The Last Laugh (1924)

Directed by F.W. Murnau
Starring Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft and Max Hiller
Produced by Universum Film (UFA)

This is where I normally provide a plot synopsis of the movie, so here it goes:

An elderly porter at a hotel has trouble getting a suitcase from the roof of a car in the rain. Winded, he takes a break and a drink. This is observed by the hotel manager who demotes the porter to the position of washroom attendant. The loss of status turns the man's world completely upside-down.

That's it. An elegantly simple tale. The trick is it is told by two absolute masters: F.W. Murnau and Emil Jannings.

Most films of this era are locked into their scene and their subject. It's a matter of technology of course, but the best directors know how to use that limitation combined with editing to tell their tale.

Murnau frees his camera. It moves around the hotel where the porter works, the apartment where he lives, the streets that he walks. It doesn't just dolly around; it floats and flies. It races down a hall so we can see what awaits or zooms in tight to the ear of a gossiping neighbor. It reveals characters hiding or sleeping or being stalked. The complete freedom of the camera creates a suspense about what is lurking out of the frame or where the camera may go next.

Murnau also brings in the expressionistic elements he's so well associated with. After the porter loses his prized job, the hotel itself becomes a thing of menace, not just towering over our hero, but reaching down as if to attack him. In a dream sequence, we see the man's idealized version of his job, standing guard before a revolving door that reaches up to heaven.

And that dream sequence... Just perfect. We start with him before the doors. Then he sees six men struggling with a trunk. He marches over to the men and lifts the suitcase over his head with one. Then, he marches into the crowded hotel lobby and performs for the assemblage by tossing the immoveable object high into the air. Murnau imbues the scene with gauzy dreamlike movement by using that mobile camera. It's simultaneously sedate and kinetic.

As for Jannings in the lead role, he is masterful. Good actors can play any emotion. With Jannings, his characters can seemingly lock that emotion on their face.   That ability is critical to this film's success.

For the film to work, we have to believe that Jannings character's position, his status, his very life are tied to this job. And Jannings sells that. We see his pride in wearing the ornate doorman's coat. He walks the streets not as a hotel employee, but as a conquering general. He has dignity and pride. He is not just a man; he's THE man.

And when that coat is taken from him, we see him diminished. We see his age and his frailty. He's lost and rudderless. When he steals back his coat, it's not rebellious or defiant. It's pathetic. And when he later returns the coat, it is a depressingly sad moment. The general has been utterly defeated.

SPOILERS. There is a tacked on "happy" ending that I can imagine will divide opinion. Some will like to see our hero get some reward for his pain. Others will hate the out of left field saccharine epilogue. I read it a third way: it's a complete demonstration of just how terrible our porter's life is. The author has to break the fourth wall to save the man as there was no way he could do it himself. That's an exclamation point on his plight.

As with most films, The Last Laugh has problems. The biggest is the way his family and neighborhood react to his demotion. His wife runs screaming from him. His neighbors sit and wait so they can laugh at him. It's absurd in a way that underlines the porter's pathos, but it also drags the viewer out of the movie.If you saw your significant other in a position of a lesser station, would you react like Jason Voorhees just appeared with a shiny, new chainsaw? I think not.

That is picking the smallest of nits compared with the artistic achievement of The Last Laugh. It may be judged too slow by some, but Murnau and Jannings have teamed to deliver a film that seems impossibly brilliant when compared to its contemporaries. It is emotionally raw and technically exemplary. This is one of the best films I have ever seen. Period.

***** out of *****

NOTE: Yes, I know this out of order. The guys on the Battleship Pretension podcast recently did a Murnau retrospective and extolled the virtues of The Last Laugh. The need to watch this has been gnawing on my brain ever since.

This film also seems to introduce a time-honored trope. If you've ever seen a movie show someone is drunk by either showing their head as the room rotates around them or by showing the lush's perspective through unfocused, jittery camerawork, both of those are here.

Read More

The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924)

Directed by Mauritz Stiller
Starring Lars Hanson, Gerda Lundequist and Greta Garbo
Produced by Svensk Filmindustri

Gösta Berling, a priest in a small town, is hitting the bottle.  Hard.  A bishop hears of his antics and is dispatched to investigate.  Gösta delivers an impassioned and fiery sermon to the congregation, but follows it up with an outburst against the believers.  He is defrocked and cast out.

