Frankenstein (1910)

The first screen adaption of Mary Shelley's horror classic, produced by the Edison company, this film achieved legendary status due to being virtually impossible to see for many years. The story is told in a series of tableaux depicting key scenes from the book that make far more sense if you're already familiar with the plot. There's some interesting high-contrast lighting and even some good - albeit primitive - special effects, depicting the monster being created by reversing the film. Charles Ogle is effective as the creature, done up in horrific makeup, and in an unusual twist on both the book and subsequent film versions, it is revealed that the monster is in fact Frankenstein's own inner demons. An interesting historical curio.

Directed by J. Searle Dawley. With Charles Ogle, Augustus Phillips, and Mary Fuller.

You Only Live Once (1937)

Fritz Lang's second Hollywood film was this effective psychological crime drama about an ex-con, just released from prison and newly married to his sweetheart who finds his past coming back to haunt him. Lang offers a trenchant social commentary on the justice system, focusing on the societal prejudice against Fonda's criminal past and the corrosive effect it has on him.

Shot with characteristic stylishness by Lang, with atmospheric high-contrast cinematography by Leon Shamroy. Sylvia Sidney is highly effective as the loyal and courageous Joan, and Henry Fonda plays his part with an intensity that brings real humanity to the character which makes all the more tragic his desperation as his life hangs in the balance in the face overwhelming evidence against him. It's also a genuine and sincere love story about real commitment and dedication between two people in the face of trouble, done without the usual cheap and false sentimentality.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

This landmark low-budget effort holds up 15 years still later as a model of atmospheric horror. Carefully constructed to give the appearance of haphazardly shot found footage, the film purports to show the film and video that was recovered after three filmmakers went missing in the woods of Maryland while making a doc about the Blair Witch legend.

Ed Sanchez and Dan Myrick combine grim naturalism (the shots of the townspeople at the beginning are unsettling in their ordinariness) with highly stylized, hand-held cinematography (shot on 16mm and video degraded to look like a cheap home movie). The dialogue is largely improvised by the three leading actors, a technique which works well enough but also comes across as a little too mannered in some instances now. It's all undeniably effective, however, and even beyond the supernatural stuff, plays off of our greatest fears of getting lost in the woods.

An unprecedented commercial hit, thanks to its groundbreaking Internet marketing campaign, the film inspired a sequel (which I have not seen) and has influenced countless "found footage" horror film rip-offs to this day, and even prefigures the "mumblecore" style in its use of unpolished technique and improvised dialogue, though to its credit BLAIR WITCH uses these elements far more creatively and to greater purpose.

The Apartment (1960)

Billy Wilder's (very) dark comedy about a young shnook working his way up the corporate ladder and the toll it takes on his humanity remains a genuinely fresh and relevant satire half a century later. Wilder and Diamond's script adroitly walks a tightrope between comedy and tragedy, where romance or suicide seem equally likely outcomes at any given moment (and occasionally very nearly intertwine).

Lemmon gives one of his finest performances, quite possibly his best, playing opposite the wonderful Shirley MacLaine, who manages to be funny, touching and tragic all at the same time. Fred MacMurray is especially effective in a dark turn as the manipulative personnel manager, and Edie Adams, Jack Kruschen, and Ray Walston are all fine in supporting roles. Features stunning black and white cinematography by Joseph LaShelle, perfectly capturing Alexander Trauner's sets which effectively convey both the squalor and character of Lemmon's apartment and the suffocating impersonality of his looming, sprawling office.

She Done Him Wrong (1933)

This pre-code period comedy-drama set in the Bowery during the Gay Nineties is an excellent showcase for Mae West, who wrote this story about a saloon singer and her various romantic entanglements and drama with the men in her life. West’s characterization is still startling and undeniably attractive, not afraid to use her power over the men around her to her advantage, while simultaneously satirizing her own image as a sex symbol with a cutting wit.

Cary Grant is effective in an early appearance as the undercover government agent posing as a missionary. Owen Moore, Noah Beery Sr. and Gilbert Roland are all fine as West's various suitors, and are ably supported by a veritable all-star cast of Hollywood character actors all perfectly suited to the various types they're called on to play, especially Dewey Robinson as West's bodyguard and Tammany Young as a Bowery tough. Shot with characteristic high-gloss cinematography by Charles Lang and featuring a nice selection of period songs that add to the atmosphere, which is nicely established in the opening montage and evoked throughout. It was nominated for Best Picture and includes West’s iconic line, “Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"

Directed by Lowell Sherman. By Mae West, screenplay by Harvey Thew and John Bright. With Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland, Noah Beery Sr., Rafaela Ottiano, Dewey Robinson, Rochelle Hudson, Tammany Young, and many others.

W.C. Fields and Me (1976)

Decided to give this a try tonight on Netflix. It's as bad as its reputation would suggest, an almost totally fictionalized account of Fields' relationship with Carlotta Monti (based on her memoir, which screenwriter Bob Merrill clearly ignored). Leave the re-writing of historical facts aside, this is just a mess, not helped any by the crude attempts at humor throughout, and the grating, unflattering portrayals of Fields and the other characters (many of them fictional, too). Steiger gives an oddly awkward performance, sometimes touching and reaching toward moments of inspiration, but too often devolving into caricature, like a bad impersonation. To be fair, it would be difficult for any actor to pull off, and the script is certainly partly to blame. Its flaws are especially frustrating given the potential of the subject, and the talent involved. Made at a time when Hollywood seemed to be going through a nostalgic phase about its own past (SILENT MOVIE and WON TON TON: THE DOG THAT SAVED HOLLYWOOD were released the same year), this one has all the worst characteristics of this particular subgenre. This is movie-of-the-week material at best. A near-total misfire. Skip it.

The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

Stylish whodunit with the incomparable William Powell as Philo Vance. A perfect example of the highly entertaining and expertly-made programmers that the studio system could produce when it was firing on all cylinders.

Vance is called in to investigate the murder of wealthy Long Island dog breeder Archer Coe, found dead in a locked room with a gunshot in his head and a pistol in his hand. Everyone assumes it was a suicide, but Vance suspects otherwise and sets about investigating the various suspects, all of whom have their own motives for killing Archer Coe.

This standard mystery plot (from a story by S.S. Van Dine) rises well above the average programmer thanks to the expert direction of Michael Curtiz, who keeps things moving at a good pace and tells the story with interesting stylistic flourishes, especially in some of the scene transitions, aided by strong cinematography by William Rees. Powell is so naturally stylish and charming that he commands attention every time he's on-screen, making his performance here (and in other films) seem like an extension of his own personality. Excellent cast all around, including Mary Astor, Robert Barrat, Eugene Pallette, Paul Cavanagh, Etienne Girardot and other reliable character actors who all play their parts to perfection.

There's a great moment when Vance whips together a model of Coe's house to demonstrate how the murder took place, and produces a highly-detailed, intricately-designed scale model that appears to have taken weeks to create. Apparently the detective had the prop department of Warner Bros. at his disposal!

Groundhog Day (1993)

The second film of last night's double-feature at Loew's Jersey was shown in tribute to the late Harold Ramis, who co-wrote and directed this offbeat comedy about an arrogant jerk of a weatherman (Bill Murray) who is doomed to relive the same day over and over again until he finally undergoes a personal transformation. Ramis makes the most of the unusual premise, and Murray delivers a funny and sincere performance that holds it all together. It's surprisingly restrained and generally subdued and even low-key for a '90s comedy. I had never seen this one before, and was surprised to realize it was released 21 years ago already, but it holds up well and is one of the more genuinely funny comedies to come out of Hollywood in recent years.

