1920s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists project Vol. 3)

[myrnaloyisdope]

That's an interesting take on Lloyd. I don't think I've thought of his comedy being particularly verbal, but I can see where some of his strongest bits rely on words or I suppose you could say sound. The suicide/heaven gag in Never Weaken is enhanced greatly by the allusion to sound. In For Heaven's Sake, the payoff to Lloyd rounding up the dodgiest gang of ne'er do wells in the Salvation Army church, is their rowdy hymn singing.

But I think you selling his visual sensibility short. The opening gag in Safety Last, contains a wonderful visual pun of a hangman's noose and the sequence in the department store is filled with visual puns.

I find it really fascinating that you could find Lloyd unfunny, when I find him impossibly funny, I do like me some Chaplin and Keaton, but I've enjoyed Lloyd's work the most of the big three.

I'm sure my top 50 list with have more than a few Lloyd's on it, though I don't want to go overboard.

I watched the 1929 talkie The Dance of Life and was very impressed. It's very polished and seems like an actual movie, rather than a grotesque melding of talking and film. Hal Skelly and Nancy Carroll are really great in the lead roles as a husband and wife vaudeville team, whose marriage is threatened by Skelly's drinking and success. Both are really understated and give some very natural performances. A particular highlight is Carroll and Skelly, late in the film, recreating their old act in the living room of Carroll's new beau. It's so understated and natural, that you would think they had been doing it for years.

The direction by John Cromwell and A. Edward Sutherland is pretty polished, with some nice functional use of sound and some interesting shots. There's a great zoom shot in one sequence, when Carroll looking for her husband after the show, walks in a bar and upon seeing him being manhandled by a woman, the camera zooms in really neatly. It's really effective. There are also some great tracking shots.

It's always difficult to not overrate early talkies for being technically competent, but this one holds up pretty darn well, and while it's not the stylistic revelation that Applause is, it's a film that paves the way for the more conventional (in the best possible sense) storytelling aspects of talking film.

Anyone have any more 1929 talkie suggestions?

[swo17]

I'm sure my top 50 list with have more than a few Lloyd's on it, though I don't want to go overboard.

Is nine Keaton films going overboard?

[knives]

I didn't intend to sell his visual attempts short. There's definitely a lot of great gags that don't need and may actually be weakened by sound in there, but I've found that I don't actually laugh, or really even go beyond thinking that was an interesting sort of joke, except in those jokes that would just as well if not better in sound. The man just has the face for it I guess. That said Safety Last, particularly in the climbing section, really is the exception that proves the rule. The whole thing is so effective, but slightly misplaced if not in story then in humour. I think I said this earlier, but that section really feels like it would be more appropriate in a Keaton sketch than what had preceded it.

As for talkies may vote in that direction has to be The Great Gabbo. It has the typical von Stroheim splendor with this very effective and weird psychology that has been exploited many times since. One of the last shots, with von Stroheim on stage is one of those moments that will be seared into my brain forever. It brings up every emotion in the book that pounds down on the viewer, but mostly it is sadness. I'll probably also be voting for The Love Parade and Hallelujah!, but that may change in the next month.

Edit: I wouldn't say nine is going overboard. Hell I'm having trouble keeping it under fifty.

[the preacher]

Anyone have any more 1929 talkie suggestions?

The Golden Age of American Talkies: 1929
I like some of these titles but probably all my entries are silent at this time. For example, as a DeMille's fan, I like Dynamite, but The Godless Girl is GREAT!

[knives]

Also to give Lloyd some credit I've just watched Free and Easy and there's no way he, even under the thumb Keaton was, could make something so truly horrendous. Why is Keaton even in that one?

[zedz]

Is nine Keaton films going overboard?

Only nine? Tough audience.

But seriously, even though I'll be striving to keep my Keaton Kwotient artificially low, I don't think I'll be able to get it under a half dozen. Good thing for me there won't be any Chaplin films vying for a place.

[Sloper]

I've always thought Lloyd's intertitles contribute a lot to his films, which is certainly not the case with Keaton. But I think they complement rather than out-classing the visual comedy, especially in my personal favourite, The Freshman.

Wiene’s The Hands of Orlac has been the biggest revelation for me so far on this project. I wasn’t sure what to expect from it, but was completely spellbound from beginning to end. The train wreck sequence at the beginning was so magnificent I felt sure the rest of the film couldn’t live up to that early promise, but actually it sets the tone and quality for what is to come. It also sets the pace: very deliberate, like quicksand. The scene is a chaos of lights, shadows, wreckage, and the barely glimpsed or implied horrors of human injuries; rescue workers disappear into the wreckage, and we are left to imagine what they see while the searchlights dazzle us. And it goes on for ages, totally immersing us in the mutilated, distorted world Orlac will now find himself in.

Although I keep re-watching it, and admire it in a lot of ways, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has never excited me as much as it should do, perhaps because those insane sets are too obviously insane to evoke a real nightmare. Apparently Orlac has often been compared disparagingly to Caligari, or been seen as a partially successful mix of Expressionism and naturalism, but I found its exploration of encroaching madness much more powerful than that of the earlier film. When moments of overt nightmare do occur – the weirdly smiling murderer’s face at the window of Orlac’s hospital room, the fist reaching down towards his bed, the news-stand made entirely of newspapers (or did these really exist?), the creditors standing behind Orlac’s wife and shaking or nodding their heads in unison, Orlac’s father enthroned in a dark alcove of the dark hall in his empty house, waking from his comatose state only to stare into space and re-affirm his irrational hatred of his son – they’re all the more disturbing because they make us realise this is the world we’ve been living in since that train wreck at the start, only we’ve been so immersed in it that it’s become our reality. The film sort of drives us mad, if we let it, and Paul Mercer’s music contributes to this effect brilliantly. The more of his scores I hear, the more I realise he's one of the best silent film score composers around; sort of avant-garde and dissonant, but also sensitive to the smallest details and nuances of the film in question. His work in the air-stabbing scene is especially creepy, and here (as throughout the film) the scratchy condition of the print really enhances the mood: just as Orlac begins stabbing, four or five white squiggles appear on the right-hand side of the frame and hover there like little demons goading Orlac on. If that sounds silly, chalk it up to the immersive quality of the film - those squiggles scared the shit out of me.

