The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr. (1996)

This 1996 documentary remains perhaps the most thorough look at the man who came to earn the reputation as the "worst director of all time". It focuses a great deal on his failures, which is also a big part of the problem I have with it.

The film consists of interviews with a number of Wood's friends and collaborators, beginning with Crawford John Thomas. Thomas and Wood set up a commercial production company in Hollywood in 1947, the year they both arrived there. Interviews with Thomas lead in to some rare behind the scenes footage of Wood directing a 16mm Western short with future collaborator Conrad Brooks, who produced the short film with his brother to serve as an acting demo reel. The footage shows Wood, impeccably dressed in a sports coat with his Errol Flynn mustache, enthusiastically directing the scene.

We next see outtakes from an unfinished early short, "Crossroads of Laredo", which Wood produced in 1948, ostensibly to sell to television, although it's hard to imagine the film, which essentially amounts to a home movie, being shown on TV at all.

The major Wood films are addressed individually, with comments from a whole host of collaborators, including makeup man Harry Thomas, actors Conrad Brooks, Lyle Talbot, Paul Marco and Gregory Walcott, even Rev. Lynn Lemon (who produced "Plan 9 From Outer Space". There are also comments from Vampira, one of the key members of Wood's cinematic entourage, as well as actresses Dolores Fuller and Loretta King. Bela Lugosi Jr. has very little positive to say about his father's work with Wood, whom he sees as a "user and a loser". This may seem rather harsh, since by most accounts Wood and Lugosi shared a deep friendship, and Wood did provide Lugosi with work, even if it was below the standards of his best work.

The problem I have with the documentary is that it focuses too much on Wood's failures. While his career in the movie business could hardly be labeled "successful" by any conventional definition, the simple fact is that Wood succeeded where so many have failed; namely, in actually making his films.

I'd like to see a serious, non-ironic study of Wood's contribution to independent filmmaking. Not that I would encourage some sort of postmodern view that elevates Wood to "auteur" status on the basis of effort alone, mind. However, as has been pointed out, Wood made very well have been the first horror/science fiction filmmaker who actively loved the earlier serials and B-movies of his youth, and who sought to recreate some of their spirit and energy. Considering that his films still hold up as entertaining more than half a century after their creation, I think it's fair to say that he succeeded in terms of entertainment value, even if the production values and technical craftsmanship are genuinely subpar. It should be noted, though, that when given a half-decent budget, as he was with 1955's "Bride of the Monster", the results are actually quite good. "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is justifiably recognized as a poorly-crafted piece of filmmaking, but one has to consider the extreme difficulties Wood faced in just getting it finished at all. And there's still no denying that Wood populated his films with memorable characters that are rather unlike anything else in Hollywood cinema of the time.

The documentary does skirt over Wood's final years, jumping from the completion of "Plan 9" to his death in 1978 in a superficially brief amount of time. Granted, the details of Wood's final years are not necessarily the kind that one would want to dwell on in a biography, but he did produce a prolific amount of work in that period which should not be ignored.

This documentary can be purchased as part of the "Ed Wood Box", a DVD set which features his major films (plus a recently-restored film "Night of the Ghouls", which Wood completed in 1959 just after shooting "Plan 9", but which he was unable to release as he never had sufficient funds to have the negative developed. The film was restored in 1983 by Wade Williams.)

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

Robert Altman was a filmmaker who never seemed to feel the need to keep "in fashion" the way other directors have. Beginning with his real breakout film, "MASH", he developed a very personal approach to filmmaking with emphasis on character and dialog that was perfectly suited to certain films ("Nashville", perhaps his supreme masterpiece), but other times seemed wrong for the material ("Popeye").

Altman's final film is a wonderfully dreamy film that depicts a highly theatrical world; in this case, the backstage of the "Prairie Home Companion" radio show. Stylistically, the film belongs to Altman, although it's cheery yet dry humor is pure Garrison Keillor. Keillor holds court with his performers, acting as a kind of master of ceremonies for a variety of acts, mostly country-western types (recalling "Nashville"). The performers are all standouts: Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin as a sister country-western act, Lindsay Lohan as their daughter, Kevin Kline in a wonderfully comical turn as detective Guy Noir, L.Q. Jones as Chuck Akers, an aging country music singer, and perhaps the biggest standouts, John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson as a comic cowboy duo, whose "Bad Jokes" number provides the best laughs in the film.

Most interesting is Garrison Keillor playing himself, an inveterate weaver of tall-tales and interesting characters, and facing his responsibilities as host with a wonderfully deadpan sense of humor and calm. Keillor is a living legend, and this film (from his own script) stands as a real testament to his unique brand of humor that stems from a long tradition going back to Twain.

Altman died just shortly after completing the film. Like Stanley Kubrick, who died just weeks after completing his final film, "A Prairie Home Companion" is also a kind of tribute to the show business world in which Altman spent his career working. In one scene in which the new owner (Tommy Lee Jones) of the show's theater arrives to survey his new property, he comments that the whole thing seems like something out of the past, a point also made in the opening narration by Kline's Guy Noir. There is also a wonderfully supernatural element to the film that seems particularly resonant given Altman's passing shortly after the film was released.

"A Prairie Home Companion" is a film both of an earlier time, and ahead of its time. It stands as one of Altman's finest and most personal works, and a wonderful record of the uniquely American humor of Garrison Keillor.

Scorsese's First Feature: Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967)

Scorsese's debut feature, Who's That Knocking at my Door has an interestingly checkered history which may account for moments of unevenness in an otherwise intriguing and personal film.

According to various sources, the film began life in 1965 as a student short by Scorsese at NYU, about J.R. (Harvey Keitel) and his friends. This was then combined with the plot between J.R. and the Girl that became a feature in 1967, then titled I Call First. Finally, in 1970, an independent distributor agreed to pick the movie up if Scorsese shot some sex scenes to be edited into the film.

As it is, the film has much to offer. The clear influence here is John Cassavetes. In fact, there are moments that the film feels so much like a Cassavetes picture that it's almost hard to tell them apart stylistically. Scorsese lets his actors improvise long scenes of dialog, which doesn't always work well. As in Cassavetes' work, the improvised dialog all too often comes across as awkward, unnatural, and even occasionally embarrassing. There is also simply too much talk-the scene where the guys go hiking in the woods, for instance, could have played much more effectively without the dialog.

The moments that stand out are the scenes with Keitel and Zena Bethune, both who achieve a good chemistry with oneanother. Their initial encounter is pure Scorsese, with Keitel extolling his praise of John Wayne, and of The Searchers in particular.

The film takes an interesting and dark turn when Keitel finds out that the girl has been raped, or so she claims. Torn with guilt, he must choose whether or not he can continue his relationship with her. What stands out in the film is Scorsese's clear embracing and exploration of his Catholic upbringing. At a time when so many Catholic film makers were exploring their faith on screen, Scorsese in particular stands out for his fascination with the Catholic iconography, beautifully photographing the inside of the St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The black and white cinematography, no doubt more a budgetary choice than an aesthetic one in this case, actually works to the film's advantage, and offers a few moments that are visually stunning, especially the scene on the deck of the ferry, with Keitel and Bethune cast in harsh, bright light from the lights on deck. As it is, though, the film is primarily carried through its dialog, and does not present as many of the visually distinct, stylistic flourishes that Scorsese developed in his proceeding films.

What ultimately makes the film of such interest is that it is an intensely personal work by a film maker who has always pursued a singular vision, even in his more "commercial" projects, and seamlessly weaves aspects of his own life, experiences and interests into a work that transcends its time and place.

Pilgrimage (1933)

The gem of the new "Ford at Fox" set is this 1933 melodrama filled with Ford's favorite themes. Profoundly sad, moving and sentimental, this film marks the beginning of Ford's mature style in the sound era.