Little Miss Marker (1934)

Early Shirley Temple vehicle benefits from great cast and script (from a Damon Runyon story), populated with colorful characters played by top character actors (Lynne Overman, Sam Hardy and Tammany Young among them). This time, Shirley is left by her father as collateral for a debt he owes to racetrack bookie Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou). Her father never comes back to collect her, however, and is eventually found dead, so the reluctant Sorrowful is left to look out for Shirley, warming up to her and eventually changing his ways to become an honest man. Also in the cast is Dorothy Dell as the nightclub singer who comes to consider Shirley as her own daughter, and Charles Bickford as tough gambler Big Steve, who is finally redeemed in the end by an act of selflessness toward Shirley that saves her life.

Produced on loan-out to Paramount, this one is a little darker than her later vehicles for Fox, with its rough Depression-era New York atmosphere. It features only one musical number performed by Temple, "Laugh You Son of a Gun", which was a big hit. The film was also a big hit at the box office, and did much to launch Shirley Temple into the stratosphere of movie stardom.

Growing up, I saw a lot of her films on video (my mom is a big fan who also grew up watching these films on TV) but this is one that I had missed over the years, so when I saw that Loew's Jersey was screening it in 35mm in tribute to its late star, I made a point to go see it. It contains everything I love about 1930s Hollywood movies - the sparkling cinematography, wise-cracking dialogue, great music, fine characters actors who appear to be having so much fun with their roles, and stars who really knew how to transcend the roles they were playing and become real personalities that still pop off the screen 80 years later.

The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Immensely fun historical drama with Charles Laughton giving one of his very finest performances. He really gets into the character, and it's clear how much fun he's having playing the role. The story of the King's ill-fated marriages is told with a boisterous, bawdy humor. I'm a sucker for these Korda historical biopics and this one is the best.

Laughton is supported here by an impressive cast including Robert Donat as Culpeper, and Merle Oberon, Wendy Barrie, Elsa Lanchester, Binnie Barnes, and Everley Gregg as his wives. Lanchester in particular stands out as the clever Anne of Cleves, who bargains with Henry to get out of their marriage during a card game on their wedding night, and it's especially fun watching her and Laughton playing off of each other so well in their scenes together.

This film has been a very favorite of mine since seeing it for the first time when I was 10 or 11, when I came across a video copy in the "foreign" section at Blockbuster Video (back when they still existed, and had a "foreign" section). I had read about the movie in Ann Lloyd and David Robinson's "Movies of the Thirties" and it became one of those classics that I knew I had to see. I was only allowed to rent one movie that night, and it came down to a selection between this one or Fellini's I CLOWNS - not an easy choice for a budding film buff - and chose HENRY VIII, which quickly became a favorite (I wouldn't have a chance to finally see the Fellini film until last year).

It became the first British film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and Laughton took home the Best Actor Oscar for his performance -- a well-deserved win.

A Close Call for Boston Blackie (1946)

I have a real affection for the Hollywood studio programmers of the '30s and '40s, especially the mystery series like "The Whistler", "The Saint", "Mr. Moto", etc. My grandfather introduced me to these films as a kid and I've come to enjoy them more and more over the years for the reliable entertainment they provide. One of my favorite series is "Boston Blackie", starring Chester Morris as Jack Boyle's popular character, and made by Columbia between 1941 and 1949. This is an average entry in the series, which is to say it's a fun way to spend an hour with its blend of light mystery and comedy. This time, Blackie has to look after the baby of an ex-girlfriend and protect her from her recently-paroled husband. He finds himself falsely suspected of a murder in the process, but things turn out okay in the end.

One of the joys of watching Hollywood studio programmers is the sheer level of craftsmanship that went in to them. This one was shot by Oscar-winner Burnett Guffey (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, BONNIE AND CLYDE) and even in this routine entry you can see the level of experience that everyone working on these films brought to them.

Curtain at Eight (1933)

Odd little mystery about a matinee idol, Wylie Thornton, who manages to make a lot of enemies as a result of his numerous romantic entanglements backstage in the theater. One night, during his birthday party, Thornton gets bumped off by an unknown killer, and Detective Jim Hanvey (C. Aubrey Smith) is called in to solve the case. There's a plot device featuring a chimp who's handy with a pistol, so that gives you some idea of about how seriously to take the proceedings. Fun to see Smith playing something other than a British military officer! Sam Hardy, an actor I always enjoy, provides the wise-cracking comic relief as Smith's detective partner. Technically it's a pretty creaky and low-budget early talkie (produced by the Poverty Row studio Majestic Pictures) but there are enough fun moments that make it worth a watch if you like this sort of thing.

The Big Trail (1930)

Landmark early sound Western starring John Wayne nearly a decade before his star-making performance in STAGECOACH. This epic saga of the trek Westward by covered wagon was shot in the pioneering 70mm Grandeur process, which is expertly used to capture the breathtaking landscapes. Director Raoul Walsh uses the widescreen frame to emphasize the story's epic qualities and heightens the sense of authenticity by packing each shot with an incredible amount of visual detail.

It's easy to see the qualities in John Wayne's performance here that would make him a screen icon, even though he spent the next nine years working in low-budget films for Poverty Row studios. When it came to casting THE BIG TRAIL, Walsh supposedly asked his friend John Ford if he could recommend anyone for the lead. Ford immediately suggested Wayne and the rest, as they say, is history.

Incredibly, in addition to the 70mm and standard 35mm versions, the film was simultaneously shot in three different foreign language versions as well.

Faithful (1910)

This one-reel slapstick comedy, directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph company, is notable today as one of the very first films to be shot in Hollywood. The premise finds respectable gentleman Adonese (Arthur V. Johnson) attracting the attention of the good but simple-minded Faithful (future comedy producer Mack Sennett) after knocking him down and buying him a new suit. Faithful is so moved by this act of kindness that he follows Adonese everywhere, much to the latter's dismay. The film's plot is standard farce, no doubt inspired by the French comedies of the Pathe company that had already inspired earlier Griffith comedies made back East.

Griffith began taking his company West in the winter of 1910, and this film reveals the variety of locations that he found available to him upon his arrival. There are shots looking toward the Hollywood Hills and, later, a shot taken from the top of the hills looking down at the area that is now Hollywood Blvd. The film was shot by Griffith's long-time cinematographer Billy Bitzer. Griffith was working in many different genres at this point in his career, cranking films out to keep up with the demand. Just a couple of years after making this film, Mack Sennett would turn from acting to heading up America's first great comedy factory.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Stylish, atomic age, hard-boiled detective thriller featuring Mickey Spillane's private eye "Mike Hammer" (played here by Ralph Meeker) as he tries to solve the murder of the mysterious Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman). Meeker's cold, violent portrayal of Mike Hammer seems worlds apart from screen detectives of just a decade prior, acting by any means necessary to get the information he's looking for, without any particular sense of honor or ethics. Director Robert Aldrich establishes a mood of heightened paranoia, aided by Ernest Laszlo's stark, high-contrast B&W cinematography. Gaby Rodgers is especially effective as the duplicitous Lily Carver, aka Gabrielle, who leads Hammer in pursuit of the plot's MacGuffin - a radioactive device referred to only as "the great whatsit" - whose diabolical contents are finally revealed in the film's nearly apocalyptic finale.