Veidt, of course, is incredible. In fact, this is his best performance (that I have seen) yet. The film harnesses his special talent for being both haunted and haunting; both a tragic victim and a potential killer. It also showcases his control over his own body, for obvious reasons. Some might find his performance over the top, but I thought it was essentially very subtle. Look at the scene where the bandages are first removed from his hands: Veidt just stares at them, not in exaggerated horror, but with the almost-blank, inscrutable, vaguely curious expression of a man looking at something alien, something that is not his. Of course, he has to exaggerate more and more as the film goes on, but as one contemporary reviewer commented, there is no ‘acceptable’ or restrained way to behave in such an extraordinarily horrible situation. Veidt has his hands fretting and fidgeting almost constantly, but in a way that’s obviously very calculated, and very ambiguous: is Orlac hesitant to use his new hands, or are they rebelling against him? This tension is maintained right until the end of the film.

SpoilerShow

Unfortunately, much of the story’s power is neutralised by the revelations at the end, although this last reel is still handled very stylishly, and is true to the novel (to judge from the extracts provided on the Kino edition). However, this does prompt the question: if the hands are not really those of a murderer, why was Orlac stabbing the air earlier in the film? In a way, that scene and many others become more psychologically interesting in light of the ending. Orlac’s sense that the evil hands were pervading and corrupting his soul turns out to have been nothing more than a paranoid fantasy in his own mind, and I guess if you were so inclined you could link this in interesting ways to the film’s Expressionist sensibilities, to the ending of Caligari, and to the point I was making earlier about the way Wiene forces us to share Orlac’s subjective perception of his predicament.

Onto other recent viewings:

I've finally gotten to Murnau's The Haunted Castle and it struck me in two ways. Firstly the story seems to be the cinematic birth of the rich people vacation together that ends in death. It's amazing to think that in a way The rules of the Game, Gosford Park, and to a lesser extent The Dead would not be without this little showing. The way it remains different from the later films though is that it seems to not care about class relations. There's only one moment where Mayer's script breaches that taboo and it's used more for humour than any big statement. Rather it seems concerned with guilt, specifically of the religious sort. Now I don't know how much input Murnau had into the script, but this aspect seems to be as autobiographical as the usually observational Murnau gets. The scene of whispered secrets especially seems like an expression of the worst case scenario for his closeted homosexuality. If nothing else Murnau seems to be playing up this aspect.
The second thing that really did strike as unique to this film (at least in regards to Murnau) was the grammar. I simply can not see the Murnau of Tabu or even The Last Laugh making this film. The entire first act seems comprised of rich men standing. Nearly all of the narrative force is in the intertitles which is odd compared with how he would grow to use them. This morphs drastically over the course of the film. All of the images (except for two dreams) seem to be born out of the photographic expression of the first few scenes. Even at the end it is just men silently standing against each other. He manages to bring an outstanding variation to this image though.

As to Vogelöd: great observations, knives. It didn't occur to me before that this might be a starting point for the Renoir and Altman films you mention, but you sure have a point there. And I agree even more about your second point, which is precisely why I don't know what to think of this film: it doesn't really feel like Murnau. Much of it unusually feels very static (though very well composed), and the dream scenes are only a little bit of a compensation for what seemed to me a pretty conventional film, visually and even storywise. I like it somehow, but it just doesn't give me that fascination that even "Die Finanzen des Großherzogs" has. Hmm...have to think about it further, and probably need to re-watch it.

I’m sorry to say I found this film very, very dull; I agree with everything you say knives, except the praise. There are some beautiful shots here, especially in the flashbacks – the scene where the baroness (I forget her name) stands up in front of her husband and lover-to-be, and says she wants to see evil, has a lovely effect where the background seems blurred and distorted, though I don’t know how intentional this is. My main complaint, though, is simply with the storytelling. I find it astonishing that this first ‘Uco-film’ – apparently a project devised by Erich Pommer to film popular novels – was such a huge success at the time. To judge from the information on the Kino disc, it seems as though everything that made the original novel interesting and compelling was jettisoned in the film. I agree that it doesn’t feel like a Murnau film, in the sense that it doesn’t feel as though he connected with the material or even understood its appeal. There’s just no investment in the story, and every opportunity for drama limps past unheeded – only Safferstätt’s anguished embrace of his wife, and the removal of the disguise at the end (even I, the slowest man in the world, saw that coming), provide the slightest frisson. Maybe it’s a bad translation, but there’s a hilarious intertitle towards the end – something like “There’s nothing we can do. Probably the events of the last few days will all become clear soon.” – which seems to sum up the general mood of apathy.