Alone, Gösta wanders the land until he is taken in by a countess at an estate called Borg.  The former priest begins tutoring the countess' step-daughter Ebba and the two begin to fall in love... which of course was all part of the countess' plan.  If Ebba marries a commoner, she forfeits her inheritance and the Borg estate will go to the countess' son Henrik and his new wife Elisabeth.

The countess' plot comes to light at a banquet hosted at a neighboring estate known as Ekeby.  The owners of Ekeby, a major and his wife, throw lavish affairs where their "knights" serve as entertainment.  The knights are in fact more like court jesters and entertainers.  Ebba is shocked by her step-mother's plan and a heartbroken Gösta leaves Borg to join the knights at Ekeby.

Can Gösta find love?  And what other secrets will be revealed over the course of this tale?

The Saga of Gösta Berling, like many silent dramas, is a melodrama.  The danger in melodrama is it either works or it doesn't, there is never a middle ground.  Either the actors and story draw you in enough to buy the flourishes, or it's all too over the top and calculated to ever be satisfying.

Gösta Berling works.  Better than that, it shines.

The Saga of Gösta Berling is first and foremost a tale of flawed and fallen humans, all seeking redemption.  And their penance can only come through connecting with another soul.  If Gösta can find love, he will no longer be the defrocked man of God.  Elisabeth is married, but isolated as she comes to realize her husband is someone she doesn't recognize.  For some it is too late: the major's wife gave up her love for a poor man to marry into wealth and her existence is a private hell she hides from in banquets and plays.

There is a lot to love here, but I have to start with the virtuoso directing of Mauritz Stiller.  He uses the frozen landscape of Sweden as the backdrop and it fits his story perfectly.    The film's camerawork complements its themes and does so in a series of beautiful moments.

Stiller also nails the pacing.  The film has a cadence that just pulled me through the trials and tribulations of these characters.  Just when things are slowing down, we see the next secret revealed and were right back in the middle of the action.  And when all of the character twists and turns threaten to overwhelm, we get a couple of action set pieces in the final third.

The movie opens with a scene from the middle of the tale.  The knights are enjoying their usual merriment in their barracks when Gösta calls for the 13th knight to appear.  Suddenly, a creature emerges from the fireplace and explains he can't stay long; he's here to pick up the soul of a knight.  The men look around nervously, before Gösta reveals it's a prank by removing the co-conspirator's mask.

The scene is the perfect set up for the rest of the movie.  Beyond showing us that the knights are a jovial lot, the scene sets the stakes immediately: Gösta's soul is at stake.  He's broken and needs to be reassembled or  he will find himself in hell. It's a theme repeated again and again throughout the movie.

The actors here are all good, but not great.  Lars Hanson plays Berling with a Sweeney Todd haircut and wide eyes.  All of the actors engage in some grand gestures and over-the-top moments, but there's a lot of subtlety to the players' work here as well.  Greta Garbo was discovered by Hollywood thanks to this film and its easy to see why.  She's tremendous.

That's not to say the whole movie works.  At one point, Ekeby is burnt to the ground.  There's a lot of tension as the fire is set and the knights begin trying to escape.  Then it keeps going on.  And on.  Gösta escapes by a different route then everyone else, but the movie never provides a great sense of location.  I have no idea where he is in the house or what he is doing.

The film also reaches a moment of character overload.  The Sinclairs are shown as minor characters who run in the same social circles as the residents of Borg and Ekeby.  Halfway through the film, they take on a larger role, then shrink right back into the background very quickly.  They all have very superficial motivation, made all the more obvious by the detailed back stories and arcs the rest of the main cast get.

In the scope of a three hour epic, these are minor quibbles.  One of the joys of exploring each year of film in a haphazard and random way is you make discoveries.  The Saga of Gösta Berling was not on my radar before.  Now, I'll never forget it.

**** out of *****

Memorable line:  "You won't escape by turning yourself into a beautiful corpse.  Don't you know that most people are dead already?"

NOTE: The film is based on the novel of the same name by Selma Langerlöf.  The book was loved in Sweden (it's considered the Swedish Gone with the Wind) and critical reception of the movie there at the time was not great.  People thought the book was better.  I guess some things never change.

Read More

The Navigator (1924)

Directed by Buster Keaton and Donald Crisp
Starring Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Frederick Vroom
Produced by Buster Keaton Productions

Rollo is rich and bored with his life.  Looking for something to do, he decides to get married.  Today.  He makes all of the arrangements, including purchasing tickets on an ocean liner for the honeymoon.  Then, it's a (really) short trip to ask his intended.