Spirited Away (2002)

I'm not normally a fan of Japanese anime - or animated films in general for that matter - so I had not yet seen any of the Hayao Miyazaki films, despite hearing great things about them. I finally saw SPIRITED AWAY and have rarely been so taken with a film after a first viewing. The powerful sincerity of its pathos never relies on cheap or manipulative sentimentality like so many "family" films. The beautiful animation from the team at Studio Ghibli is a splendid thing to behold, creating its own universe populated with unique and distinctive characters in the service of telling a powerful and moving story. This was the first Miyazaki film I have seen but I plan to see more of his work now.

A Night in Casablanca (1946)

Late Marx Bros. comedy is also probably their best film since A DAY AT THE RACES. A mild parody of the Humphrey Bogart classic, the film really has more to do with the Brothers on the trail of a Nazi war criminal (played by expert comedic foil Sig Ruman) trying to smuggle stolen art out of Casablanca.

The film features some of Groucho's best lines (his scene at the hotel desk with a Mr. and Mrs. Smyth is a highlight), Harpo has some great sight gags (contributed by an uncredited Frank Tashlin), and Chico has a fun piano solo performing "Beer Barrel Polka". Also features the Bert Kalmar-Harry Ruby tune "Who's Sorry Now?"

Directed by Archie Mayo, written by Joseph Fields and and Roland Kibbee. Also starring Charles Drake, Lois Collier, Lisette Verea, Dan Seymour, and others.

Gangster Story (1959)

When Woody Allen made TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, he must have had this film in mind, which features a plot device of a bank robber staging a heist by pretending to be filming a movie about a bank robbery. Except this premise is rendered entirely ludicrous here by the fact that there is no crew or equipment present, and indeed no indication whatsoever that a filming is actually in progress, even as the robber walks out carrying a sack of money, waving to the policemen, and driving off.

That gives some idea of the rest of the film, about a gangster (played by Walter Matthau in a performance that resembles a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Ned Sparks) whose brilliant heist plan attracts the attention of some mobsters (who are about as menacing as the Bowery Boys) that want to recruit him for their scheme to rob a country club. The film is filled with such ridiculous scenes as Matthau knocking a man out and stealing his car in the middle of a crowded parking lot, killing a man on a golf course with a club, and wheeling the safe out of the country club office in broad daylight.

This was the first - and only - film directed by Walter Matthau. Unfortunately the direction is highly inept, including mismatched day-for-night shots, violating the 180 degree rule, and an entirely post-dubbed soundtrack that has the result of giving all of the dialogue an oddly-paced, clipped style that is unnatural and distracting. The acting is amateurish and even Matthau comes off quite poorly here. The most interesting part of the film is its extensive location footage of late '50s LA, but even the photography is so mediocre that there isn't anything particularly effective done with any of it.

Directed by Walter Matthau. Written by Paul Purcell from a story by Richard Grey and V.J. Rhems. Edited by Radley Metzger. Starring Matthau, Carol Grace, Bruce MacFarlane, Gerrett Wallberg, Raiken BenAri, David Leonard and others.

The Cocoanuts (1929)

The Marx Brothers made their screen debut in this filming of their 1925 Broadway hit. A satire on the Florida land boom of the '20s, this early talkie appears rather quaint now. Due to the constraints of shooting for sound film, the pacing often seems slightly off, and the overall energy lacking. The comedy holds up well enough, though, and the film features one of the Marxes' most frequently quoted bits, the "Why a duck?" routine.

Margaret Dumont reprises her stage role as the wealthy Mrs. Potter, and Kay Francis makes an early appearance as a villainous but seductive thief. The romantic leads are bland but inoffensive. The music numbers (with songs by Irving Berlin) are generally creaky and unmemorable, with the exception of the bizarre "Monkey Doodle Doo".

Directed by Joseph Santley and Robert Florey. Adapted by Morrie Ryskind from the stage play by George S. Kaufman. Also featuring Oscar Shaw, Mary Eaton, Cyril Ring, and Basil Ruysdael.

A Day at the Races (1937)

The general consensus among comedy fans seems to be that when the Marx Bros. signed with MGM in 1935, their films were robbed of the pure anarchic spirit that marked their earlier films for Paramount. While it's true that producer Irving Thalberg softened their characters (and added an emphasis on the supporting romantic couple and lavish musical numbers) in order to broaden their audience appeal, the first two films the team made for MGM under Thalberg's supervision remain two of the finest films that they appeared in.

A DAY AT THE RACES does contain excessive padding, especially in the "Water Carnival" sequence, but there are also several excellent comedy sequences that rank among the Marxes' finest: the "Tootsie Fruitsie" ice cream routine, the examination scene, and especially Groucho's tour-de-force phone call bit where he poses as the blustering and befuddled Col. Hawkins. The brothers are supported by expert foils including the incomparable Margaret Dumont and Sig Rumann. It's a handsomely-produced and highly entertaining combination of comedy and music, even if it does go on a little too long.

Directed by Sam Wood; written by Robert Pirosh, George Seaton and George Oppenheimer from a story by Pirosh and Seaton, with uncredited material by Al Boasberg, Leon Gordon and George S. Kaufman. Also featuring Maureen O'Sullivan, Allan Jones, Douglas Dumbrille, Leonard Ceeley, Esther Muir, and others.

Burstup Holmes' Murder Case (1913)

The proliferation of screen adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories in the early years of the 20th century soon lent themselves to parody, such as this two-reel farce comedy directed by Alice Guy at her Solax studio in Fort Lee, NJ. A fun send-up of the Holmes mysteries with some broad physical humor.

Starring Fraunie Fraunholz, Darwin Karr, and Blanche Cornwall.

Silent Sherlock

THE COPPER BEECHES (1912)
Early Sherlock Holmes screen adaptation notable for being made under the personal supervision of Arthur Conan Doyle (as well as the first to be authorized by Doyle). It is the only remaining entry in a series of eight episodic Holmes films produced by the Eclair company. This one is short on action and long on exposition, with some scenes playing out more like a series of tableaux representing key moments in the story. Despite the static camerawork and staging, there is a great deal of attention paid to the set design of Holmes' flat at 221B Baker Street, and some nice location photography as well.

Holmes is played here by Georges Tréville, and his performance is interesting to watch considering that it predates not only the iconic performances of Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, but even those of actors like Ellie Norwood or Arthur Wontner who helped to shape the character. Still, Tréville does a good job, especially given the limitations of the production, and embodies many of the traits as described by Doyle.

Directed by Adrien Caillard from the story by Arthur Conan Doyle. Starring Georges Tréville.


THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP (1921)
"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", a series of films produced in the early 1920s by Stoll Picture Productions, is regarded as one of the first adaptations to really do justice to Doyle's stories. Eille Norwood starred as Holmes in all 47 films (and holds the record for having played the character on screen the most number of times). Three of the films in the series are available on the Internet Archive.

The first of them, "The Man with the Twisted Lip", dates from 1921 and, if it is any indication, demonstrates that the producers got a lot of things right in adapting the stories to the screen. Running just 26 minutes, it is also indicative of the serialized format in which these films were released. Eille Norwood makes a fine Holmes and his performance stands up well against later interpretations. The film is a stylish one, featuring strong high-contrast, shadowy cinematography, and also makes good use of authentic London locations, which provide a fascinating glimpse into the period. There are some startlingly inventive shots, such as an apparent murder played out in silhouette against a lighted window. All in all, a solid mystery film and a must for Holmes fans.

Directed by Maurice Elvey; written by William J. Elliott from the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; photographed by Germain Burger. Starring Eille Norwood, Hubert Willis, Robert Vallis, and Paulette del Baze.