Still, at least that film is mercifully brief. Phantom, on the other hand, seems to drag on forever. There’s some interesting discussion of it in the set’s thread, but I’d like to quote Craig Keller’s eloquent defence of it here:

On the one hand, Phantom, if it requires pigeonholing, would reside more comfortably in the cooler, more wuthering patch of 'psychodrama'. It's a mysterious, and sad, film. The images and the mise-en-scène are exquisite by any standard, regardless of whether fewer 'trick-shots' have been employed than in earlier or later Murnau. The scenario by Thea von Harbou is never less than intelligent. Before I saw the film, I had the impression from the tossed-about received-wisdom that it consisted of an hour-and-forty-five minutes of romantic weepy, and one or two scenes of Murnau's supernatural precision. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a deeply felt, deeply uncanny work.

I can only say I wish I’d seen all these qualities in the film. Certainly it offers more in the way of visual pleasures than Schloss Vogelöd, in that the locations and sets are beautifully framed and lit, and there’s even a nice bit of camera-whirling in one of the debauchery scenes. But again, I find this anything but ‘deeply felt’. I kept thinking of other ‘sap destroyed by siren’ films – The Passer-by, Daydreams, Il Fuoco, L’Atlantide, The Blue Angel, Vertigo (which is mentioned in the blurb on the DVD cover) – and how totally un-engaged Murnau’s film seemed in comparison to those. A lot of the films just mentioned allow the siren to remain vague and underwritten, for various reasons, and in Phantom the doubling of the rich girl and the tramp illustrates clearly that Lorenz has fallen for a ‘phantom’ rather than a person. I guess it’s the phantom of material success and social status (fittingly represented by the horse-drawn carriage that knocks him over), but I’m not sure the film really explores this theme in interesting ways. Not only is the siren not interesting; no one is interesting. A less intriguing collection of characters can scarcely have graced the screen.

Unlike The Hands of Orlac, Phantom never draws us into the hero’s state of mind; the aforementioned debauchery scene and the phantom vision of the carriage lack conviction and have little impact, they don't feel 'earned'. The ‘toppling building’ effect works brilliantly in Der Letzte Mann, because it suggests the porter’s naïve fear of retribution having stolen the uniform, and so much else about his total investment in his place of work, but the same effect in Phantom is far less suggestive, far more like a gimmick thrown in for the sake of it, because we have so little sense of the character’s place within this small town. His aspiration suggests that he wants to elevate his position here, and when he has transgressed he fears the town’s retribution, but unlike in the later film there seems little reason to focus his terror on the buildings themselves. I feel I may have missed something, though, and will certainly revisit this film at some point.

The Finances of the Grand Duke, on the other hand, completely beguiled me on the first (and second) viewing. Maybe it’s because Karl Freund was on board for this one – in the same year he worked on Letzte Mann and Michael, which are both in my top ten for this project – but there seemed to be a wit, vitality and beauty to the images here, whereas in the earlier films there was merely a sort of inanimate elegance. I do wonder what the full-length version was like. Certainly the frenetic pacing was one of the things I liked, and the generic gap between this and the earlier Murnaus is so great as to render comparisons pretty meaningless, but the photography is so good, and the leading actors so charming, that I can only imagine the enormous amount of extra footage (which apparently was of a ‘pictorial’ nature) would add more pleasure to the mix. It was particularly refreshing to see Alfred Abel do something other than clutch his head in despair, with that trademark ‘this milk is both tepid and sour’ look on his face. I’m with Kalat (excellent commentary as always) on this one: Abel makes a very charming gentleman thief. Totally loveable film. It will definitely be on my list.

A couple of films worth seeing on Treasures 3: The Soul of Youth, directed by William Desmond Taylor, who is most famous for being murdered but was evidently a very talented director as well. It’s schematic and didactic, but you can’t fault the execution. Same goes for Redskin, which I’ve already mentioned twice on the forum in the last day or so. I’ll say it again, though: nice colours, some striking close-ups, reasonably engaging plot, culturally important/interesting, Richard Dix very possibly made of wood.

[Tommaso]

First of all, great post, Sloper, as always. I wish I would remember "Phantom" a little better than I do. It's been three years since I saw it for the first and only time; and at that time I had a nice discussion with Schreck about it in the Silent Films on DVD thread, which I simply link to here : viewtopic.php?p=146334#p146334" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . As you can see, I was much in favour of the film, but I really need to see it again to counter your arguments. But if my memory doesn't deceive me, I'm totally agreed with evillights' point-of-view. But perhaps it's just the incredible tintings and the general beauty of the film that left a vague, but very fond memory. And I completely agree with you about "Finanzen": this is not a very deep film, but the beauties of its landscape photography and indeed the charm of Alfred Abel has made it very dear to me. Great to see that Murnau was able to pull off a 'light' film so convincingly.

Meanwhile, my calendar frightens me. Only ten more days to go until the listmaking is due (at least officially), and I'm still sitting on a huge kevyip of 20s films I simply didn't manage to watch yet. I'll try to use the Christmas holidays to watch at least Manfred Noa's "Helena", de Gastyne's "Jeanne d'Arc", and Berger's "Walzertraum", but heavens, this period is so incredibly rich that any idea of assessing it comprehensively is bound to fail...