The story involves a small town mother, Hannah Jessop, played to perfection by Henrietta Crossman in the role of a lifetime. Norman Foster turns in a surprisingly subtle performance as her son, Jim, who is engaged to be married to the daughter of a local drunk. When Hannah finds out about this, she signs Jim up for the draft, whereupon he is shipped off to war. During a brief layover in his home town, Jim learns that his fiancee is pregnant, but he is killed in France before being able to return home to marry her. The rest of the film deals with Hannah's coming to terms with her relationship with her son during a visit to France to visit his grave.

"Pilgrimage" has been referred to as a "women's picture", which might surprise casual viewers more familiar with Ford's macho stories of tradition in the face of battle. What is remarkable about the film is that Ford's direction keeps the story from ever becoming mawkish or overly sentimental, preferring instead to portray the strong and noble qualities of his characters. Hannah Jessop is a remarkably defined character, helped in no small part by the incredible performance of Henrietta Crossman (it is truly surprising that she didn't have more of a career in films). Ford steers clear of cloying, manipulative sentimentality by portraying Hannah as a flawed woman, driven to despair by her own sense of self-righteousness. In one scene, she expresses regret over hiding her selfishness under the guise of "Christian" values. Realizing that her stubbornness has cost her son his life, she shows her change of heart by helping out another young couple whom she meets in France, and whose situation resembles that of her own son and his fiancee.

To dismiss "Pilgrimage" as a "women's picture" is to deny the raw emotional intensity of what Ford accomplishes here. He puts his audience, as well as his characters, on an emotional rollercoaster by indulging in his penchant for rustic, "cornball" humor between the film's more heart-wrenching moments. The extended visit to France provides a good opportunity for some "small town folks in a strange land" type of humor, which is interesting in pitting the stereotypical rustic types against the "sophisticated" urban types. In doing so, Ford draws an interesting parallel between the clearly distinct types of films so popular during the period in which the film was made (directors like Ford and Capra tended to portray smaller, even rural environments, while Lubitsch, say, or Stevens, focused on an upper-middle to upper class urban milieu). It has the effect of giving the film a truly encompassing, human-epic feel. There is a particularly funny moment at a shooting gallery, in which Hannah surprises the onlookers with her sharpshooting skill. It ends with a ridiculous bit of corny humor that is so silly and good-natured that it's impossible not to laugh.

Stylistically, Ford plays with some of the classical conventions in which he was working. An unusual approach used early on in the film features the actors speaking directly into the camera, rather than looking slightly off-screen in the direction of the character to whom they're speaking. It seems to have been an effect that Ford abandoned, as it really doesn't turn up in his later work, or even in the later scenes of this film.

The cinematography, by George Schneiderman, is gorgeous, particularly in the rural scenes. Ford frames his actors in deep focus shots, allowing the backgrounds to sprawl out behind them for as far as the camera can see. There is one scene, in particular, where Norman Foster's character leaves his home at night to meet with his fiancee, that shows the influence of F.W. Murnau and of German Expressionism in general which had so affected Ford's style in the late 1920s. Indeed, the theme of the film resembles those he dealt with in his seminal 1928 work, "Four Sons".

Ford's theme of Catholic guilt is very heavy throughout the film. There is a scene in particular, in which the mayor of the town tries to convince Hannah to make the trip to France to pay tribute to her son, and to represent the town. He shames her into going, playing on her guilt, while in the next scene, as he is seeing her off on the train, tells her how "proud" the whole town is of her. There is a particularly painful scene in which Hannah tells the other mothers with whom she is traveling that she doesn't deserve to be there, as she feels so wracked with guilt over her son's actions. The theme of guilt runs heavily throughout the film, serving as a catalyst for several of the film's major plot turns. As usual with a Ford film, the characters develop organically from their environment, rather than serving as pawns in the plot. Several other Fordian elements are present, including the presence of a family dog which follows Hannah around in moments of distress, and which plays an important symbolic role in the final scene.

There is no denying that Ford had developed into a full-fledged artist with a distinct style during the 1920s. In the silent film medium, his masterworks such as "The Iron Horse", "3 Bad Men" and especially "Four Sons" stand as a testament to that. With the coming of sound, however, Ford-like so many other directors-had to take time to re-adjust and to develop his style within the new medium of the talking picture. With "Pilgrimage", he emerges fully formed, displaying the kind of breadth and scope of subject matter which has earned him the reputation as America's finest filmmaker.

"Pilgrimage" is available on DVD through the "Ford at Fox" collection, in a pristine restored print. The disc features an optional commentary track by Ford biographer Joseph McBride, and comes with my highest recommendation.

The First Films

Question: when was the first movie made?

Ask this question to ten different historians and you will receive ten different answers. For years it was fashionable to say that cinema was "born" on the night of December 28, 1895 in Paris, when the Lumieres held their famous first screening (in actuality, it wasn't even the Lumiere's first screening, let alone the first screening before an audience anywhere in the world).

Others will say that it was Edison, with films like "The Sneeze" and "Sandow", although of course Edison's own output goes back earlier than that.

Still some will make a case for one of the sadly neglected, often overlooked pioneers like Max Skladanowsky in Berlin, or William Friese-Greene in England, or France's Augustin Le Prince (who actually did succeed in capturing a few frames of motion as early as 1888, but never perfected playback of his device-despite persistent rumors to the contrary-and disappeared under mysterious circumstances before he could make any more progress).

Thanks to a joint effort between Kino on Video and the Museum of Modern Art, we can now get a little closer at looking at the beginning of film, at least from the Edison company.

The two earliest experiments on the set are called "Monkeyshines" (nos. 1 and 2). Dating from sometime in late 1889 or early 1890, the fragments (or what survives of them, at least), represent nothing so much as a series of very blurry still photographs.

The second film offers a slight improvement on the sharpness of the image, but is still a blur in terms of its movement.

These images were played back on a cylindrical device that could be cranked by hand. The images were run in front of a little viewer, creating the illusion of continuous movement-sort of a "live action" version of the Zoetrope. While these represent an important step toward the eventual development of the full blown movie, I feel that they are closer to the "series photography" of Eadweard Muybridge or Jules-Etienne Marey than they are to the moving picture that Edison and his chief developer, W.K.L. Dickson, would eventually arrive at.

An important development came in 1891, when Dickson completed the "Dickson Greeting" test, in which the inventor steps before the camera and removes his hat. This film has the distinction of being the first test shown to a larger audience. Edison's wife was a member of the Federation of Womens' Clubs, and Edison arranged a demonstration for the members at his Orange facility. The event was recorded in the news of the time.

Viewed today, the film is extremely brief when projected at its proper speed. The important step is that the movement appears entirely natural. The Kino DVD offers the opportunity to view the film in a "slow motion" playback to better appreciate the individual frames.

Two more of these early camera tests are included on the disc, "Newark Athlete" and "Men Boxing", both from 1891 and both demonstrating a "natural" movement upon playback, along with a photographic clarity, missing from the first tests.

With the invention of the Kinetograph, Edison and Dickson succeeded in perfecting playback of their films within the "peepshow" viewing format. Edison, of course, preferred the "single person" viewing option of the Kinetoscope as he thought it would increase revenue by charging admission to each individual viewer rather than screening it for an entire audience. At the time (1893), it was surely enough to have perfected not only the photographing but the playback of the moving image with such natural movement, such image clarity, and for such a sustained amount of time.

What's most interesting about Edison and Dickson's "Blacksmithing Scene" from 1893 is that Dickson chose to use costumed actors for his subject. The artifice of the medium is already apparent in the staged scene, with actors (most likely other technicians) dressed in blacksmith garb, and passing around a bottle of alcohol after finishing their work. (It's also worth noting in passing that another one of Dickson's technicians-maybe even Dickson himself!-is visible in silhouette, blocking part of the image by standing in front of the camera during the first half of the film, an error oddly overlooked in many accounts of the film).