THE DEVIL'S FOOT (1921)
The second of the three Stoll Productions' "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" series available at the Internet Archive, THE DEVIL'S FOOT is another stylish adaptation with Eille Norwood returning with a thoughtful, effective performance as Holmes.

The remarkable thing about these adaptations is how well-paced they are despite the need for heavy exposition, finding creative solutions to the problem of conveying information that would normally be handled through dialogue. Once again, director Maurice Elvey keeps things visually interesting with stylish lighting and camerawork that at times seems to recall DeMille's experiments with chiaroscuro lighting several years earlier.

Directed by Maurice Elvey; written by William J. Elliott from the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; photographed by Germain Burger. Starring Eille Norwood, Hubert Willis, Harvey Braban, and Hugh Buckler.


THE DYING DETECTIVE (1922)
Third and final of the Stoll Productions' "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" films available at the Internet Archive. Exceptionally well-paced mystery, expertly shot and directed. The story features an interesting twist, with Holmes apparently contracting an Asiatic disease under mysterious circumstances, which proves to be a quite clever method of solving the mystery. With Holmes incapacitated for much of the film, it adds an interesting variation on his usual sleuthing techniques.

I continue to be impressed by Eille Norwood's performance of the title character, and even after seeing him in just three films, I've come to think of his interpretation of the role as the equal of other fine actors to play the part in multiple films.

Directed by Maurice Elvey; written by William J. Elliot, from the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Also featuring Hubert Willis, Cecil Humphreys, Joseph R. Tozer, and Mme. d'Esterre.

Silent Heroes (1913)

Two-reel Civil War melodrama (produced by Thomas Ince) about a young man who is branded a coward for staying home to take care of his dying mother instead of enlisting to fight. When his mother dies, he proves himself a hero by mobilizing the Home Guard to defend the town against Northern raiders.

Fairly typical melodrama enhanced by some well-staged battle sequences and good use of locations, along with an interesting high-angle shot - taken from a balcony looking down on the street below - that is unique for this time. Also includes an early screen appearance by future director Frank Borzage.

Directed by Walter Edwards and Jay Hunt. Also featuring Estelle Allen and Tom Chatteron.

Who's Minding the Store? (1963)

Delightfully zany, madcap fun from Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis. An honest, hard-working (but accident-prone) young man is engaged to a department store heiress and must make good by working in her mother's store, where he is given a series of impossible tasks designed to trip him up.

One of the very best Tashlin-Lewis collaborations, filled with dozens of clever cartoon-like sight gags, expertly-timed slapstick, and sharp satire of the retail business. The kitschy atomic age set design is enhanced by the splendid Technicolor photography. The laughs come fast and furious as Lewis gives one of his finest performances, supported by a wonderful cast of character actors. The highlight: Lewis' "typewriter" routine set to the Leroy Anderson tune.

Directed by Frank Tashlin; produced by Paul Jones; written by Tashlin and Harry Tugend, from a story by Tugend; photographed by W. Wallace Kelley; music by Joseph J. Lilley. Starring Jerry Lewis, Jill St. John, Ray Walston, John McGiver, Agnes Moorehead, Kathleen Freeman, Fritz Feld, and Richard Deacon, among many others.

Strange Behavior (1981)

Effective low-budget thriller about a small-town sheriff investigating a trail of killings of local kids. He suspects that the local school's psychology department, which has been conducting bizarre mind-control experiments on students - including the sheriff's own son - is behind the gruesome slayings.

Stylish slasher flick with sleek early '80s aesthetic complemented by throwback '50s feel, featuring a score by Tangerine Dream. Although the film is set in Illinois, it was shot entirely in New Zealand.


Directed by Michael Laughlin; produced by Anthony I. Ginnane and John Barnett; written by Laughlin and Bill Condon; music by Tangerine Dream. Starring Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher, Dan Shor, Scott Brady, Charles Lane, and others.

The Wolf of Wall St. (2013)

Martin Scorsese's talent for presenting unbalanced, larger-than-life characters comes out in full force with this epic story of real-life Wall Street fraudster Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in a tour-de-force performance), who works his way up from selling fraudulent stocks to making a fortune with higher-stakes investment fraud, is indicted by the FBI and, after serving a short sentence in prison, returns as a motivational speaker, giving talks to audiences who see no contradiction in learning the secrets to success from a convicted charlatan.

It is this contradiction that is at the heart of the film. Scorsese wisely does not shy away from portraying the high-power world of the stock brokers - a world of extreme excess, of sex, drugs, booze and lots of cash - as sleek and seductive, creating a strong attraction-repulsion reaction that makes the film's conclusion all the more damning.

The film's structure is similar to GOODFELLAS in depicting its protagonist's rise from humble origins to his precipitous fall, although the Belfort character perhaps has more in common with Travis Bickle or Rupert Pupkin.

Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1977)

Another entry in the "Bigfoot" subgenre prevalent during the 1970s, this film takes an intriguing docudrama approach to the subject, following a team of wildlife researchers on an expedition to northern British Columbia in search of the elusive Sasquatch.

The film benefits from good nature photography, and adds an air of authenticity by utilizing clips of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film and alleged recordings of Sasquatch calls and howls on its soundtrack, but will probably only be of interest to Bigfoot enthusiasts and fans of this subgenre.

Machine Gun Mama (1944)

Zany and chaotic B-movie comedy with Wallace Ford and El Brendel as a couple of guys from Brooklyn who come to a carnival in Mexico to sell their elephant, Bunny. Ford and Brendel stay on with the carnival and before long, a romance blooms between Ford and the owner's daughter (Armida). There's comedy, romance and even music. Of course, there's also intrigue and suspense, as the villainous Jose (Jack La Rue) plots to sabotage the carnival, but everything turns out fine in the end.

The direction and writing are uninspired, but Wallace Ford puts in a good performance, and El Brendel does his usual shtick, while the comic potential of the elephant gimmick is underdeveloped. Still, it's charming and fun, and the byplay between Ford and Armida is enjoyable enough; a light diversion that works for what it is.

Directed by Harold M. Young; produced by Jack Schwarz; original screenplay by Sam Neuman; songs by Neuman and Michael Breen. Starring Wallace Ford, El Brendel, Armida, Jack La Rue and Luis Alberni.

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

The "Citizen Kane" of Bigfoot movies, this 1970s drive-in favorite is a great example of regional and low-budget, atmospheric filmmaking done right. Filmed in parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas (according to the IMDb), the film has an authentic flavor to it that is a key component of why it is so effective.

Director Charles B. Pierce wisely goes the route of emphasizing atmosphere, creating a sense of real dread through what is implied off-screen, which is far more effective than showing too much of the monster. The use of local, non-professional actors (some playing themselves) adds to the documentary-like approach taken by Pierce.

The film ultimately succeeds because it takes the local Bigfoot legend seriously, and does not treat the subject with derision or unnecessary sensationalism. It also treats the characters with respect, focusing on the power that the legend holds for them.

Directed by Charles B. Pierce; screenplay by Earl E. Smith; photographed by Pierce; music by Jaime Mendoza-Nava. Starring Chuck Pierce Jr., William Stumpp, Willie E. Smith, and narrated by Vern Stierman.

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)

This 1936 filming of the "Sweeney Todd" story is a generally slow and visually dull adaptation that makes far too little of its intriguing central premise, focusing too much instead on bland and uninteresting secondary characters and subplots. The film is played as a straightforward melodrama when it could have been played more effectively as a dark comedy.