In any case, here are two more I watched these last few days:

Manolescu (Victor Tourjansky, 1929): This is floating around in a bad-looking copy, probably stolen from the vaults of Gosfilmofond - even though we get the original German titles of this UFA production- , and there's no sound at all. But nevertheless I have to say: Wow! This story about the real-life Romanian con man George Manolescu rather gripped me, and it's all because of the lady who causes his crimes and his downfall. I adore Brigitte Helm in general, but this might be her most erotic (as opposed to plain 'nudity') role ever. There's an unbelievable intensity in her eyes and especially in her body language when she seduces Manolescu (the great Russian actor Ivan Mozzukkhin), and all this is helped very much by the much-lauded UFA-style of sets and garments, which feels as lavish, but not as predictable as your usual Hollywood production of the time. Helm played a lot of femme fatale roles, but this might be seen as the quintessence of them all. I have to admit that the film gets considerably weaker in its second half in which Manolescu, severely injured after a fight with Helm's husband (played by none other than Heinrich George), tries to start a new life with a nurse he met in hospital (the beautiful Dita Parlo) only to be delivered to the police by Helm. Set in the wintry mountains, this part of the film simply doesn't allow the director to indulge as much in style as the first half, and it feels much more conventional. But nevertheless, all in all it's a pretty great film, almost as much a summary of everything that was typical of the late silent German style as "Asphalt". I really can't understand why this isn't out on a decent dvd or even only VHS, but I've said the same about "Nina Petrowna", that other - and even better - Helm film that nobody should miss. In both films, enjoy the cinematography of the great Carl Hoffmann.

The second film I'd like to mention is a too little known classic, of course: The Merry Widow (Erich von Stroheim, 1925). This was the last 20s Stroheim I had missed out on before, and I have to say, I didn't find it quite as great as his other films from the time (I meanwhile read that the Great Von agreed about this). But that is only relatively speaking, of course. We again get a truly fine re-enactment of a half-fairytale-like and half-Austrian kingdom, and Stroheim comes up with some truly funny and satirical scenes in the first half of the film, mercilessly exposing the hypocrisy of the army officers in all things of love. As always with Stroheim, I really chuckled about the wittiness of some of the intertitles. The (slight) problems with the film are foremost in the choice of actors: Mae Murray remains a little non-descript in the main role, whereas John Gilbert as her (main) love interest is far too dashing and romantic to be really believable as the cynical officer he purports to be in the first half of the film (i.e., before he really falls in love with Mae).
Of course he is far less cynical than his cousin, the Crown Prince (Roy d'Arcy, a role that would have been ideally suited for Stroheim himself), but somehow the whole film hovers a little uneasily between the sarcasm of "Foolish Wives" and the much more heartfelt "Wedding March". And it all ends in a rather conventionally filmed duel and a happy ending forced on Stroheim by the studio. However, no complaints. Compared to the standard fare of 1925 and beyond, The Merry Widow is still a pretty great film, and will give you much to enjoy. And a 137 minute film without a dull moment is a rarity, anyhow. Track down that TCM broadcast, then.

[nsps]

I'm sure my top 50 list with have more than a few Lloyd's on it, though I don't want to go overboard.

Is nine Keaton films going overboard?

I would say no.

[YnEoS]

I highly recommend everyone seek out L'horloge magique ou La petite fille qui voulait être princesse [The Magical Clock, or The Little Girl Who Wanted to Be a Princess] (1928). One of my favorite films by Wladyslaw Starewicz from the 20s. In addition to just being a great example of stop motion animation, it's got a pretty interestingly structured narrative, and is divided into 3 very different worlds.

SpoilerShow

A girl being told a story by an intricate clock machine, which she breaks halfway through because of the tragic ending, and proceeds to finish the story her way in her dreams.

[lubitsch]

I edited the viewing guide to bring it up to date and filled a few gaps here and there especially with shorts and animation but apparently I had forgotten to mention Die Straße by Grune, so there may be still a few gaps, I left a few films of no significant importance deliberately off.
At the same time I shifted the ballot date to Sunday 16th January because I simply hadn't time to watch the 30-40 hours I'd like to see of the decade and won't manage to see them and compile my list. However I think we should call it quits then and if no one has any objections and I open the next round with the 30s on 17th January.

[myrnaloyisdope]

Sounds good to me. I still have quite a few things I'm hoping to see.

[knives]

I'll clear that, gives me time to see those remaining Vertov's now that I know they exist (which is not even considering what I may have gotten for my birthday tomorrow).

[Sloper]

I wish I would remember "Phantom" a little better than I do. It's been three years since I saw it for the first and only time; and at that time I had a nice discussion with Schreck about it in the Silent Films on DVD thread, which I simply link to here : viewtopic.php?p=146334#p146334 .

Thanks for the link - great discussion there. The issue of whether Lubota is a good poet or not is indeed interesting and important. Fascinating information from markhax about the Hauptmann novel, where it is the sight of the adolescent girl that prompts the 'Sphinx clawing at my breast' poem; I guess in Murnau's film it is figured as a kind of premonition of what is to happen, and an indication that Lubota's obsession was nascent inside him even before he was hit by the carriage. While watching the film, I thought we probably weren't supposed to make a very firm judgement about the poetry, but merely take the word of the bookseller and his daughter that it is good; and then the word of the expert that it is bad. So in a way, we follow Lorenz into his delusions, but realise before he does that they are delusions, and that in fact the bookseller and his daughter's appreciation of the poetry was more a sign of their love for Lorenz than of the poetry's quality as such. I took the point of the story to be that he has to adjust his values and appreciate this very real and meaningful love, rather than chasing after the phantom-love of this unattainable, non-existent woman, and of the amorphous poetry-reading public. Once he has had this moral epiphany, he is capable of writing something truly good - the confessional 'novel' we have been reading - but then I was surprised the film didn't include an intertitle suggesting that Lorenz would try, once again, to get his work published. I suppose this would have been implied for any reader of the novel - we're reading it, so it must have been published - but since it's been translated into the medium of film it seems like something more is needed to flesh out the happy ending. I agree with you, though, that this ending (which according to Wikipedia seems to be true to the novel; maybe markhax can tell us?) feels kind of tacked on, especially that final detail about the mother, which is so lazily and perfunctorily inserted that I can only think it must have been written after the film was shot.