By choosing to re-create a scene from the past, Dickson was already getting at the possibilities that moving pictures provided to stage fiction as well as record reality, and how often that line would be blurred over the years. Although it may not be apparent to viewers today, at the time people would have recognized the blacksmith scene as deliberately hearkening back to a "simpler time", especially in the allowance of alcohol in the workplace (which was already frowned upon by 1893). Dickson also draws a parallel between the simpler "industrial" workers of an earlier era, and the craftsmanship of his own team of inventors who developed and built the camera being used to film it.

Most importantly, Dickson had discovered the ease of shooting in a studio. Due to the incredible size of the early camera, it made sense. The "Black Maria", Edison's studio, provided an ideal means of shooting each film, as it could turn to face the sunlight, and even had a dressing room attached for the various celebrities who would
come to be photographed before Edison's camera. Dickson's preference for shooting in the studio was certainly echoed by whole generations of filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, who found the artifice and controlled conditions of filming on a stage to be preferable to working on location.

The "Blacksmithing Scene" was also notable for being displayed at the Brooklyn Institute of Technology in 1893, providing an important step up in the public awareness of motion picture development.

Examining these early tests provides an interesting glimpse into the development of the medium in its earliest days, and as is apparent by looking at the work of just one of the people developing the motion picture at that time, we can see why it's impossible to point to any one film as the "first".

Encounters at the End of the World

Werner Herzog must surely rank as one of the most ruggedly individualistic filmmakers working today, with a kind of adventurous, "pioneer" spirit that would have made John Ford or Raoul Walsh proud.

In the past, he has explored the most obscure regions of the world in films like Aguirre the Wrath of God, and more recently in Gizzly Man, in which he ventured in to the documentary format to examine the eventual breakdown and destruction of a man at the hands of an environment he did not fully understand.

Encounters at the End of the World takes the viewer to the unexplored vastness of Antarctica. Herzog looks at the individuals who choose to come there to explore. Many of them are Ph.D.s, musicians, philosophers and other unlikely types with a passion for adventure, exploration and knowledge. Herzog shows us the practical side of their experiences (training for white-outs by placing buckets over their heads, and quickly losing all sense of direction), drilling holes in the ice for diving (and explaining that a diver must be able to find his way back to the exit or risk being trapped under hundreds of miles of ice).

He makes the point that Antarctica is largely the final frontier among the continents. Somehow it seems very appropriate that Herzog would make this film. In the process of revealing the vastness and even danger of the environment, he also paints a very revealing picture of the individuals who choose to make such exploration possible in the first place.

Shadows (1959)

John Cassavetes must surely rank as one of the most influential filmmakers from any country, in any style or genre, of the last 50 years. His work is, in many ways, so influential that his influence is almost hardly noticeable, much in the same way the stylistic touches of Godard-so radical in their time-have almost come to be accepted as conventional.

However, like the films of Godard, it's impossible to watch a Cassavetes film and feel indifferent or blase about his incredible innovation and startling originality. I had the pleasure of watching the Criterion DVD of Cassavetes' "Shadows", a film so ahead of its time that it's almost difficult to conceive of what it must have looked like to audiences in 1959. The Criterion DVD uses a print restored by UCLA, and the care put into the restoration is detailed in a special restoration featurette included on the disc. The film is still rough, given its independent roots, but looks and sounds quite good all things considered.

It's the seminal film of the American Independent film movement, and departs from the experimental "underground" movement of the same period by weaving the technical and thematic innovations with a slightly more conventional approach (a feature length, narrative film). "Shadows" is a truly experimental film, however. It captures its setting-Manhattan circa 1957-with the same kind of "documentary" realism that Truffaut and Godard lensed the city of Paris through in their seminal New Wave films such as "The 400 Blows" or "Breathless". The jazz score, featuring incidental music by Charles Mingus, compliments the imagery perfectly, but also works well with Cassavetes' cinematic technique, which is almost jazz-like in its improvisation and deft style.

"Shadows" is, above all, an intensely personal film. As I mentioned earlier, it's impossible to watch it and not get caught up in the excitement of something new and original. It's easy to imagine younger viewers seeing the film and wondering what the "big deal" is; especially ironic considering how many younger filmmakers indirectly steal Cassavetes' techniques without even realizing where they come from. The film is technically rough, yes, but shooting it on 16mm, "guerilla style", as Cassavetes did, was the only way to achieve the kind of results he was after.

It remains one of the truly seminal films in the history of American cinema, and like his counterparts in Europe, Cassavetes remains a true innovator whose ideas will never grow stale, regardless of how many times they are imitated, copied or stolen.

Unnerving Cinema: Touch of Evil (1958)

Is there a more unnerving film that "Touch of Evil", Orson Welles' final Hollywood film from 1958? If there is, I haven't seen it.

I re-watched the 1998 reconstruction by Walter Murch last night on DVD, and I have to say it's one of the most tense, unnerving and unsettling experiences I've ever had while watching a film. From the very first shot, when a ticking time-bomb is placed in the trunk of a car, to that final confrontation between Vargas and Quinlan by the bridge, every second of the film had my stomach in knots.

I won't write about the film's various technical achievements here, nor its "place" in the film noir canon (I'll leave that for another time). Instead, I want to focus on just why the film is so successful in creating a sense of very real panic and dread. The scenes with Janet Leigh in the motel room, owned by the family who her husband (Charlton Heston) is currently prosecuting, are even more unsettling for me than the similar scenes of Janet Leight in another motel room in Hitchcock's "Psycho". Even Dennis Weaver manages to deliver a somehow more maniacal, frightening performance for me that Anthony Perkins in the Hitchcock film. It is a tribute to Welles' talent that, even without aiming for pure "horror", he delivers a situation just as frightening as anything out of a horror film.

The most unsettling aspect might be the film's theme of betrayal, in which no one is safe from the corrupt hand of the law, personified by Welles' gross, bloated Quinlan. The one honest officer (Heston) sees his life, and that of his new wife, torn to shreds within a day of his involvement in the investigation that has led to the conflict.

"Touch of Evil" has gotten a mixed response, but it may be a case of a film that was ahead of its time in 1958, along with other masterworks by real film artists, including Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and Ford's "The Searchers", both films that somewhat confused audiences at the time by their self-reflexive nature and their somewhat unconventional approach to then-common generic conventions. Welles delivers a film noir that is so self-reflexive, and so conversant in all the conventions and expectations of that genre (while subverting them at the same time), that it effectively put an end to the "classic" noir period (although I would argue that it had been coming for some time, especially with the hyper-noirish films of the 50s such as Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly"). Part of the film's unsettling nature may not come from the actual content at all, then, but from the assured mastery of Welles' technique in shattering our expectations of the genre.

Dracula Re-visted

Just in time for Halloween, I wanted to share my thoughts on Tod Browning's classic of Gothic horror, "Dracula", which I just picked up on DVD in a splendidly restored edition. Although I'm publishing this post in conjunction with Halloween, it's interesting to note that, in an ironic twist, "Dracula" was not released around Halloween at all, but rather on Valentine's Day.

I've always had mixed feelings about the Universal monster cycle of the 30s and 40s. While the films themselves contain an undeniable sense of atmosphere and often brilliant production design, the characters themselves seemed to devolve into self-parody very quickly, culminating with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" in 1948 (which, far from being seen as a parody, many enthusiasts seem to embrace as part of the horror cycle!)

"Dracula" works for me on a number of levels. Purely at a level of design, it's one of the most remarkable evocations of Gothic horror ever put on screen. In particular, a scene where Renfield (Dwight Frye) enters the main hall of Castle Dracula is such an overwhelming set (achieved with the aide of matte work) that it staggers the imagination once you begin to examine its apparent scale.

