts Paul on his last day on earth. In its methodical depiction of its protagonist's daily routine, the film is almost reminiscent of John G. Avildsen's SAVE THE TIGER (1973), but unlike Jack Lemmon's garment factory owner in that film, Paul Steward is already dead to himself when we meet him.

A series of flashbacks provides the account of the deterioration of Paul and Miriam's marriage - a sexless, loveless affair - and reveals the total dissolution of their relationship that followed Miriam's nervous breakdown and her subsequent shock therapy treatment. But we get the impression that these are still merely symptoms, not causes, of a much larger problem, which ultimately - like the family murder/suicide cases that Paul obsesses over in the news - remain chillingly unexplained.

Paul attempts to reach out by talking about his interest in these murders to seemingly anyone who will listen. His friend, Harry Rosenthal (Jose Ferrer), a Holocaust survivor, does his best to try to convey to Paul how good he really has things, but Paul won't be convinced. A therapist friend (Viveca Lindfors) encourages him to seek help. But Paul decides to spend the afternoon with five prostitutes in a brothel, in a kind of gift to himself on his last day. That night, when his train back to Connecticut breaks down in the dark, he shares another sexual encounter - this time with a lonely, neglected and unsatisfied housewife, a kind of mirror image of himself. The emptiness of it all reveals how desperate he is to be moved by some kind of experience, any kind. And it continues right up through the film's relentlessly upsetting and dark conclusion.

NATURAL ENEMIES takes no easy way out with its story. The last five or ten minutes of the film is where most other films would offer some kind of redemption for their protagonist. Paul would realize how good he's got things, or some such, and would vow to start anew. Not in this film.

There's a moment toward the end, where Miriam is trying to get Paul to tell her "what's wrong" - as if it could simply be summed up in a few words. He finally lets loose, telling her how much he hates everything about his life - the house, his family, the "pretentious bullshit" of the magazine he publishes, etc. It's a moment that rings hauntingly true - Paul Steward quite literally hates everything about his day-to-day existence. And though the film doesn't provide a neat-and-tidy explanation for the horrific actions its protagonist eventually takes, it certainly provides a glimpse in to what makes him tick.

Director Jeff Kanew takes a stylistically straightforward approach with the material, emphasizing the ordinariness about so much of Paul's situation. Hal Holbrook turns in a genuinely disturbing performance. For all of the horror it depicts, it never moves toward sensationalism. Even the scenes involving the five prostitutes in the brothel are handled in such a way that they take on a quality of the ordinary; all part of Kanew's effective minimalist approach.

Griffith's Social Drama as Wish Fulfillment

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

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

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