I forgot to mention a few weeks ago that I enjoyed seeing The Iron Mask with Carl Davis and CBSO accompanying; these evenings are always the highlight of any year when I manage to get to them. Not such a great film, though. Very, very handsomely mounted, always nice to look at, but the pace was surprisingly leaden. Any Hollywood film would have to make changes to the novel (which I haven't read, but vaguely know the plot of) but some of the alterations here really scupper the story. And I understand the climactic sequence is, in one important respect, true to the novel, but I'm sorry to say that it drew gales of laughter from the audience I saw it with (which included my wife, who practically had to eat her own fist to stop from laughing out loud). I wasn't quite able to restrain myself either, although I did find the last shot quite moving. There were other nice moments - the dolly shot introducing the king, with all the courtiers doffing their hats to him, Fairbanks trying to kiss Constance at the beginning, leaping from a tree onto the prison wall to rescue her, or the battle scene where he casually arms himself with the sword of a fleeing musketeer - but overall it was quite disappointing.

The Borzage films (on the BFI discs), on the other hand, have been very much the opposite of disappointing. Aside from a half-remembered viewing of A Farewell to Arms when I was about fourteen, this was my first exposure to Borzage, and it's been a huge treat to see these masterpieces for the first time. Lucky Star would have to be my favourite at the moment, mainly because this is the one where Farrell's performance is actually comparable in quality with Gaynor's, although I feel The River might have surpassed it in its original form - an incredibly sexy film, heavily foreshadowing Ossessione, especially in Mary Duncan's Clara Calamai-esque performance as the vamp. This is one role Gaynor really couldn't have played. Street Angel and Seventh Heaven are also wonderful; haven't quite got around to Liliom yet.

It struck me while watching De Mille's The Godless Girl that one of the great things about Borzage's films is their intense sincerity and earnestness. They're pretty corny, melodramatic stories in many ways, but Borzage and his collaborators manage to sell them as these incredibly rich, moving and profound tales about lost souls colliding and finding love/faith/meaning in their lives. Borzage's visual sense is of course so many light years ahead of De Mille's - I really don't have the words to describe these beautiful compositions and camera movements, I just keep thinking 'rich' and 'warm', but they're ineffably beautiful and powerful - but there's also a crassly manipulative quality to De Mille's approach that holds him back from achieving something really great. Watching The Godless Girl, I couldn't help but compare him to Spielberg. He is effortlessly proficient when it comes to engineering suspense, staging an action set-piece (the fiery climax is brilliant; do watch it even if you can't be bothered with the rest of the film), and hitting the biggest and simplest emotional buttons, but not for one moment does he give the impression of meaning it, or of having any intent other than to fulfil his duty as a crowd-pleasing Hollywood director. That's what makes the moralising in the film extra-annoying, even though the message turns out to be not simply 'believe' but rather 'believe and let believe'. His insincerity also restricts the actors, who are simply tasked with pushing those buttons. Borzage's films seem far more interested in the characters as 'real people', people worth looking into and exploring in all their emotional depth - especially when it comes to those characters played by Janet Gaynor. I've always liked her (primarily for Sunrise and A Star is Born), but these films reveal talents I never imagined she had. She can display so much - world-weary guile, childlike innocence, divine epiphanies, cynicism, even moments of sexual arousal - in those still, determined gazes.

The only problem I had with the Borzage films (except The River, for obvious reasons) had to do with the endings. Somehow, as in Phantom, they all feel a little rushed, unlikely, un-earned, tacked-on, and even insincere. I'd have to watch them again to go into this in more detail, but does anyone else feel the same way?

[Saturnome]

L'horloge magique ou La petite fille qui voulait être princesse [The Magical Clock, or The Little Girl Who Wanted to Be a Princess] (1928).

Cute film with a lot of charm, and a technical wonder too. I love the special effects behind the interactions between the little girl and the giant of the forest. I felt the story was incomplete though.

SpoilerShow

I know it's irrelevant to the fact that the film is all about a little girl ending a story her way, but what's up with her (very old!) father? What's going to happen in the clock? That's the first thing that came up in my head after the end.

Le Roman de Renard is Starevich's real masterpiece and one of my favorite film of the 30s no less. Considering the fact that he animated it alone right after L'horloge magique in 1929-1930, there is a huge technical progress. And the characters have so much personality, it's a real wonder.

[myrnaloyisdope]

Some thoughts of recent viewings:

I watched three little seen King Vidor silents: The Sky Pilot, Peg o' My Heart and Wine of Youth. None of the three is particularly great, though each has some interesting qualities. The Sky Pilot makes use of a snowy setting quite nicely and features some nice performances from Colleen Moore and John Bowers. Narratively the film is pretty pedestrian with a stock story of a young preacher going to a hard boiled western town and trying to preach that old time religion. There are enough suitable twists and turns to keep one engaged, but the film never really demonstrates much other than general competence. It's a let down compared to the lyrical quality of Vidor's earliest surviving feature, Jack-Knife Man.

Peg o' My Heart boasts a really energetic performance from the stage star Laurette Taylor (who had made the title role famous). Vidor talks at length in his autobiography about the troubles of making the 38 year old Taylor appear believable as a teenager. Vidor mentions using a special lighting set-up to achieve the youthful quality desired and it works quite well. Taylor appears very natural in front of the camera and there are some really striking close-ups that exude stardom. Again the film doesn't really boast anything particularly Vidor-esque beyond the general competence which permeated the majority of his work, but it is still a nice little film.