As with many early talkies, "Dracula" really benefits from its star performance of Bela Lugosi as the Count. Lugosi's skill in transforming himself into a popular culture icon can never be overstated. With this one film, he became instantly recognizable with viewers all over the world, and with many today who haven't even seen the film itself. To fully appreciate what he does with his performance, one only need to compare it with that of Carlos Villarias in the Spanish version, produced simultaneously at Universal by a different crew shooting on the identical sets at night (more on that later). Villarias is almost comical in the role of the count, not because of any lack of skill on his part, but because Lugosi took what could have so easily been a campy or over-the-top role, and embodied it with a genuine sense of mysticism and dread. Villarias is the one major weak link in the film's Spanish counterpart.

The supporting cast is an odd mix of really standout performances, and strangely ineffective ones. Dwight Frye, a Broadway actor who came to Hollywood to make this film, gives as equally memorable a performance as Lugosi, completely personifying sheer lunacy. Edward Van Sloan is also perfectly cast as Van Helsing. There is something perhaps indescribable about his performance that feels very "modern". It's perhaps no surprise that Frye and Sloan also appeared in "Frankenstein" later that year, not unlike Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre appearing in "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca" back-to-back, almost like a team. On the other hand, the performance of Helen Chandler as Mina lacks the color of Lupita Tovar's role in the Spanish version, while David Manners makes for an extremely bland leading man (Manners later confessed that he and Chandler never took the project seriously, and often had to hold back laughter during the shooting). It's perhaps ashame that a more serious actor wasn't chosen for the part, as such an unprofessional attitude did nothing to help the film.

A real point of contention in recent years has been the awkward staging of some shots. The first part of the film, set in Transylvania, is as perfectly eerie as anything ever put on film, while the rest of the film, borrowing heavily from the stage play, feels very static and stage-bound in comparison. David Manners recalled that it was cinematographer Karl Freund, not Tod Browning, who directed all of his scenes. This is a highly controversial claim, as Browning was not only the sole credited director, but was responsible for getting this film off the ground. Indeed, it was Browning's "dream project", so it seems unlikely that after struggling for several years to bring it to the screen, he would have taken such a casual approach as to let the cinematographer direct. That said, there are a couple shots in the film involving the moving camera that are unmistakably Freund's. (Freund, best known as the cinematographer of such Expressionist classics as "The Last Laugh" and "Metropolis", soon turned to directing, with such films as Universal's "The Mummy" and MGM's "Mad Love", before ending his career as the cameraman for TV's "I Love Lucy".) In the DVD commentary, David Skal points out that in nearly all the bedroom scenes with the nightstand lamp, there is a piece of cardboard fixed to it. While Skal calls this an error (he claims that the cardboard was to block the light from the lamp during closeup shots), Steve Haberman, in an alternate commentary track, points out that it's not an error at all, but rather a custom of the time to help dull the amount of light coming from the lamp for someone choosing to sleep with the light on. In any event, it seems hard to fathom that this could have found its way into all the shots without someone noticing, so I'm inclined to agree with Haberman on this point.

The film's director, Tod Browning, was a master of the macabre and had developed a very unique style, combining dark, almost Expressionist lighting into his silent films, and focusing on themes of deformity and outsiders. In many ways, Dracula is Browning's ultimate "outsider". While he is able to ingratiate himself almost effortlessly with his charming demeanor and old-world charm, he remains forever a part of another world. Unlike the characters so frequently played by Lon Chaney in Browning's work, Dracula is not a deformed or crippled character, instead exuding an undeniable appeal that makes him all the more dangerous. Chaney, in fact, was the original choice for "Dracula", but died of cancer shortly before filming commenced.

The film was simultaneously shot by a second unit in a Spanish-language version for the foreign market, since dubbing was considered insufficient. Paul Kohner (previously head of production at Universal before being demoted when studio president Carl Laemmle gave that job to his son as a 21st birthday present) produced this version, directed by George Melford, a craftsman whose most famous work was probably "The Sheik", the film that launched Valentino into stardom back in 1921. Kohner and his crew studied Browning's rushes, shot during the day, and made whatever conceivable improvements they could think of when they went to do their shooting at night. The result is a more technically accomplished film than Browning's, but one that lacks the personal style that Browning brought to the project. It's still a remarkable achievement, especially considering that the production team on this Spanish version was distinctly "B-unit" when compared with the crew on Browning's version. The cinematographer was George Robinson, who later shot some of the Abbott and Costello vehicles at Universal, and he manages here to match some of the brilliant shots conceived by Karl Freund. This version is available for viewing on the special edition DVD.

It's interesting to compare the film with "Frankenstein", also released in 1931 as a kind of follow-up to the success of this film. The biggest difference lies in the directors of each film. Browning was a silent film director through-and-through, with little or no experience on coaching actors through dialog and line-readings. His style was entirely visual, and his use of symbolism to convey major points in the story is one of the most significant aspects of "Dracula", with its recurring religious imagery of wine, blood, the crucifix, and images of re-birth or resurrection. The film is a visual feast of Christian symbolism, which Browning uses at every opportunity to draw parallels between good and evil.

"Frankenstein", directed by James Whale, also features heavy religious symbolism in its premise of a scientist "playing God", but while Browning emphasized the visual symbolism, Whale's strength lay in his handling of dialog. While "Frankenstein" is also heavily influenced in its design of Expressionism (both films were designed by Charles D. Hall), Whale's extensive stage experience makes him far more adept staging dialog scenes, while his visuals (photographed by Arthur Edeson) lack Browning's deeper levels of meaning. Whale's famous use of canted angles in the laboratory scenes add to the sense of panic and hysteria, but fail to convey the kind of deeper meaning contained in many of Browning's compositions (Browning's decision to shoot the initial encounter between Dracula and Renfield is significant, in that it strays from the shooting script, which called for an elaborate crane shot, bringing Renfield and Dracula face to face for their dialog, instead choosing to keep Renfield at the bottom of the staircase, with Dracula towering above him at the top).

While James Whale was comfortable working in a variety of genres, he is perhaps best remembered for the slightly campy humor he brought to "The Bride of Frankenstein", which even better displays the difference between his approach and Browning's. Browning plays "Dracula" as straight horror, filled with an underlying sense of panic, dread, death and decay that is lacking from "Frankenstein". While Lugosi's Count Dracula is an unnervingly charming character on the outside, he is the personification of evil, while Karloff's Monster in "Frankenstein" is a far more sympathetic, tragic character buried underneath a hideous appearance.

It's no surprise, then, that viewers may be more comfortable with "Frankenstein". The pacing is far more brisk, and Whale's handling of dialog is more comfortable than Browning's. Too, the fact that "Frankenstein" was written for the screen gives it a more cinematic approach than the stage-bound sections of "Dracula". However, "Dracula" is the far more stylish film, and one that gets much closer to the pure horror. Much criticism has been leveled at the long stretches of silence on the film's soundtrack (composer Philip Glass went as far as to record a new score for the film). It's important to remember that the film industry had a moratorium on underscoring from late 1930 until 1932, due to the over-production of musicals in the first months of sound film. Aside from that, Browning's use of silence is extremely effective at contributing to the atmosphere, and to tamper with it as Glass did is inexcusable.

"Dracula" remains one of Browning's most accomplished works, and one of the finest expressions of Gothic horror on the screen. "Freaks" remains perhaps his most touching and insightful look at the theme of the "outsider", and "The Unknown" is probably his most accomplished film at a level of design and execution, but "Dracula" remains his most indelible mark on pop culture.