Her response: "Certainly not!"

Dejected, Rollo enjoys a "long" walk home and decides to take the trip anyway.  Coincidentally, Rollo's girlfriend is the daughter of a ship owner.  Spies have been sent to prevent the ship, The Navigator, from being sold to their enemies. 

Both Rollo and his girlfriend accidentally end up on The Navigator when the spies cut the ship adrift without a crew.  At first, the two are unaware of their circumstances or that anyone else is on board.  Then, two people who have never set foot in a kitchen have to figure out how to brew coffee and boil eggs.  They fail miserably. 

Can these two get their act together and possibly find love?  And can they survive (gulp) cannibals?

The Navigator is another Buster Keaton joint and compared to his other release from this year (Sherlock Jr.), it pales in comparison.  The thread holding the film together is thinner than a female lead on the CW and exists more as an excuse for some very episodic comedy.

Some of it works.  Rollo gets in his chauffeured car in the beginning to propose, the car does a U-turn and stops so Rollo can enter the home directly across the street.  After the rejection he decides a long walk will do him good, so he walks back across the street as his driver makes another U-turn to return to the house.

I did enjoy the series of ropes and pulleys the stranded couple finally employ to cook their breakfast was clever and funny.  When Buster dons a diving suit to make an underwater repair, he uses a lobster to clip some wires, grabs a swordfish to duel another swordfish and washes and dries his hands.  All of which elicited a smile.

There are small moments that make me smile.  A mysterious gust of wind keeps knocking off Rollo's hat, but he always has another at the ready.  When he is donning the diving suit, he is smoking a cigarette.  The girl secures the helmet and poor Rollo can't breathe as the suit fills with smoke.  His reaction is priceless.

There are other moments that feel like they should work, but never quite come together.  When the couple are first on the ship, they hear but don't see each other and begin chasing each other around, just missing seeing each other.  It's the same thing over and over and it only becomes visually interesting toward the end of the sequence.

When they first attempt to make a meal and fail, the jokes are pretty obvious.  The girl doesn't know that coffee beans need to be ground.  Buster uses seawater instead of real water.  He attempts to open a can with a cleaver.  It all feels like something is missing to get the laugh under the ideas.

The cannibal sequence feels like a complete waste.  When the natives attempt to board The Navigator on one of the ladders, Buster grabs an axe and cuts the ladder off.  And when they attempt to climb another... he grabs an axe and cuts it off.  It's not thrilling or funny.  It's just repetitive.  The resolution is the definition of deus ex machina.

The Navigator feels like the production crew found a boat first, then started trying to write the jokes around it.  As a movie, it doesn't quite work.  As a series of gags?  Some land, some don't.  However, in the end, it's Buster Keaton.  And you can always do worse than give him an hour of your time.

**1/2 out of *****

Read More

Waxworks (1924)

Directed by Leo Birinsky, Paul Leni 

Starring Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss 

Produced by Neptune-Film AG

An unnamed writer wanders through a carnival looking for a booth 10 and a job.  The owner of the wax figure exhibit there wants someone to write a compelling backstory for three of his mannequins: Harun al Raschid, Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper.  The writer sits and begins crafting the tale of Harun al Raschid, a caliph in Baghdad.

The caliph lives in a majestic castle.  At the base of one of the walls, a baker and his wife live in squalor.  One day, the caliph, already frustrated at losing a chess match to his vizier, takes out his anger upon the baker because of the smoke entering the castle from the poor man's oven.  The vizier is dispatched to take the baker's head, but is distracted by the beauty of the man's wife.  The advisor reports back to his king that there is a beautiful woman leaving outside the castle.  Curious, the caliph dons a disguise to investigate that night.  Meanwhile, the baker feeling jealous and guilty that he cannot provide more, breaks into the castle to steal the ornate wishing ring on the caliph's right hand.  How?  By chopping the arm off (which matches the wax figure who is missing an arm).  Will the baker succeed in making off with the jewel?  And can he keep his wife despite the attention of the caliph?