The latter approach comes through in the brilliant performance of Tod Slaughter in the title role, definitely the highlight of the film. He plays the part with a wickedly dark sense of humor and energy, and is clearly having a lot of fun with it, but without losing the sinister and menacing edge that the story calls for. It's one of those parts that seems tailor-made for its actor. It was a role he'd played on stage with his own theatrical company, and thankfully was preserved for posterity on film here. I haven't seen any of Slaughter's other films, but I plan to seek them out on the basis of his performance here alone.

The Pay Off (1942)

This Poverty Row quickie from PRC stars Lee Tracy as Brad McKay, a wisecracking reporter involved in some serious investigative journalism after the city’s prosecutor is found murdered. The plot takes the usual twists and turns, as he teams up with his editor’s son (Tom Brown) and Phyllis Walker (Tina Thayer) to crack the case. There’s a twist at the end, but by that point it’s clear the most interesting thing about the film is watching Lee Tracy’s performance.

This is an otherwise-routine newspaper film with the real highlight being Lee Tracy in the kind of role that had made him famous (on Broadway in “The Front Page” and in early talkies such as “Blessed Event”). He’s a bit older here, with a sense of world weariness to his character, but plays the part with the wisecracking gift of gab that he brought to all his best work.

The direction is unobtrusive and the cinematography generally unremarkable except for the occasional camera moves that help keep things interesting during the scenes of expository dialogue.

Cavalcade (1933)

Based on the elaborate stage production by Noel Coward, Cavalcade follows the lives of an upper-class British family, the Marryots (Clive Brook and Diana Wynyard) and their servants, the Bridges (Una O'Connor and Herbert Mundin) during the early decades of the 20th century. When the film is written about today, it is all too often held up as an example of the one of the least worthy films to receive the Best Picture Academy Award.

Unfortunately, to think of it only in terms of its place in the history of the Academy Awards is to overlook the power of Coward's approach to the story, interweaving his characters against the backdrop of key events in early 20th century British history, which gives the film a truly epic scope. Diana Wynyard turns in a fine performance as Jane Marryot, who serves as the emotional center of the film. Only 27 when the film was made, she does a remarkable job at portraying Jane at various ages over time ranging from 1899 to 1933.

The film is a clear model for such latter programs as Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey in its focus on contrasting upper-class and servant-class families against an historical backdrop. This narrative tapestry works best in the format of long-form programs like "Masterpiece Theatre", which can devote more time to individual characters and events, whereas Cavalcade frequently feels episodic and rushed. There are also a few moments, including the sinking of the Titanic, which feel almost unintentionally comical in their brief and ironic treatment.

Director Frank Lloyd (who won a Best Director Academy Award for his work on this film) does a fine job helming this massive and handsomely-mounted production. Its sets, which won their designer William Darling an Oscar for Art Direction, suggest a scale surpassing that which we see in the frame. The war sequences were directed by William Cameron Menzies, who creates a dizzying montage of shots depicting the Great War, accompanied by an equally rich soundtrack, intricately mixed to combine the sounds of battle with the voices of the soldiers singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary", creating a powerful contrast. The film was shot by Ernest Palmer, Murnau's cameraman on 4 Devils and City Girl, and Frank Borzage's cinematographer on 7th Heaven.

It's too easy to dismiss the film on the grounds of its somewhat staid cinematic style and obvious theatrical origins. Instead, when viewed as an innovative approach to weaving personal stories against the tapestry of history, told with taste and restraint, Cavalcade represents a noble effort to tell an epic story through the eyes of characters swept up in the events.

The Next Step for Digital Filmmaking

Independent filmmaking has gone through more radical changes in the past decade than it has in nearly the last century. The introduction of consumer digital video tools in the late 1990s, and the availability of non-linear editing systems like Final Cut Express made it possible for amateur, DIY, and independent filmmakers of all stripes to have access to the same tools, and to the same level of quality and technical expectations that were previously the purview of the professional.

In 1999, the New York Times published an article by Rick Layman titled "New Digital Cameras Poised to Jolt World of Filmmaking" (Rick Layman, The New York Times, 11/19/99). In the piece, Layman describes the technology being used by filmmaker Mike Figgis during the filming of his landmark film TIME CODE, which combined four separate, 90-minute takes into a single film. In addition to discussing how the coming changes in technology would affect established filmmakers, the article also discusses how - more importantly - the new digital tools could revolutionize the world of independent filmmaking, not just in the production stage, but also in terms of direct digital distribution to theaters. Where the article makes it most pressing point, however, is that the attraction of these tools for independent filmmakers is not just technological, but also artistic.

This article conveys the excitement over the sense of newness resulting from emerging digital technologies that, for a brief moment, looked as though they would usher in a wave of new opportunities for independent filmmakers to produce and distribute their work.

The excitement over the possibilities of digital filmmaking loomed large over the independent filmmaking world during much of the first half of the 2000s. Nearly 15 years later, however, the excitement has dissipated. Digital cinema has seemed to fail to live up to its potential. Discussions about its possibilities abounded but now seem rather quaint. The New York Times article refers to a hypothetical scenario proposed by Mike Figgis, in which he speculates that if he were a "young filmmaker in Ohio or someplace", he could make a film like TIME CODE with on location with his friends as crew, and that the whole thing could be shot for around $100,000.

Figgis' comments are intriguingly prescient in terms of one of the misinterpretations about the possibilities presented by digital filmmaking that were at least partly responsible for its current transformation into a more expensive and unwieldy proposition that has once again become the purview of professionals.

A real turning point in understanding this transformation occurred in 2005-2006, with the emergence of YouTube, which ushered in its own era of user-generated streaming video content. Because YouTube allowed registered users to upload video content to its servers free of charge, the site quickly became overrun with an overwhelming amount of media, with over 100 hours of video being uploaded per minute according to their website. YouTube initially seemed like the final step in democratizing film. If MiniDV and affordable cameras, NLE systems and DVD authoring software had made production more feasible, then YouTube made it possible for the filmmaker to upload his or her work to distribute to a potentially worldwide audience.

Instead, YouTube proved to be the wedge that split and divided digital filmmaking permanently. Because distribution of digital films had still been previously limited to festivals or other curated viewing experiences, that became the mark of seriousness. In other words, even though the digital filmmaker might be using equipment that could be purchased at the local Best Buy or Office Max, he or she still enjoyed a certain level of professional affirmation through the film festivals or other exhibition channels that vindicated these films by mimicking the traditional modes of commercial film distribution.

YouTube instantly blew away the traditional models and instead made it possible for quite literally anyone with a camera, a computer, and an Internet connection to get their work shown to a potentially larger audience than had ever been previously possible. Thus the split between the "professional" amateur and the "amateur" amateur. It was only in hindsight, particularly as YouTube moved toward increasingly commercial and sponsored content and away from being primarily a home for user-generated content, that the possibilities promised by the emergence of digital tools a decade earlier began to resemble a lost opportunity.

To return to an earlier point regarding Mike Figgis' comments about the hypothetical "young filmmaker in Ohio", it is useful to look at the exact wording of his quote in order to understand how one of the biggest misconceptions and, eventually, disappointments surrounding the potential of digital cinema came to be. At first, his statement appears to be suggesting that any kid in the Rust Belt could make a film like TIME CODE if only he had access to the tools. In the article, he says "If I were some young filmmaker in Ohio..." This is not splitting hairs. The difference being that Figgis, whether he was working in Hollywood or Ohio, has the ideas and vision in the services of which to employ digital tools. The big lie of digital filmmaking was that "anyone could be a filmmaker".