Wine of Youth was one I was particularly looking forward to, after reading James Card's appraisal of the film as a risque exploration of marital conventions. The initial set-up is quite well done, with three generations repeating the same sequence of events. Firstly an old fashioned party is shown, with helpful intertitles noting that the same vitriol thrown at Jazz in the 1920's was being thrown at the Polka in 1870. A second party is shown, this time set in 1900, where the Waltz is taboo dance. Finally a contemporary party is shown with a range of 'sheiks and shebas' dancing the night away. What ensues is a generational commentary on relationships, with the lovely Eleanor Boardman as a young woman, being courted by William Haines and Ben Lyons. Boardman wants to know more about her potential husband and conceives the idea of going out camping for a couple of weeks with the two suitors and another couple in order to see each other as they really are. Unfortunately Vidor sort of botches this potentially interesting premise, but rushing through the camp sequence spending all of 10 minutes on it (and only a couple hours of movie time), before the film returns home where the strain of Boardman's rebelliousness causes turmoil amongst her parents (who heretofore have gotten little screen time or character development). The closing sequence features an extended and genuinely uncomfortable war of words between the beleaguered parents that leads to a rushed and unsatisfying conclusion.

The second half of the movie feels like it was very rushed and given that the film clocks in at 73 minutes, it certainly seems the case. It's a shame, because the film had a lot of potential to do some interesting things, the camp sequence in particular could have been extended and been considerably more challenging to social norms. Instead it ends with the wilful Boardman getting cold feet and going back home (the film gets cold feet it would seem too). These kinds of films end up being the most frustrating, because they are full of potential, but they don't live up to it.

[myrnaloyisdope]

I watched Frank Borzage's The Circle today and was fairly impressed. I had know idea that Borzage was with MGM at this point (1925). The film plays out like a response to the Lubitsch's marital comedies like The Marriage Circle, but lacking the irony or sly wit of Lubitsch. It's not a bad thing, dare I say it's like an earnest Lubitsch (sorry for the pun, but I thought it was pretty clever). Borzage is less interested in satirizing the love-lives of the idle rich and more interested in exploring love and marriage as ideals. The prologue of the film has a wife running way with her husband's best friend, leaving both the husband and her new born child behind. The film fast forwards 30 years, with Creighton Hale (in an impossibly stuffy role. I wanted to break his monocle so badly) as the now grown child and his wife, the lovely Eleanor Boardman contemplating leaving Hale for his best friend, played by Mark MacGregor. In order to find out if she is making the right choice, she invites Hale's mother and lover to the castle for the first time in 30 years in order to see if they are still in love. The film has the set-up of a Lubitsch film, but never quite goes all out in that direction. It's not a negative though and what results is a sort of hybrid Borzage-Lubitsch concoction, with some genuinely tender moments and some occasional bite.

The finale sequence features a very compelling reading by Boardman, as she is brought back home by Hale, who having finally shown some interest in the direness of the situation, seems to revert back to his stuffy, monocle wearing ways. He prompts stunned looking Boardman to retire for the evening and I kept waiting for the predictable moment where Boardman would smile lovingly, thereby signifying that all is well, but alas it never comes and Boardman seems quite uncertain about her husband right up until the end. It's a really fascinating sequence if only because it seems to express an attitude of uncertainty about love, that is uncommon to the Borzage films I've seen.

[YnEoS]

Just recently watched Varhaník u sv. Víta aka The Organist at St. Vitus' Cathedral, a 1929 Czech silent directed by Martin Fric. Really every shot in this is absolutely stunning to look at, and it's a nice tightly told story, that leaves barely a moment for pause. I really wish there was a copy with a soundtrack around given that the protagonist is a Organist, but it was quite effective without it. Really nice visual storytelling to, not too much dialogue, and a lot of the inter-titles are redundant with things quite obvious on screen (ex: "The organist comes home"). Definitely a nice example of exception filmmaking in all areas of the late silent era. I'll probably find a spot for this gem in the lower-mid portion of my top 50. Definitely worth checking out, I'd be curious to hear what other people make of this.

[Tommaso]

I'm afraid the most acclaimed Spanish silent film, La aldea maldita (1930), is ineligible, but don't miss El sexto sentido / The Sixth Sense (1929) by Nemesio Sobrevila

Thanks for the recommendation, preacherman; I've just watched it. Certainly a strange film: at first I even considered it to be somewhat dilettantic: a story that would be incomprehensible without the intertitles (never a good sign for a silent), mostly very static shots certainly not in tune with the year 1929 (but giving it an artificial quality, intentionally or not), and a curious didactic quality on top of it (allright, allright, a metafilm...). However, after a while it began to suck me in: there's indeed an 'objective' quality to the many long-held shots in which nothing seems to happen, quite in tune with the film's celebration of the cinematic apparatus as a recording tool for reality; in this respect, a very sparse film which however exemplifies its theme rather convincingly. I certainly also liked the weird operator of that apparatus, Professor Kamus. Still, I'm not sure about what the filmmaker was actually intending to do: your quote about the difficulty to pigeonhole this film (is it a romantic comedy or an avantgarde film?) pretty much sums up my own uncertainties about it. In any case, I liked that leading lady, Antonia Fernandez. Need to think about this film a little more, I guess...