In the second tale, Ivan the Terrible loves torturing his victims.  In particular, he enjoys watching his poisoned prisoners die as the grains of sand move through an hourglass that counts down the last seconds of their life.  Ivan admires the skill of his poison mixer, but fears that the man may inscribe Ivan's own name on one of his hourglasses.  He dispatches his guards to imprison the poison maker, but not before the man writes on an hourglass.  Meanwhile, a noble reminds Ivan of a promise to attend his daughter's wedding.  The paranoid czar first objects to leaving the palace and opening himself to attack, but then agrees if he can switch places with the noble.  They trade clothes and soon the czar's fears are realized when archers kill the disguised nobleman.

The czar arrives at the wedding with the corpse and seems surprised that the guests are not thrilled that the bride's father is dead.  First, he demands that the guests drink and dance.  Then, he decides to take the bride for himself and sends the groom to be tortured.  Upon arriving back at the palace, Ivan discovers an hourglass with his name written on it.  As the sand slips through it, Ivan trembles in fear, then realizes he can live if he just turns the hourglass over.  Was the leader poisoned?  And will the prospect drive him mad before he dies?

The writer sits to right the third tale, but starts dozing off.  He looks up and sees that the Jack the Ripper figure has disappeared.  Suddenly, the writer and the museum owner's daughter are being chased through the surreal carnival by the living embodiment of a killer.  The couple find themselves cornered by the infamous murderer.  Will they survive the attack?  Or was it all just a dream?

Regular readers of the site know that I love my genre flicks.  And in Waxworks we have not one, but three genre stories touching on everything from comedy to horror and from fantasy to suspense, mixed with a healthy dash of Caligari-style German expressionism.

With all that going for it, I liked the film a lot, but didn't love it.

Let's start with the good.  The middle episode revolving around Ivan the Terrible had a great deal of suspense, but also some dark humor.  The tale itself is a Tolstoy-Edgar Allen Poe mashup.  The czar's paranoia is sold by Conrad Veidt's wide, darting eyes.   And the saying "just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" proves true as assassins attack the czar immediately upon exiting the palace.  

The humor for me came into play with the czar's clueless approach to the wedding.  He does not understand how the death of some random noble could put a damper on the proceedings.  The czar survived!  And he graced you all with his presence at the wedding!  More drinking!  Get the band playing!  More dancing!  Who care that the bride's father's corpse is literally left on the steps outside the hall?

When Veidt goes full on crazy at the end, it works.  His belief that continually turning the hourglass will keep him alive isn't so much a descent into madness as much as the last step in what has been a long journey.

The first tale is twice as long, but feels like it contains half the story.  It's lighter and more comedic than the other tales, but it is also full of long takes of characters looking at each other.  It definitely could have been edited down.  That said, (SPOILERS) the reveal at the end that the figure in the bed was a wax figure was both surprising and fit the framing device of the armless wax mannequin.  As I was expecting the caliph to lose his arm, this was a nice misdirection that played into the comedic tone of the story.  I also loved the stunt near the end that sees the baker leap from the palace tower onto a tree.  It was a creative and thrilling escape.

This tale is also a bit risqué in the context of the era (though not to a modern audience).  One of the first scenes between the baker and his wife sees him pounding a dough and her watching from the window.  They repeatedly cut back and forth between the two of them.  I think the look on their faces qualifies not as subtext but as supertext.  Later, the two embrace, her with a dress hanging off the shoulder and him wrapping his arms around her body.  It's sensuous in a way that contrasts starkly with the polite kisses we usually see in movies of the era.

The last tale ends up being the best and worst of the anthology.  It has the best set-up and throws a curveball at us based on what's come before.  After setting up the convention of the writer telling a tale, it's a pleasant surprise for the wax figure to come to life.  That said, I did not care for the execution.  The characters are all filmed in a way that makes them transparent.  I do not know if that was a conscious choice or simply the result of superimposing several images, but the effect is to make the characters appear ghost-like.  I never for a moment thought I was viewing reality so when the episode is revealed to be a dream, it is less a surprise than a forgone conclusion.  Beyond that, the episode is barely five minutes in a film with an 84 minute running time.  It is well done and suspenseful, but I would have spent more time with Jack the Ripper and less with the caliph.

The framing device is an effective way of telling the tale, but the ending makes no sense.  The writer (I wouldn't call him "our hero" as he hasn't done anything except write some stories) ends up embracing and kissing the daughter of the exhibit owner.  The two actors play the couple in each of the three tales, but that cannot explain how they fell in love over their storytelling.  The movie does not provide any sense that much time has passed.  They have no on-screen relationship.  The kiss just does not feel earned.