The absurdity of the statement is no different than suggesting that by giving someone a brush and a canvas, that they could paint the Mona Lisa, or that someone could write "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" just for being given a pen and paper. Both ideas are ludicrous. Why should it be that filmmaking, unlike other arts, is assumed to be not just attainable, but able to bemastered, even by those with no skill, training or - most importantly - ideas?

When filmmaking as an art form is impoverished and ghettoized by such attitudes, it is not surprising that eventually technology itself - and the vast amounts of money necessary to pay for it - became seen as the very mark of professionalism and seriousness. The tremendous upswing in the number of film schools and self-professed filmmakers demonstrates the degree to which people bought into this mindset. One result of that mindset has manifested itself in the slapped-together dreck passing as "camp" or "parody", or the inward-gazing "slice of life" pieces that demonstrate nothing so much as the filmmaker's lack of imagination in dealing with a world beyond their own limited experiences.

For a brief but glorious period there was an acceptance of the kind of expressive and personal work that could be produced using the tools available to the artist. Films shot on MiniDV, edited on home computers and burned onto DVD-R for viewing, could be taken seriously precisely because audiences and other filmmakers were interested in the possibilities of what could be produced when you removed the technological barriers that had long been the roadblock to filmmakers working outside large-scale commercial systems. The emphasis became focused on expression. Because of the low production costs, it also created a situation in which "making your money back" did not need to be the constant, overriding concern at the expense of everything else.

Fargo (1996)

FARGO, by Joel and Ethan Coen, is probably a "love it or hate it" kind of film, depending on your tolerance for dark comedy, but I definitely fall into the former camp.

It plays well as a straightforward thriller but also contains a strong undercurrent of jet-black humor that's never quite outright mean-spirited or completely unpleasant (even though it involves kidnapping, gruesome murders, and dismemberment in a wood chipper). Shot largely on location in North Dakota and Minnesota, Roger Deakins' cinematography captures the bleakness of the weather and the long flat expanses, which atmospherically reflects the state of the characters in the story.

The real standout performance is Frances McDormand as practical and tough policewoman Marge Gunderson, but William H. Macy (as the meek everyman in way over his head with kidnapping and loan fraud schemes), Harve Presnell (as his no-nonsense Midwestern business tycoon father-in-law) and especially Steve Buscemi (as a perpetually nervous and volatile hitman) all contribute fine turns in playing well-defined characters that they can really sink their teeth into.

Dark comedy is one of the most frequently mis-used labels when it comes to describing movies, and one of the toughest forms to pull off. FARGO pulls it off, and does so admirably well. It's certainly one of my favorite films of the past 20 years, and my favorite work by the Coens.

The Mikado (1939)

While the 1939 film of Gilbert & Sullivan's THE MIKADO is far from a faithful adaptation in terms of containing every song and scene from the show, it is certainly faithful to the spirit of the great 1885 operetta by one of the great teams in theater history.

THE MIKADO was my introduction to the work of Gilbert & Sullivan. I had first learned about this film years ago from my grandfather, who had seen it at the Little Theater in Baltimore when he was about the same age that I was at the time. He had never forgotten the stunning Technicolor photography and mentioned wanting to see the film again. I managed to find a copy on VHS at the time, and it has since become a favorite of mine as well.

Victor Schertzinger, a songwriter and filmmaker whose other directing credits include the first two Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "Road" pictures, does an admirable job in bringing the operetta to the screen. The film is photographed in Technicolor, imbuing the film with a gorgeous, pastel look. The casting of Kenny Baker, as Nanki-Poo, is a rather obvious concession to popular taste, but he acquits himself well in the role. The real stand-outs in the cast are the members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, especially Martyn Green as Ko-Ko and Sydney Granville as Pooh-Bah.

Most of the classic Gilbert & Sullivan songs are present, although the film does omit a good deal of the score in order to maintain a manageable running time. Perhaps the most regrettable excision is Ko-Ko's comic song "As Someday It May Happen", which was shot but deleted from the film prior to its release (thankfully it is included as a supplemental feature on the recent Blu-ray release from the Criterion Collection).

Schertzinger's film of THE MIKADO may not be great cinema, functioning instead as a kind of filmed theater.  But it is a valuable and vivid record of the incredible talent involved in the D'Oyly Carte company, capturing the performances of Martyn Green, Sydney Granville and others for posterity, and for that fact alone is a treasure. It also remains a fine and effective introduction to the work of Gilbert & Sullivan.

Book Review: Fritz Lang - The Nature of the Beast

Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast
by Patrick McGilligan
University of Minnesota Press


Fritz Lang produced one of the most-studied and celebrated bodies of work of any filmmaker, and yet he remains a largely enigmatic figure. After a highly successful career as one of the leading directors in Germany during the silent era, Lang eventually emigrated to the United States, where he directed numerous films in Hollywood and became one of the most internationally-recognized filmmakers in the business. Yet his personal life has remained largely shrouded in the mythology, often spread by Lang himself, that built up over his long career.

Patrick McGilligan’s Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (originally published by St. Martin's Griffin Press in 1997, and now available from the University of Minnesota Press) undertakes documenting Fritz Lang's life and work beyond the publicity and personal mythology. It is an exhaustively-researched, meticulously-detailed work. McGilligan gives us a comprehensive biography, covering each period of Lang’s life and work in extensive detail, and masterfully interweaving his research with quotes from those who knew and worked with Lang, to give us a stronger sense of how the filmmaker's life shaped his work.

Beginning with the director's early years in Vienna and Paris, McGilligan does an excellent job in shedding light on Lang’s formative experiences, including accounts of his military career as well as his training in the arts. Lang’s entry into motion pictures in Berlin, initially as a scenarist before turning to directing, is well-covered, with welcome descriptions of his earliest works that are now lost, and details about the two producers who did more than anyone else to facilitate Lang’s early film career – Erich Pommer and Joe May.

McGilligan spends a good deal of time in The Nature of the Beast exploring the mythology surrounding the director, particularly in two key incidents that have remained clouded by conflicting accounts of the events. The first involves the death of Lang's first wife Lisa Rosenthal, the cause of which was never fully determined. While it was ruled a suicide, following her discovery of Lang’s affair with screenwriter Thea von Harbou (whom Lang later married), there persisted suggestions that Lang had played a role in her death. Interrogated by the police on the night of Rosenthal's death, Lang and von Harbou insisted it had been a suicide. It is here that McGilligan makes some of his more controversial connections of this incident with Lang's filmography, citing the recurring suicides and slayings in the films - from Brunhild's suicide in Die Nibelungen all the way through the burlesque dancer's murder in his final American film, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt - to suggest that, even though these kinds of plot devices had been present in Lang's work almost since the beginning, they took on a much greater deal of significance after the death of Lisa Rosenthal.

The second incident occurs in 1933. Lang claimed that he had been summoned by Joseph Goebbels for a meeting, in which Goebbels offered him a position as head of the German film industry. According to Lang's account, he quickly fled the country, although there are conflicting accounts of the story and doubts expressed over certain details by numerous sources. What is certain is that during this time his marriage to Thea von Harbou dissolved. With her allegiance to the Nazis, and Lang's own Jewish ancestry, the marriage came to an end in 1933 as Lang prepared to leave Germany.