Seven Keys to Baldpate

There are certain stories that used to get made and re-made as films seemingly countless times throughout the years. "Charley's Aunt", "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch", and others seem to have been re-made nearly every decade throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Another such example is George M. Cohan's comic play, "Seven Keys to Baldpate", from a story by Earl Derr Biggers, which was filmed several times between 1917 and 1947, including a 1934 version with Gene Raymond. Jack Benny even appeared in a Lux Radio Theatre version.

The 1929 version of "Seven Keys to Baldpate" is a fun early talkie, this one starring Richard Dix as the writer who accepts a bet that he can finish his novel in 24 hours while spending a night in a remote lodging called Baldpate, belonging to his publisher. There are plenty of twists and turns, and colorful characters and even romantic interest, as the improbable events involving stolen money hidden in the vault lead to a plot so wild that the writer is able to finish his novel on time just based on the events he's experienced in the last 24 hours. There is, of course, a big twist to the end of the film that I won't reveal here.

Richard Dix gives a strong performance in this film, while the rest of the cast feels slightly underrehearsed. Granted, the whole thing is played rather tongue-in-cheekly, such as the moment when Dix, confronting a burglar with gun in hand, leaps over a handrail on the staircase when it would have been far simpler to simply step around it. Played in this slightly over-the-top, melodramatic style, the film is quite a lot of fun. The self-reflexive nature of the plot makes for some interesting touches as well, especially at the surprise finish.

The film was directed by Reginald Barker, one of the earliest pioneers whose credits include such important, early works as "The Italian" and "Civilization", co-directed with Thomas Ince. Barker allows his actors to carry the scenes. There is some interesting, atmospheric lighting touches in the cabin scenes, but for the most part, the film is shot and acted in a very straightforward fashion that serves as evidence of its stage roots. Dix shows here what a versatile leading man he could be. Indeed, while never quite an "A-list" star, he enjoyed a brief period of success in the late silent era and made the transition to sound quite well, culminating with his finest role, the lead in Wes Ruggles' "Cimarron".

This film, which was clearly popular enough to see previous filmings in 1917, 1925, and would reach the screen again in 1934 and 1947, remains an interesting pop culture phenomenon of its time.

This Gun For Hire

Film Noir is a term that gets tossed around so casually now that I hardly feel like delving into a description of another 1940s Hollywood crime drama for fear that I'll have to defend it as "noir" or "not noir" or some other similarly grey area in between.

I'm not sure if Paramount's "This Gun For Hire" is a noir, or an existentialist crime drama, but frankly, whatever it is, it's one of the most mold-shattering films of the era that I've seen.

The film is steeped in existential bleakness. It's hard to imagine a film like this coming out in 1942, when the US had just entered World War II and the studios were cranking out patriotic diversions like "This is the Army" and "Stage Door Canteen". Evidently, the film was already in production when the US entered the war, and as a result, there is some of the "do it for your country" type of propaganda found in other darker, subversive films of the period, such as Hitchcock's "Saboteur".

What makes "This Gun for Hire" so totally unsettling is that it looks and feels like a film of its time, with its somewhat flatter lighting and rather ordinary interior sets (lacking the kind of high stylization that directors like Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak and Anthony Mann would bring to the noir picture later in the decade). In this very ordinary environment, however, there is a real nightmarish quality, mainly thanks to the brilliant portrayal of the hired killer, Raven, played by Alan Ladd.

Ladd, like the settings of the film, is disconcerting in that, on the surface, he looks like a handsome, good guy, but I can't think of any other film made before this one in which the protagonist is so thoroughly ruthless and cold-blooded in killing anyone who gets in his way. There are some interesting character touches, too, as when the maid swats away Ladd's beloved cat, and he responds by smacking and generally roughing her up. His portrayal brings to mind the kind of unbalanced, "ticking time bomb" element that Robert DeNiro used so effectively in "Taxi Driver".

The set-up involves the Killer, Raven, getting double-crossed by a client (Laird Creger). Raven has to set out to clear his own name, and gets involved with a girl (Veronica Lake) who can help him clear his name, despite her being engaged to a bland cop (Robert Preston) who's out to bring Raven down. If the plot description sounds simple, be aware that it shatters every previously-held convention of how the "good guy" is supposed to act. We're literally rooting for a ruthless killer who feels no remorse about killing for money, or even mere convenience.

The film lacks the kind of stylistic flourishes that Wilder, Siodmak, Tourneur, Mann, even Huston, brought to their crime dramas. In fact, the film was directed by Frank Tuttle, very much a routine director for Paramount with work going back to the silent era. How much of the film's attitude can be attributed to Tuttle is hard to say, but in any case he did a magnificent job directing the film.

"This Gun for Hire" remains one of the most unflinching, uncompromising and ruthless films of the era right before the golden age of film noir.

The Joys of B-Movies

The past couple of nights, I've been watching some of my "guilty pleasure" films-Hollywood B Mysteries. I love all of them. Lone Wolf, Boston Blackie, The Falcon, The Saint, The Crime Doctor, Philo Vance, Charlie Chan...the list goes on.

The past couple nights, though, I watched the Warren William "Perry Mason" films, produced by Warners in the mid-30s, which are a delight in their apparent simplicity, tight plotting, fun performances, and crisp dialogue. On the surface, these B-films (programmers would be a more fitting word, I think, as these films do not contain the kind of cheap production values that are often associated with the term "B-movie") are the very definition of slick, streamlined simplicity. But looking closer, I was taken with the level of cinematic sophistication apparent in each one of them. "The Case of the Howling Dog", from 1935, features incredibly well-executed camera moves. The interesting thing is that the camera moves do not seem terribly logical to the style of the filmmaking, but rather seem to exist to keep audiences "moving forward" in the plot. Each establishing shot of the different attorneys is opened with an elaborate pan up and pull back. It's the kind of camera move that's easy to take for granted, maybe even to dismiss as "showy", but as any filmmaker who's attempted such a camera move in one of their own films can tell you, is incredibly difficult to pull off.

It's a testament to the invention and skill of the craftsmen who put these films together. Under the studio system, it's easy to see the beaurocratic rankings of producers, technicians and stars as the crassest kind of commercialization of an art form. But upon closer examination, one can't help-viewing these films more than 70 years later-the amount of skill and craftsmanship involved in even a little programmer like "The Case of the Howling Dog".

The Big Trail

Fox has finally gotten around to releasing on DVD one of their most important early titles in its original format-Raoul Walsh's "The Big Trail", shot in the 70mm Grandeur process.

This is true epic. Watching the action unfold on screen, one is overwhelmed by the amount of visual information Walsh fills almost every frame with. Even seemingly simple setups with two or three of the principals talking to eachother contains what appears to be dozens of extras, animals, props and expansive landscape unfolding in the background. It's not an exaggeration to say that the film could be watched twice in order to catch every piece of the visual detail Walsh provides.

The plot is somewhat standard among pre-"Stagecoach" westerns. That is, it deals with ideas like Manifest Destiny; the noble efforts to move westward and settle the land. Before John Ford really defined the Western in generic terms with "Stagecoach" in 1939, Westerns tended to fall into one of two categories: either they played out as pure entertainment-the early films of William S. Hart, for instance, and later Tom Mix-or they were the cinematic equivalent of epic poetry, with beautifully composed long takes which the camera could linger on for as long as needed to convey the beauty and power of the landscape.

The silent era saw a rise in the epic films with a Western theme. The first, and most notable, was James Cruze's "The Covered Wagon", a film that was close to its director's heart, as his parents has been pioneers who traveled west with the wagon trains. The film set a new standard for scale, period accuracy (which, at the time, was hardly that far in the past), and most importantly, for the grand depiction of the landscape. John Ford made a follow-up film for Fox, "The Iron Horse", about the westward expansion of the transcontinental railroad. This magnificent epic provided a scale that was hard to match. Throughout the decade, the Western continued to thrive with films like "Tumbleweeds" by William S. Hart, dealing with the land rush.