The acting here is top notch, particularly amongst the central figures.  Emil Jannings, Veidt and Werner Krauss are a dream team of German actors and it shows on the screen.  Jannings is funny, Veidt is manic and Krauss is menacing.  All perfectly inhabit the larger than life characters they portray.  

The other star here is the production design.  The first two stories have elaborate sets that were designed by Paul Leni.  There are visual cues that hit perfectly.  The palace walls that seem ready to crash upon the baker's abode.  The M.C. Escher stairs as the baker flees the palace guard.  The angled windows of the czar's torture chamber.  It all owes a great deal to the design from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but it all works here.

As I say above, Waxworks is a very good, but not great outing.  There were some slow moments, but plenty of thrills, laughs and suspense.  It could have been amazing with some tighter editing in the caliph's tale and some further expansion of the suspenseful Jack the Ripper tale.  Still, it's worth a look.

***1/2 out of *****

NOTE: The original script had a fourth wax figure representing Rinaldo Rinaldini.  Rinaldini would have been played by William Dieterle who plays the writer in the movie.  Though it was cut, you can still see the figure of Rinaldini with the tall hat in the opening.  Rinaldini was a nobleman bandit in Corsica in the 1700s (thanks Google!).

Photo from Film Sufi

Read More

Beau Brummel (1924)

Directed by Harry Beaumont
Starring John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Willard Louis
Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures

George Brummel is frustrated and angry.  The woman he loves is marrying into aristocracy and he, a lowly commoner in the army, is left on the outside looking in.  He is angry at his station in life and angry with society.  He wants vengeance...

So he establishes himself as one of the great fashion and culture trendsetters of the late 1700s.  See, because then he can make people wear silly hairstyles and...

Okay, I'm a little fuzzy on what the actual plot for vengeance is.  It honestly appears that all Beau Brummel really wants is to put himself into position to sit next to the prince and backhandedly compliment him constantly.  As retribution goes, it seems lacking, but whatever works, right?

Ultimately, Beau tries to seduce a lady of the court and the prince who has been his sponsor sends him off to France.  He loses his fortune and  ends up in a prison hospital stark raving mad.  Can he still end up with the woman he loves?

Beau Brummel is boring.  Its plot is nonsensical and almost funny, which is decidedly not the tone the film is going for.

John Barrymore is terrific in the lead role.  He has a sense of arrogance and humor that is infectious to watch.  Unfortunately, it is all in service to a story that is poorly developed.

The main failing of the film is the way the plot skips over the most interesting aspects of the story.  We start with Brummel imploring his girl not to get married.  Why is this aristocrat and commoner together?  Don't know.  Then we cut to a scene where Brummel and the prince are BFFs.  Again, how did Brummel link up with the prince.  Sorry, the film is not interested in that.  Next, Brummel is the toast of England, setting every fashion trend.  How did he become so influential?  That must be in a different movie.

The problem with this approach is the audience is told a lot of information it is never shown.

There is one small moment in the film that I thought was well realized.  Brummel has just let go his long time servant, partly because the beau has no money and partly because the man attempted to speak with the prince on his behalf.  Brummel is forced to serve himself a meal for the first time and is flummoxed. He can't even cut his own food.  It's a great character moment that shows just how pathetic the once mighty lead has become.

Ultimately, Beau Brummel wastes some lavish sets and a standout lead performance on a silly and plodding plot.  Unless your entertainment alternative is watching water boil or paint dry, skip this one.

*1/2 out of *****

Read More

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Directed by Buster Keaton

Starring Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton

Produced by Buster Keaton Productions 

A lonely projectionist sits reading while wearing a ridiculously over-sized moustache.  Why?  Because the boy has big dreams of being a detective, the book is a how-to guide for his dream profession and the moustache allows him to try out one of his disguises.



His manager is not amused and tells him to clean up the movie theater.  Fortunately, our hero finds four dollars amongst the trash in the theater as he is sweeping.  This will allow him to buy the box of chocolates he has had his eye on for his girl.  Unfortunately, theater patrons keep showing up to collect the money they lost earlier.  In the end, the projectionist is left with one dollar, enough to buy only the smallest box of chocolates.  Undeterred, he makes the purchase and heads to his girl's house.