These events lead in to Lang's departure from Germany, to his brief stay in Paris, and to his eventual arrival in Hollywood. McGilligan gives us a revealing portrait of Lang's struggle to fit in with the structured and producer-centered model of the Hollywood studio system. He developed several ideas for projects before directing his first American film, Fury, for MGM in 1936, and quickly ran in to opposition for some of his more controversial ideas for the script. Lang also struggled to fit in with the colony of other Jewish actors and artists who had fled Germany following the rise of Nazism. Lang's relative comfort stemming from his prestigious reputation in the German cinema, as well as rumors about the death of his first wife and conflicting stories of his meeting with Goebbels, did nothing to endear him to his fellow expatriates.

McGilligan covers Lang's years in Hollywood through accounts of his professional struggles within the studio hierarchy, and providing solid accounts of the often complex production histories of Lang's films from this period. He paints a portrait of a singular artist who never quite adapted to the studio system, as evidenced by the recollections of Lang's collaborators during this time. One of the critical moments in Lang's later career came during the height of the Blacklist in the early 1950s, when he was forced to distance himself from his left-leaning political positions in a similar way that he'd had to distance himself from his associations with Nazism after leaving Germany, another struggle against changing political tides.

Such incidents are consistent with McGilligan's portrait of Lang as an outsider, someone eternally in the process of adapting to his environment and re-writing his own personal history in order to do so. McGilligan's accounts of pivotal moments in Lang's life reflect the approach he has taken with his book, exploring the facts beyond the personal and professional stories that have built up over the years (and have taken on seemingly mythic proportions) to get at a better understanding of the man behind the mythology. Whether or not the reader agrees with the conclusions that McGilligan draws, the book is a meticulous work of research that does an admirable job in presenting the biography of its highly complex and often contradictory subject.

Chaplin at Essanay - Part III

A Jitney Elopement
With Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Leo White.
Another Essanay that feels like it could have been made at Keystone, except this one demonstrates the more methodical pacing that Chaplin was able to pursue at Essanay. The premise is one of Chaplin's favorite: it involves him impersonating a count in order to marry the girl he loves.

The "bogus count" routine has its roots in Chaplin's work in his Keystone short Caught in a Cabaret, and also figures in plot descriptions of the now-lost Her Friend the Bandit. It was a theme he would return to at Mutual, with The Count, and would even include variations on it in later films such as The Idle Class (where Charlie the tramp infiltrates a swanky costume party by trading on his resemblance to the wealthy host), City Lights (posing as a millionaire for the blind girl), The Great Dictator (the Jewish Barber masquerades as Adenoid Hynkel in the final sequence to deliver a message of hope to the nations of the world), and certainly Monsieur Verdoux, in which the title character is a virtual chameleon, marrying then murdering women for their money.

As usual with this premise in Chaplin's work, the fun comes from watching how he interacts with his hosts. Like a fish out of water, the fastidious yet crude tramp struggles with the finer social graces. At the dinner table, he sprinkles so much pepper on his food that he gives Edna and  her father sneezing fits. The dinner table sequence is also a fine example of Chaplin's evolving directing style: by keeping all three figures in the frame, he allows the sequence to play out in an extended take with minimal editing, allowing the material to build and being able to control the timing within the shot through the performances.

The charade falls apart when the real count (Leo White in full form) shows up. A chase ensues, with Charlie whisking Edna away in his "jitney". The chase is well-staged, utilizing strategic undercranking for maximum effect, and one of the rare examples from his post-Keystone work of Chaplin ending a film with such a sequence. The action is fairly standard breakneck stuff, but the way in which it is shot offers an interesting alternative to the Keystone method, employing fewer shots as the cars circle eachother before the car containing Edna's father and the real count plunges off a pier.

There is also one of the stunning visual moments in the chase -- the Murphy Windmill (on the corner of Lincoln Ave. and Great Highway, according to Film in America). Critics frequently carp about Chaplin's drab visuals in his films, but he had a great eye for finding poetic beauty in seemingly ordinary locations. The windmill is certainly striking on its own of course, and it was an inspired choice to use it as the backdrop to this otherwise routine ending to a slapstick comedy.

A Jitney Elopement may not be one of Chaplin's best Essanays, but it allowed him to explore one of his favorite themes and offers solid examples of his mature filmmaking style, which would come into full bloom in his next film.

Chaplin at Essanay - Part II

The Champion
With Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Bud Jamison, Leo White, Lloyd Bacon.
The Champion opens with one of those little scenes that Chaplin did so well, and that made him such an audience favorite: sitting on a stoop with a little bulldog, he prepares a sausage for his meager lunch, but offers some to the dog, who sniffs at it but turns it down. A simple bit, and totally unrelated to anything else in the film, but it's a charming and cute bit of business that immediately establishes Charlie as an underdog.

Noticing a sign advertising for sparring partners against champion pugilist Spike Dugan, Charlie takes up the challenge. Slipping a horseshoe inside his glove, he knocks out the champion, and the trainer puts the new star fighter on the fast track to prepare for an upcoming prizefight against champion boxer Bob Uppercut.

Chaplin has a lot of fun playing with the props in the gymnasium setting, swinging around a pair of Indian clubs, playing with an outsize barbell, and jumping rope. He also finds time to flirt with the trainer's pretty daughter, and sabotages a briber, offering him cash to throw the fight, by soaking him in the showers. The big fight contains some well-choreographed comic sparring, but it can't help feeling like a warm-up for the intricate and brilliant boxing ballet in the much later City Lights.

The Champion is a good example of Chaplin's ability to get lots of comic mileage out of a single setting. The scenes in the training facilities show off his ability to find the comic potential in a variety of props. The playfulness of the film shows Chaplin establishing a special relationship with his audience. Perhaps the most charming moment in the film occurs in a shot which is repeated again at the very end. As Charlie and Edna playfully kiss, they stop, look directly into the camera with a smile, as Charlie obscures their kissing by holding up a giant beer bottle. It's one of those little moments that some of Chaplin's critics would probably find overly-cute, winking at the audience to gain sympathy. But it's also a perfect example of the special qualities of Chaplin as a performer that made audiences around the world immediately identify with him.

In the Park
With Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Bud Jamison, Leo White.
A throwback to the "park" comedies so popular at Keystone, this one-reel effort is little more than a series of gags centered around the misunderstandings and altercations between different characters Charlie encounters while out for a day in the park. Often cited as a virtual remake of the earlier Keystone Twenty Minutes of Love, In the Park is overall an unremarkable effort and shows signs of the occasional lack of inspiration that must have resulted from the hectic production schedule of these early shorts. Some of the better moments include Charlie seated next to an amorous couple on a park bench and watching them like a lovesick puppy; his reactions to their exaggerated spooning providing some of the funniest moments in the film.

In the Park also shows how Edna Purviance, even in a relatively minor and uneventful part, brought such radiance to her roles. Her vivacious charm and playfulness perfectly matched Chaplin's character and it's easy to see how much her natural sense of humor became such an essential part of these comedies.

Chaplin at Essanay - Part I

A new series of essays on Charlie Chaplin's comedies made for the Essanay company during 1915-1916.

Beginning in 2010, I had begun re-visiting Chaplin's Keystone comedies and decided to write a series of short pieces on that formative period of his screen career. Following this, I decided to look at the comedies he made for Essanay in 1915-16, a tremendously important period in Chaplin's career. With the Essanay comedies, Chaplin found his filmmaking style and further developed the screen character which would become an international icon in 1915. Key works such as The Tramp looked forward to his later, mature classics in the masterful handling of comedy and pathos. During this time Chaplin also established his reliable stock company of players, including leading lady Edna Purviance, with whom he would continue to work in the coming years.