The coming of sound posed some problems for the Western, as shooting outdoors was extremely difficult with the newfangled sound equipment. Raoul Walsh had shot one of the first outdoor talking Westerns, "In Old Arizona", in 1928. A little background information on Walsh is valuable in understanding how appropriate he was for this type of material. Born in 1887, Walsh worked a number of odd jobs before coming west to work in the cattle drives. Learning how to ride a horse, he got a job playing a Klansman in a stage production of Thomas Dixon's play "The Clansman", which would be filmed in 1914 by D.W. Griffith. Walsh worked on the film as well, both as an actor (he played John Wilkes Booth in the Ford Theatre sequence), and as assistant director. The same year that film was released, Walsh directed "Regeneration", a prototypical gangster film that gained him excellent notices. The 1910s and 20s were spent working in a variety of films, most notably directing "The Thief of Bagdad" for Douglas Fairbanks at United Artists, and "Sadie Thompson" with Gloria Swanson, which also featured the former actor Walsh in the leading role opposite Swanson.

1928 proved to be a pivotal year for Walsh. The coming of sound, and the fact that Walsh was working at a studio (Fox) that was pioneering the use of sound before most other studios, helped place him in the first rank of American filmmakers working in the sound medium. That year, he directed "In Old Arizona", a Western in which he also played the lead. This was cut short when, driving home from the location one night, a jackrabbit jumped through his car windshield. The shattered glass cost him an eye, and guaranteed the end of his acting career. (Irving Cummings finished direction of the film, now with Warner Baxter in the lead).

If Walsh's career as a leading man ended with "In Old Arizona", another leading man's career was born with "The Big Trail". A former propman, Marion Morrison adopted the screenname John Wayne for this, his first leading role. John Ford had recommended him for the part, and Walsh and the studio executives were willing to take a chance on him. In his first major role, Wayne carries himself very well. It's odd, watching the film today, to realize he'd spend the next eight years (and some forty films) in the lowest-grade Poverty Row westerns before Ford used him in "Stagecoach". Ford supposedly held a grudge against Wayne for making his starring debut in another director's film, but this seems a bit extreme. It is true, however, that Ford did not work with Wayne again until 1939, and that for whatever reason Wayne spent the interim period working in some of the lowest-grade productions imaginable.

"The Big Trail" has become something of a legendary film in the sense that it was a pioneering effort in widescreen cinematography. William Fox owned the patent on a process known as Grandeur, a 65mm precursor to CinemaScope, and employed it on this film. Due to the fact that entire theatres would have to be rebuilt to screen the widescreen version, Fox also insisted on shooting a standard Academy ratio version alongside the widescreen one. In addition to this already tremendous undertaking, three additional foreign language versions were also filmed simultaneously with different casts.

It has been said that Walsh used the wide screen more creatively here than most directors were in the 1950s, when CinemaScope became the standard. Incredibly, Walsh seems to have packed every frame with detail as far as the eye can see. This creates an incredible sense of "being there" amidst the action which is sorely lacking in the standard aspect ratio version.

The widescreen version has never been released on home video until now. It was apparently broadcast on AMC at some point in the 1990s, but the first DVD release contained just the standard version. The newest DVD release is a two-disc collection featuring both the standard version and the widescreen version. It is overall a gorgeous transfer, the only flaws being embedded in the film itself. Fox has provided some nice documentaries on the making of the film, as well as the careers of its director and star, and topping it off with a good commentary track by Richard Schickel.

Although the point is made in the documentaries, it's worth remembering that in 1930, many of the actors in the film had been around at the time of the pioneers' move westward. It was still quite recent history, and as a result, the film has an authenticity which can never again be matched. What's even more impressive is that the filmmakers were able to travel over such a variety of locations as were used in this film, and be able to film incredibly deep shots without picking up any signs of "modern" buildings. It would surely be impossible to make this film today, at least with the same variety of locations, as the landscape has surely been riddled with gas stations, fast food restaurants and other developments that would prevent it from being usable.

In so many ways, this film is an important historical document, not just of American cinema, but American history as well.

D.W. Griffith at Biograph

The first of my Deep Discount orders arrived the other day-the Griffith Biograph set from the "Masterworks" collection. Needless to say, I've been spending every free minute I have going through the films. I realize that this collection represents a kind of "best of" Griffith's work, but I still can't get past how inventively he was staging his shots even at this early point. I actually started with "The Adventures of Dollie" (presented as a bonus film as the quality of the short, mastered from the paper print, is evidently below Kino's usual standards). The depth and space that Griffith brings to the shots is really astounding to me. I know other filmmakers were doing similar things at the time, but I've simply not seen anything quite like it in other films of 1908. The framing allows for so much information within the shot, but not by lining the actors up in front of the camera, but rather by placing them in different spaces and distances in the shot. I also watched "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" so far, which I have been wanting to see for years. What struck me more than anything here was the illusion of documentary realism Griffith achieved. I've read that the film may not have even been shot in New York's Lower East Side after all, but rather in Fort Lee, New Jersey. If that's the case, it's all the more impressive what a convincing depiction Griffith manages to create here. His use of background extras was especially notable, each going about their business in the background in realistic spaces to create an utterly believable environment for the story to play out in.

"Underworld" with the Alloy Orchestra

I just got back from the annual silent film screening at the Maryland Film Festival, held at the Charles Theatre in Baltimore. This year's film was "Underworld", accompanied with an excellent score by the Alloy Orchestra.

Josef von Sternberg's career was launched, after one or two false starts, with the splendid gangster film, "Underworld", produced at Paramount Pictures in 1927. The film is the prototypical gangster film, spawning a whole series of pictures that would really flourish in the early years of the following decade, when the technological introduction of sound in film gave whole new possibilities to the genre.

Watching a silent gangster film such as this one, or Lewis Milestone's The Racket from the following year, it can be difficult to remember that at the time, audiences didn't have films like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy to compare it against. Those films so completely formed the gangster film, with the gangster-slang dialog, machine gun rattle and police sirens on the soundtrack. Watching Underworld, it's easy to imagine it as a sound film. In fact, this is a criticism of Sternberg's silent work in general that I've read in several different sources. Ironically, his sound films, especially The Scarlet Empress, had an amazingly fluid camera style and stylized design that link them with the best techniques of the silent era.

It's also a good example of how a completely routine story can be greatly enhanced by the style and visual flourishes of the director. There was one bit in particular that stood out to me. Just after the main gangster, Bull Weed (played by George Bancroft) has gone on a rampage, he holes up in his apartment, trying to decide what to do next, and as he is thinking, gently feeds a stray kitten some milk that has just been delivered. It's a seemingly minor touch, but is a great, subtle character moment in the middle of the film that allows the audience to feel sympathy for him.

The performances were quite good, particularly Clive Brook, who delivered an incredible performance in Cavalcade, one of my very favorite films. It was also a treat to see silent screen comedian Larry Semon in a rare, semi-dramatic supporting role.

There were moments of the film that really stood out as examples of silent film technique at its finest: the opening shot, of a clock reading "2:00 am" superimposed over a giant skyscraper and the camera moves during the scene in which the two gangsters confront eachother at the nightclub. There was also an interesting but brief montage of the various underworld characters gathered at the annual party, with the shots growing increasingly frantic and more chaotic.

The score was provided by the Alloy Orchestra, who always provide fine accompaniment to the silent films shown at the Maryland Film Festival, and this was no exception. The score really captured the energy of the film without being overpowering, and also captured the lighter moments quite well.

Last House on the Left

I am not normally a fan of the horror genre. My favorite works in the genre tend to come from the silent era, and from the filmmaking school of German Expressionism in particular. I admire the stylistic boldness of the Universal horror films that came out of Hollywood in the 1930s, and of course the atmospheric brilliance of the Val Lewton pictures.