[YnEoS]

Curious what people think of Le Brasier Ardent if anyone's seen it. This was somewhat randomly one of the first silent films I ever saw and it really blew me away. Definitely one of the crazier narrative silents I've seen. I recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

[lubitsch]

Time to catch and watch all the silents I missed until now. At the moment I have a list of 104 films which will need a bit of pruning I guess. But it doesn't look if there are many newcomers. Vidor's Jack-Knife Man is fine within its limits, I pass on the rest from the early 20s that myrnaloy described. Fievre wasn't quite the hit I hoped for, the print ran a bit too fast, but it's all a bit too sketchy, films like Hintertreppe or Scherben are better chamber dramas. Souls on the Road I watched on Christmas discovering to my great surprise that it plays on Christmas, too. Nice to see something that has survived from Japan of this era, but it's too moralistic and dreary especially the young man whining around the clock pretty much goes on my nerves. Suram Fortress was a bloody mistake, that's what you get when you rely on a few screenshots and the fact that you've heard about the story via Parajanov, what amateurish claptrap. Le Brasier ardent starts in the most splendid and disturbing matter with adream sequence and continues with a funny parody of Feuillade's secret societies. Then things go downhill when the love triangle sets in and the story goes on forever and ever. Gunnar Hedes Saga isn't at the level of Juha of Sir Arne even if a considerable chunk of the film wouldn't be missing I don't see to what the story could have amounted. There's a character introduction, some reindeer running along and a memory loss being restored in the usual way this happens in movies. Schlagende Wetter also misses a few parts here and there, but again what's the connection between the love triangle and the whole miner surroundings? Some visions of space are pretty much astonishing but it desn't jell into a coherent whole. The Rat is a quite hilarious star turn for Ivor Novello who plays the rough man who treats all women badly (as all women deserve to be treated) but is loved by them nevertheless ((all women are whores anyway). Naturally there are a few characters more evil than his one and he reforms after the sacrifice Mae Marsh does for him. Not badly directed by Cutts though even though he seems to have discovered during the filming that you can move towards an object and pull back again. Happens once or twice too often. Kosintzev's Devil's Wheel speeds along arriving nowhere in particular missing parts play a role in it as they most certainly do in Death Ray by Kuleshov. Nice to see a bit more trashy plots but the Soviet directors are generally unable to create any interest in the characters they are filming so that I couldn't care less who hunts whom where. Case of three Million was a pleasant exception a tightly written satire, well structured, sustaing momentum and ideas from beginning to the end. Not an eternal masterpiece but quite good. Mauprat on the other hand falls apart in three quite disparate parts and rarely is more than a conventional costumer, there are a few exciting disorienting moments during an assassination, but that's all.
Two films however stood out for me. The first one is Mizoguchi's Song of Home. I rarely liked Mizoguchi until now but that's really embarassing to the nth degree. College students return to the country meeting a talented youngster whose family was too poor to send him along to Tokyo. The youngsters try to spice up life with a bit of supremely harmless dancing which enrages our clean hero who reprimands them for not thinking of the great values of the country life, pushing his sister away and hilariously managing to convince them all with his patriotic speech. He also saves the boy of visiting Western professor (clearly a Japanese actor with a huge beard and moustache, hilarious beyond description) from deadly dangerous rapids but refuses the offer for money and later for the payment of an education because he wants to be a good farmer, that's what Japan needs.
A pity that no Allied bomb could catch this immortal piece of art.
The positive surprise was Wendhausen's Der steinerne Reiter which is beautifully designed not as excessively as Nibelungen or Caligari but very thoroughly to create a surrounding for the legend like story which involes Klein-Rogge ruling with terror over his peasents, but falling in love with the woman who originally came to him in order to stab him as vengeance for his sister. How she falls for him is handled a bit too sketchily and the film runs a bit out of ammo when Klein-Rogge is captured but this still is a pretty remarkable picture which haunts film histories as a lesser companion piece but deserves a good restoration.

[knives]

I'm afraid the most acclaimed Spanish silent film, La aldea maldita (1930), is ineligible, but don't miss El sexto sentido / The Sixth Sense (1929) by Nemesio Sobrevila

Thanks for the recommendation, preacherman; I've just watched it. Certainly a strange film: at first I even considered it to be somewhat dilettantic: a story that would be incomprehensible without the intertitles (never a good sign for a silent), mostly very static shots certainly not in tune with the year 1929 (but giving it an artificial quality, intentionally or not), and a curious didactic quality on top of it (allright, allright, a metafilm...). However, after a while it began to suck me in: there's indeed an 'objective' quality to the many long-held shots in which nothing seems to happen, quite in tune with the film's celebration of the cinematic apparatus as a recording tool for reality; in this respect, a very sparse film which however exemplifies its theme rather convincingly. I certainly also liked the weird operator of that apparatus, Professor Kamus. Still, I'm not sure about what the filmmaker was actually intending to do: your quote about the difficulty to pigeonhole this film (is it a romantic comedy or an avantgarde film?) pretty much sums up my own uncertainties about it. In any case, I liked that leading lady, Antonia Fernandez. Need to think about this film a little more, I guess...

I just finished this...film and really don't have much else to add. It's enjoyable and deserves to be seen, but the way it's elements collide leave me unsure of where to place it. Everything about it screams the previous decade (with The Cameraman's Revenge probably being the closest I can think of to this film's central conceit. I'm glad to have seen it and will see it again eventually, but I don't think it really rises above good.