While there have already been countless volumes written on Chaplin's filmography (Charlie Chaplin by Theodore Huff and The Films of Charlie Chaplin by Gerald McDonald, Michael Conway and Mark Ricci being key sources), and books focusing on his work for Essanay (including Charlie Chaplin at Keystone and Essanay: Dawn of the Tramp by Ted Okuda, Chaplin at Essanay: A Film Artist in Transition, 1915-1916 by James L. Neibaur, and the article "Essanay - Chaplin Brand" by Jeffrey Vance, adapted from his book Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema), these essays are intended as continued examination and appreciation of this important part of Chaplin's filmmaking career.

A note on the sources: The copies of the films I viewed are the ones included on the DVD set pictured above: "Charlie Chaplin Short Comedy Classics: The Complete Restored Essanay & Mutual Collection" (Image Entertainment, 2003).

A note on the credits: Unless otherwise noted, all films were written and directed by Charlie Chaplin, produced by Jess Robbins, and photographed by Harry Ensign (the cinematographer of His New Job is unknown).


His New Job
With Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin, Charlotte Mineau, Leo White.
Chaplin’s first effort under his new Essanay contract was a throwback to the roughhouse business of his Keystone days. Appropriately enough, the “new job” of the title refers to Charlie becoming an actor at the “Lockstone Studio” (an obvious nod to his former boss). Charlie shows up for an audition, causing no end of frustration for the receptionist as he tries to make his way into the boss’s office. A new co-star is introduced when Ben Turpin shows up for an audition. Though Turpin reportedly disliked working with Chaplin, the two of them work well together and display a comic chemistry that would be better exploited in their following film together, A Night Out. Turpin was a highly talented comic, best known today for his trade-mark crossed eyes and brush mustache. At first, his brand of humor might seem mismatched for Chaplin’s comic universe, but his brash vulgarity makes for a good contrast with Chaplin’s dignified Tramp. In one such moment, Turpin crosses his leg, placing his shoe on Charlie’s knee, which Charlie reacts to with exaggerated disgust. A moment later, after a confrontation, Charlie retaliates by snatching Turpin’s cigarette out of his mouth and lighting it with a match struck on Turpin’s neck.

We then move into the production stages, where an historical drama is being shot. Charlie is hired as a prop man, and wreaks no end of havoc. He is then called in to replace an actor in the historical drama at the last moment. As the crew is setting up, Charlie gets into scrapes with newly-hired prop man Ben Turpin, including kicking him through the scenery and running a handsaw across his backside! There is some funny business with the props, too, including a sword that gets bent out of shape when Charlie whacks himself in the head with it. He then knocks over a pillar which lands on top of him, and before long, chaos ensues when a fight breaks out on the set.

Filmed at the Essanay facilities in Chicago, Illinois, the film is entirely stage-bound, lacking any of the natural outdoor locations regularly seen in the Keystone comedies. As a result, the film feels claustrophobic. Given its film studio setting, this is appropriate, but the contrast between the more freewheeling Keystones and the more structured approach at Essanay is evident. Chaplin was unhappy working at the Chicago studio, and also with some of the production practices there, such as the presence of a scenario department (headed by future columnist Louella Parsons), and having to run the dailies in negative form to save on expenses. Perhaps due to these production conditions, His New Job feels overwritten, suffering from too much plot, and not allowing Charlie as much time to develop bits of character business that the slower pace of the Essanay comedies would afford him in future projects. It’s not surprising, then, that for his next film, Chaplin would re-locate to Essanay’s West Coast studio in Niles, California, located near the San Francisco Bay area.

In Chaplin’s body of work, His New Job is a minor effort, re-visiting material that had already been played more effectively in Keystones such as A Film Johnny and The Masquerader. Chaplin would revisit this “behind the scenes” comedy a year later with the Mutual comedy Behind the Screen, and during his time at First National would begin work on the uncompleted How to Make Movies, a satirical look at the production process at the Chaplin studio which would remain unfinished. His New Job does provide an interesting glimpse of Essanay’s Chicago facility, and includes a couple of interesting camera moves on a dolly, all the more striking because these kinds of shots were so rare even in American dramas of the time, let alone comedies. Chaplin would later avoid this sort of camera movement for its own sake, though in this case, it’s tempting to read their use as a parody of the technique in such historical spectacles as Cabiria and Intolerance. A side note: two future stars make early appearances in this film as extras – Agnes Ayres and Gloria Swanson.


A Night Out
With Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin, Edna Purviance, Leo White, Bud Jamison.
If His New Job suffered from too much plot, A Night Out rectifies that problem with a simple two-act setup. The first of Chaplin’s Essanay comedies made in Niles, he is again paired with Ben Turpin, this time to even greater effect. The two play a pair of drunks out for a night on the town. The first part of the film is set in a posh nightclub, where Charlie and Ben run afoul of a French count (played by Leo White, who quickly became one of Chaplin’s most reliable character players). Their drunken behavior erupts into a battle with the count, and the two are eventually tossed out by the headwaiter (played by Bud Jamison, another important player in Chaplin’s stock company at Essanay). The scene brings to mind the nightclub routine in the later City Lights, with Charlie’s bad behavior so out of place in the upscale surroundings. A bit of business that Ben Turpin performs, in which he constantly begins to remove his jacket, ready to fight at the slightest provocation, also recalls Chaplin’s later performance in City Lights’ nightclub sequence. 

The second part of the film takes place in a hotel, which the two inebriates have checked in to for the night. By coincidence, the nightclub headwaiter and his wife are staying at the same hotel. When the wife pursues her runaway dog into Charlie’s room, her husband shows up, and the inevitable complications ensue. After this farcical turn, the film ends with the still-inebriated Charlie and Ben fighting it out in their hotel room.

In his very first scene in the film, Chaplin immediately establishes himself as fastidious yet undeniably brash, picking his teeth with his bamboo cane, then twirling the cane and snapping it into place, before walking out of the shot with his now-iconic shuffle. Chaplin also appears in a slight variation on his usual costume here, with rather more dapper and better-fitting attire, and also a lighter-colored bowler. He still precipitates the chaos, but always manages to somehow stay outside of it. Despite the rough slapstick, Chaplin still finds plenty of moments to engage in little bits of character business, such as brushing his teeth with the stem of a palm leaf at a fountain.

A Night Out marks a number of firsts in Chaplin’s filmography. In addition to being his first film made for Essanay in Niles, it is also the first to feature his long-time leading lady, Edna Purviance. Purviance had a natural charm and beauty, and conveyed a real sense of fun and humor, that perfectly complemented Chaplin’s screen persona. She would work with Chaplin until 1923, at which time he directed her in a dramatic role in A Woman of Paris. After making one more film, Purviance retired, although she remained on the Chaplin studio payroll until her death in 1958.

A Night Out also marks the end of Chaplin’s pairing with Ben Turpin. Although he would later appear in a bit part in The Champion, and in the extended four-reel version of Burlesque on Carmen, Turpin’s screen partnership with Chaplin was short-lived. Their comic by-play recalls Chaplin’s earlier pairing off with Roscoe Arbuckle in films like The Rounders. Turpin had been with Essanay almost since its beginning in Chicago, and would enjoy a long career in films that lasted until his death in 1940. His final appearance was a cameo as the plumber (“It looked alright to me!”) in Laurel and Hardy’s Saps at Sea, and his distinctive look, with his shock of unruly hair, crossed eyes, and brush mustache, would become an iconic emblem of silent comedy. A fitting tribute to his legacy came in 1949 when his photo would make the cover of LIFE Magazine in illustration of James Agee’s seminal appreciation of silent film comedy, “Comedy’s Greatest Era”.

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.