Perhaps because I am so hard to please when it comes to horror films, I feel a certain heightened appreciation for those that do move me. George Romero's work, particularly "Night of the Living Dead", is one such film, as is Tobe Hooper's "Texas Chain Saw Massacre". While I hardly make a case for these films as much more than well-made entertainment, they at least hold up as that.

I recently sought out Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left", after hearing that it was inspired by one of my favorite films, "The Virgin Spring" by Ingmar Bergman. I found this fascinating, not just to see what a master of the horror genre such as Craven would do with the story, but also because it serves as a great reminder how in the early 70s, directors like Craven weren't ripping off Hollywood hits in an attempt to imitate what sold at the mall cinemas. Instead, they turned to the exciting work coming out of Europe, and applied it to uniquely American genres such as the slasher film (a term which, while it didn't exist at the time as a genre label, could certainly describe the early films of Craven, Hooper, etc.)

I didn't quite know what to expect, but I was quite affected by the horrific images in this film. The plot involves two girls on their way to a concert in Manhattan, and get kidnapped by a gang of truly vicious and sick killers. They torture, rape and murder the girls, and fleeing the scene of their crime, just happen to come across the home where the parents of one of the girls live. When the parents realize who their house guests are, they go about seeking the most brutal revenge possible.

What automatically struck me about the film was its grainy, documentary look. This adds tremendously to the sense of genuine panic which sets in quite early on in this film. There are numerous scenes that cross all boundaries of what one would expect to be the limit of graphic violence, even in a film like this. It's difficult to imagine a film even remotely like this being made today. Sure, there would be a few moments of gruesomeness like we see here, but it would contain nowhere near the sheer pervasiveness of grotesqueness through the entire film.

Like many independent films of this period, the filmmaking style is naturally quite rough. It's important to remember just how much money a film like this cost to make in 1972. With digital equipment, it would be quite easy, in the purely technical sense, today. But it was the vision of directors like Craven, Carpenter, Hooper, Romero and Cronenberg (in Canada) that led to huge strides made in genre throughout the next decade. The rough filmmaking technique works to the advantage of this film.

Interestingly, the film was financed by the distributor who needed a second feature to play with the more expensive "A" picture in Manhattan grindhouses. When you think of the opportunity that directors like Craven had to get their films made and distributed, it's really quite remarkable.

Re-Discovering Abel Gance

Few filmmakers can claim such innovation over such a short period of time as Abel Gance. Born to working class parents in Paris in 1889, he later shed his working class roots, marking himself as a true artist of the cinema. For many years, his filmography served only to tantalize film buffs, as so many of his titles are either lost or unavailable. Following the reconstruction of his 1927 masterpiece "Napoleon" in 1981, Gance returned to his position as one of the cinema's foremost innovators.

But what of his other films? Among his silent films, perhaps the two most well-known titles are "J'accuse", his 1919 pacifist epic, and "La Roue", a melodrama taking place in the trainyards. For many years it has been difficult to obtain copies of either of these films for viewing, and even then, only in poor prints that did not do justice to the original. Thanks to the restoration efforts of David Shepard, the films are now available on DVD in splendidly restored editions. These two films were shown on Turner Classic Movies on Sunday April 27th, 2008.

I will write separate reviews of the films as soon as I have the chance to see them.

The evening's lineup of films also included a 1968 documentary directed by Kevin Brownlow titled "The Charm of Dynamite", a fascinating look into Gance's career and the making of his films. It featured large amounts of behind-the-scenes footage taken on the set of his films, showing the elaborate camera operations that had to take place in order to achieve the distinct moving camera style that Gance perfected.

"La Roue" was a hugely innovative film in its time, causing Jean Cocteau to write "There is filmmaking before and after 'La Roue' just as there is painting before and after Picasso". It was clearly influential in its editing style, which the Soviets would borrow to develop their theories of montage. Akira Kurosawa claims he was inspired to go into filmmaking after seeing "La Roue".

Gance was a huge admirer of D.W. Griffith, and like Griffith, was an artist who was perhaps too big for the medium at that time. His ideas, the scope of his productions, practically seemed beyond the capabilities of the medium. He did, as Kevin Brownlow said, grab the infant medium by the hand and give it a breathless rush through life. It would be at least thirty years after "Napoleon" before the cinema had caught up with Gance's ideas from a purely technical standpoint.

The opportunity to see these two films is an excellent way to begin re-discovering the work of this master, and to examine more closely the films that display his genius.

The Unholy Three (1930)

Tod Browning was one of the most distinct directors of the late 1920s. Developing a specialty for crime dramas early on his directing career, he soon turned to a unique combination of the bizarre and the grotesque, the sordid and the spectacular, creating-with star Lon Chaney-some of the most delightfully weird films ever to come out of Hollywood. The film that really solidified the Browning-Chaney collaboration was a 1925 production from MGM, "The Unholy Three", which cast Chaney as Professor Echo, a ventriloquist who teams up with two fellow sideshow performers to form an unholy trio of criminals.

In 1930, MGM decided to remake the film as Chaney's first talkie, billing the "Man of 1000 Faces" as "The Man of 1000 Voices" in advertisements. The 1930 version is interesting on a number of levels. It provides us with the chance to see the same actor playing the same role a second time and in the new medium of talking pictures. It is remarkably faithful to the original film, and gives us the opportunity of watching a journeyman director like Jack Conway imitate the style of Tod Browning quite well. It's use of sound is quite creative for the time, and despite some moments of muddled recording, quite clear. The "shadow" of Tod Browning hangs over the project, as so much of the film, and certainly all of the distinct visual touches (such as showing the silhouettes of the "unholy three" while plotting their crime) come from his original film.

The film begins at a sideshow, where a barker is bringing audiences in to gawk at the variety of oddities and novelty acts. The audience for this show is overwhelmingly "bland" and "normal", compared to the bizarre gallery of performers they have come to watch. It is tempting to read into this scene, a direct carry-over from Browning's original, a bit of commentary on the kind of grotesque entertainment that Browning and Chaney provided, and the large numbers of viewers who lined up to watch it. Both versions are clearly fascinated with showing the sideshow performers-a tattooed lady, a fat woman, a fire eater, Siamese twins-perhaps giving the movie audience their "money's worth" on acts that could only be seen otherwise in dime museums or carnival fairgrounds. The sideshow scenes have a sleazy quality to them, a certain grim tone that makes this carnival seem like a frightening and unpleasant place. This was a staple of Browning's work, and of his original version of the film, which no doubt stemmed from his years working the sideshow circuit. Jack Conway does a good job of re-creating that atmosphere here.

Ivan Linow plays Hercules, the strong man, a role played by Victor McLaglen in the original. Linow is actually quite good in the role, and is perhaps does even more with the part than McLaglen did. The 1930 remake jettisons a cute bit during this scene from the 1925 original, in which a mother tells her son that if he doesn't smoke, he'll grow up to be strong just like Hercules. Later, just after Hercules has finished selling copies of his "self-help" book, he casually lights a cigarette.

Next, we are introduced to Chaney as Professor Echo. Chaney has a wonderful, relaxed presence in front of the camera here, apparently quite comfortable with handling dialog in his first talkie. He also has a pleasant voice that matches his screen presence well. Watching this film, it immediately becomes apparent that Chaney could have had quite a career in talkies, and it is a pity that he would be dead within the year. His performance here includes a delightfully strange act with his ventriloquist, who makes wisecracks and sings songs. Chaney "signs off" his act with "That's all there is to life, a little laugh, a little tear". Echo is also involved with Rosie O'Grady (played by Lila Lee, who is charming enough but lacks the presence that Mae Busch brought to the original role), a young woman who works as his partner in picking pockets in the audience during his act.