[Tommaso]

A few more:

Brüder (Werner Hochbaum, 1929): actually it should be Lubitsch's task to praise this film, as he is one of the foremost proponents of Hochbaum's work around. An interesting, semi-documentary film about a strike in the Hamburg harbour in 1896/97, with clear leftist leanings and the message spelled out in the intertitles several times. Interesting editing and camerawork, though in a less virtuoso style than the Russians and thus also less manipulative, even though Hochbaum doesn't seem to have been afraid of crude symbolism occasionally (for example in a climactic scene where the strike leader is to be arrested by the police and in the process inadvertendly rams a nail through his hand, Jesus Christ-style...). But these moments are rare, and the film in general is a very fine portrait of the working class and their fight against the ruling powers, with a much more optimistic stance all in all than for instance in Jutzi's "Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück". And there are some extremely beautiful shots of the snow and ice-packed Hamburg harbour. Not as great as Hochbaum's films from the early 30s, but certainly not to be missed.

And as I was recently entirely blown away by Julien Duvivier's "Pepe le Moko" (which will almost certainly make my Top 10 in the 30s list, with "Au bonheur des dames" not far behind), I wanted to check out at least one of his 20s works and settled for a heavily truncated version of Le tourbillon de Paris (1928) starring Lil Dagover as a stage artist who is torn between her work and her rich and much older husband. The original film seems also to have incorporated an important role for a lover, but you can only guess at this in the shortened version. Anyhow, I found the film quite impressive due to Dagover's performance, who believably depicts the fear of getting older and the general emotional turmoil of her character. Dagover is much helped by Duvivier's direction, very sensitive, fascinating close-ups and so on.

Finally, Lady of the Night (Monta Bell, 1925). Recently restored by TCM and issued by WB Archive, this was a stunning film depicting Norma Shearer in a double-role. On the one hand, she plays Molly, a girl from reform school with a good heart who is in love with a young inventor. When that young man tries to sell one of his inventions to a rich banker, he meets the banker's daughter Florence (also Shearer) and falls in love with her. Finally, Molly lets go of her love. This sounds all very simple and it probably is, but it pulls on the heartstrings and Shearer's performance is simply incredible in both roles. The film of course plays with the contrast between the incredibly stylish Molly and the cute, bourgeois Florence, but I find Shearer's versatility and ability to play both parts equally convincingly astounding. Add to this some of the most beautiful (even if they are probably electronic) tintings you're ever likely to see. Gee, I'm almost tempted to put this somewhere in the lower tier of my list, not because the film is so important in itself, but because great acting and sheer viewing pleasure should be acknowledged, too. You're in for a treat with this one, I'd say.

[Zazou dans le Metro]

I was looking at my post from 6 months ago in this thread where I was positively thrumming with excitement expecting that the walls of the edifice of previous 20's lists would come tumbling down with the trumpeting from around the globe of newly discovered upstarts.
Alas,for me, it is not to be. Although my viewing has been severely hampered by the vicissitudes of life I still find my top three - Sunrise/ Menilmontant/ Jeanne d'Arc unassailable.
I just have not come across anything likely to scale similar heights. Perhaps the highest, but only to the nursery slopes, has been Charles Vanel's 'Dans la Nuit' - starring the helmer himself alongside his leading lady of choice from the silent era, Sandra Milanowa. Shades of Gremillon with the use of lyrical documentary style footage and impassioned close ups and spurred on by the (in the viewed Arte version) soundtrack by Louis Sclavis -another personal fave. Spoiled only somewhat by a clunky deus ex machina wrapping up it would have made a great bonus supplement on something like MoC's Grand Jeu if it's not going to get a release in its own right.
Making base camp was Nina Petrowna rightly championed often enough in these pages by Tommasso as well as the Swiss-French production by Jean Choux La Vocation d'Andre Carel. A ho-hum story- line of rich Parisian heir dons blue collar drag on the barge towpaths to pursue/test the fidelity of his love interest, gains points for the near miraculous restoration job and photography of the bargees at work. These looking forward to the poetic realism of the next decade and dare I say even further to the likes of Pasolini. However these scenes are undercut by the insipid and torpid interior scenes that manage to look back a decade, even adding a very miscast and deflated Michel Simon to boot.

Proving that our gods have feet of clay:- Those that should not even have been issued climbing boots. Epstein's totally misguided foray into costume epic 'Lion des Mogols' is a stinker of the first order. The usually formidable Ivan Mosjoukine as Pharoah/ruler of Shangrila-golia swishes around in a dinky mini skirt with a load of backstage nellies from the Cage aux Folles but even the glue of campness cannot hold this one together. Whither the genius of Finis and Usher ? I feel similarly about Murnau's turgid Gang in der Nacht but I'm sure someone will put me straight. Also sorry Tommasso and Ann Harding but I got almost as insensed by Duvivier's Tourbillon. Too much gazing into unseen horizons by Dagover signifying torment and too much mantlepiece hugging, pipe stuffing and shoe gazing from the ageing hubby. Admittedly this was the severely truncated version but it also followed my Duviv 30's bash, which whilst providing impetus for La belle Equipe et al into the next list project conspired to overshadow this one. Perhaps expectations have been too high and I will seek out if possible a longer version to re-visit
On the subject of the 30's but for an accident of birth there are two that would be unfurling the flag near the summit. Firstly Gremillon's La petite Lise which surpasses M and Blackmail as a model par excellence for the new narrative potential for sound alone and secondly the brutal beauty of Kalatozov's Salt for Svanetia which aesthetically belongs to the 20's but like Lise had an extended gestation period. So,personally, not such a spirited expedition after all. But soft, the new decade approacheth.

[swo17]

I feel a little lost without swapsies...

I've watched most everything I was planning to at this point, but if anyone has any hidden gems that are definitely going to make your list that you fear some people might not have bothered to watch, please list them here (maybe limited to 3-5) and I at least will try to watch as many of them as I can that I've missed.