Finally, the audience is introduced to the third partner in crime, Tweedledee (played to perfection by Harry Earles from the original), a midget who is extremely sensitive to comments on his height. Presumably just to earn a living, he allows himself to be taunted and gawked at by the crowds, until he finally loses control and kicks a small boy in the face for heckling him. The boy's father rushes the stage, and a terrible brawl erupts, causing the sideshow to be shut down by order of the police.

Out of work, Echo teams up with Hercules and Tweedledee to form the "Unholy Three". Their plan is quite complicated: Echo will disguise himself as "Mrs. O'Grady", with Rosie as his "granddaughter", and sell birds in a rented pet shop. Hercules will become "Herman", their friend, and Tweedledee will become their "baby". Echo will throw his voice to convince potential buyers that the birds can talk. Of course, when customers bring them home and they say nothing, they call the pet shop demanding an explanation. "Mrs. O'Grady", along with the "baby", will come out to the house, ostensibly to check on the bird, but really to case the joint so they can plan a perfect robbery.

In the rented pet shop, they have taken on a salesman, Hector MacDonald (played quite well by Elliott Nugent, who also co-wrote this film and is superior to Matt Moore in the original). Hector is falling in love with Rosie, which creates great tension between her and Echo. Their robbery of the Arlington home ends in disaster, and raises the suspicion of a detective, Regan, who begins an investigation. There is a particularly memorable scene in which Regan comes to visit "Mrs. O'Grady" in her bird store, and almost discovers the stolen beads which Tweedledee has hidden inside his toy elephant. This scene is a fine example of how this story really works better as a talkie, because the sound effects convey so much of the suspense and the pending disaster.

From here, it is only a short time before things become more complicated, and their plans continue to spin out of control, ending in a trial that goes well except for one fatal mistake.

This 1930 film is remarkable in the fact that it manages to retain so many of the really strange, fantastic elements of its 1925 version without losing its power. It's the kind of story that would be very easy to do wrong, because it requires complete conviction on the part of the actors to maintain the genuinely suspenseful tone amid all the really bizarre and even improbable plot points. The scheme hatched by the trio, for instance, is impossibly complicated, but the film allows the viewer to get so drawn in to this bizarre world that it hardly matters.

Jack Conway was one of MGM's least distinct technicians, but his direction of this film shows that he was at least capable of imitating Browning's style. Browning himself was never the stylist that some of Chaney's other directors, such as Victor Sjostrom and Herbert Brenon, were. But he did develop a distinct visual look which gave his 1920s work a particularly effective atmosphere. Conway manages to capture that here.

By the end of 1930, Chaney would be dead from throat cancer, a tragic end to a brilliant career. In this, his final film, he delivers a powerful performance, making the most out of his character and transforming Echo from a caricature to a real character. The film is a testament to his professionalism and his love for his art.

The Wrong Man (1957)

In Alfred Hitchcock's body of work, his films tend to be thought of in four or five major "sections": his early British period, including his silent films; his "Golden Hollywood" period of the early- to mid-40s; his "post-war" period, beginning with "Spellbound" at Selznick, covering all of his independently produced films, and ending with the dark, profound "I Confess"; his "golden age" of "Rear Window" through "Pyscho" and "The Birds"; and finally, his "later years", featuring such films as "Topaz" and "Frenzy".

One film that somewhat stands out among his films of his "golden age" of the 50s is this 1957 drama based on a real incident of a man falsely identified as a stick-up man, and his efforts to extricate himself from inevitable conviction at the hands of mistaken witnesses.

What makes the film unique is that, by 1957, Hitchcock had become very comfortable working within his style, so much so that by 1959 he was able to make what essentially amounted to self-parody in "North by Northwest". His TV show had been on the air for two years by this time, and it must have seemed to everyone that the Hitchcock formula was already well set.

It came as a surprise, then, when Hitchcock made a stark, black and white film that owes much to Italian NeoRealism as well as the films of Jules Dassin, Sam Fuller, and other younger filmmakers who had emerged after the war. Hitchcock chose as his leading man Henry Fonda. Unlike his two other favorite leading men, Cary Grant and James Stewart, Fonda was quite capable of stepping outside of a "public image" and getting closer to the root of the character he was playing. Here, he is the model of solemn, silent dignity as he is put through every conceivable indignity while being questioned and investigated by the police.

The film makes brilliant use of its New York City location photography. There are some scenes taken in the subway that are particularly effective. Hitchcock had used New York as a location before, and would use it again, but never with quite the same "realist" style as he does here.

"The Wrong Man" is the odd Hitchcock film that can't quite be compared to any of his other work. Aside from the theme of the film, which of course defines Hitchcock's favorite plot device, there is little in the film that screams "Hitchcock". There is, as in many films of the era, an interesting exposing of the "dark side" of American family life. It's apparent that, especially for many artists, post-war American life was portrayed as just a little too good, just a little too perfect, and filmmakers like Hitchcock, Lang, Wilder, and others delighted in poking holes in that mythology.

The film is an interesting testament to the willingness of Hitchcock to step outside his cinematic "comfort zone" and experiment with new, emerging film styles in cinematography, acting and storytelling. As has been pointed out, the public stayed away from the picture, probably because Hitchcock's name guaranteed light, fun entertainment. Some have even suggested that the film would have been more highly regarded if directed by someone like a Frankenheimer or a Lumet. I would tend to agree with Andrew Sarris' assessment of the film as one of the greatest American films of the 1950s.

Suspicion and the British Style

Alfred Hitchcock can be a difficult director to write about, because his name, themes and favorite obsessions are always larger than the individual films that make up his body of work. As with any large body of work, there are stronger and weaker works. "Suspicion", a 1941 suspense thriller starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, is a film that is easy to classify in that latter category. But, despite it's flaws, I would rank it closer to the former.

The plot revolves around a charming cad, Johnny, played by Cary Grant. He ends up getting married to young and innocent Joan Fontaine, but soon, mysterious things begin happening that give her a very bad feeling about him. Soon, she even becomes convinced that he is plotting to murder her for her inheritance, which she has ended up forfeiting as her father doesn't approve of Johnny.

What is remarkable about the film is not the plot, nor the performances, but the sheer style that Hitchcock brings to every frame. He was still working very much in what I see as his "British" style. There is a calm, almost lyrical pace to the film even in its more intense moments. He is still using his performers more as "types" than as real characters, which seemed to be the traditional approach in his British work. We see the remnants of his "British" stylistic sensibility in a number of his early films, certainly "Rebecca", most clearly in "Foreign Correspondent", and to a lesser degree in "Suspicion". The one exception may be "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", a thoroughly American screwball comedy that Hitchcock (supposedly) directed as a favor to Carole Lombard. However, this film, along with "The Trouble with Harry", perhaps gets closer than any other of his American films to what he was trying to do all along in Britain, which was to make comedies. Hitchcock's sense of humor is above all what marks his "British" style. I would argue that it was with "Saboteur" and "Shadow of a Doubt" in 1942 and 1943, respectively, that Hitchcock really moved fully into an "American style".

The ending of "Suspicion" also recalls the ending of Hitchcock's "The Lodger", in that the obviously guilty man is suddenly announced not to be the killer after all, not for any logical connection to the events that have preceded it in the plot, but because the studio felt that the public just didn't want to see lovable Cary Grant (like Ivor Novello in the earlier film) as a killer. This is the kind of studio-era interference out of which the auteur theory was born, because although such a forced ending could have ruined the film, Hitchcock makes it work, somehow, despite our senses telling us of the obvious incongruity of the ending compared with what has gone before.

"Suspicion" is a solid Hitchcock film, not one of his very best, but containing many of his favorite elements and handled with a clear style that enhances what would have been a fairly routine picture in other hands.