Another suitor has his eyes on the projectionist's love interest.  The villain (we know he's a villain because of the non-fake, thin moustache) steals a watch from the girl's father, pawns it and buys that deluxe box of candy in an attempt to woo her.  The father returns to find the watch missing.  Our projectionist begins searching people for clues (he is a burgeoning detective after all), but unfortunately the villain has slipped the pawn shop receipt into the projectionist's pocket, framing him for the crime.



The would-be gumshoe attempts to shadow the the bad guy, but, after a series of misadventures, ends up trapped on top of a moving train car.  He escapes and heads back to run the projector at the theater.  While manning the booth, he falls asleep and dreams he enters the movie he is showing as the world famous detective Sherlock Jr.  Within the fake movie world, a woman's pearl necklace has been stolen.  Sherlock Jr. must evade exploding pool balls, falling medieval axes and an unmanned motorbike in order to solve the case.  Will Sherlock Jr. solve the case of his dreams?  And what will he learn that can help in find love in the real world?



Sherlock Jr. is a marvel.  It's a marvel of comedic timing, acrobatic stunt work and virtuoso camera work.  More remarkable than all of that is its structure.  It's tightly written and unspools in a near perfect manner.  



Truth be told, the first half of the film is a very basic Keaton comedy.  The gag involving the money found in the pile of trash is funny, but reminiscent of other things we have seen the star do.  Same with his shy demeanor around the woman he loves and his losing out to the larger, stronger rival.  It's classic Keaton mixed with his signature pratfalls and stunts.  



Then Keaton falls asleep.  And that ghostly version of the actor walks down the center aisle of the theater and  right into the movie screen.  He's able to work through all of his failings and insecurities in a storyline that parallels his own real-life situation, but only now he's a step ahead and not a mile behind.  He knows the right thing to say.  He is confident.  He is the great detective and hero of his dreams.



The comedic pieces in the last half of the film range from subtle tricks to full-blown comedic action.  Keaton's trick billiards shooting that constantly avoids an explosive number 13 ball is tense and funny.   The final chase sequence that finds Keaton perched on the handlebars of a motorcycle with no driver is thrilling.  

However, there are two just jaw-dropping effects used here.  In one, Keaton dives out a window and through a screen he had set up earlier.  He lands disguised as an old woman.  How did he do it?  No idea, and I'm not going to google it and ruin the surprise.  In the second, his partner is standing against a wall with an open suitcase.  Keaton dives into the case and disappears.  Again, I don't want to know how he did.  I just love the genius of the move.



I love the epilogue.  Despite Keaton believing himself to be the detective, it is his girl who pounds the pavement to uncover the real criminal.  The end finds the projectionist and his girl in the projection booth.  Keaton knows he is not Sherlock Jr., but he still wants to be more than the shy suitor we followed in the first half of the film.  His solution?  He looks to the movie screen and takes his cues on wooing the woman he loves by replicating the moves of the lead actor.  It's a great moment both recognizing the power that wish fulfillment plays in our love of movies and the way that movies can  inform the way we act.



I only have one issue with the movie and it's when he first steps into the film within a film.  There is an extended sequence where the background he is acting in changes to comic effect.  For example, he goes to jump into the water of the ocean and the scene changes to a snow bank as he jumps.  It's amusing and has a "how did he do that?" quality.  The issue is, it makes no sense in the context of the story.  Why would there be a series of random backgrounds inserted into the movie?  It's Keaton showing off with the camera for the sake of showing off.  The moment is so well executed, it can almost be forgiven.



Sometimes this blog is about charting the regression of stars (See the recent review of D.W. Griffith's America).  With Keaton, the films just get better and better.  Sherlock Jr. is a near perfect combination of acting, story, technical skill and comedy that justifies its place in cinema as a classic.  At 44 minutes long, there is no excuse to miss this one.



***** out of *****



NOTE: In the sequence where Keaton jumps off the back of the moving train and onto the water tower, he actually fractured his neck, though he wouldn't realize that until years later.

Read More

America (1924)

Directed by D.W. Griffith

Starring Neil Hamilton, Carol Dempster, Lionel Barrymore

Produced by D.W. Griffith Productions 

Nathan Holden, a farmer and courier, is enamored of two things: his involvement with the revolutionaries in the nascent Sons of Liberty movement opposing Great Britain in the 1700s, and his infatuation with Nancy Montague, a rich woman he encountered on one of his mail runs to Virginia.  Unfortunately for Nathan, the Montagues are loyalists through and through, and the patriarch of the Montagues hates rebels.

Holden delivers a dispatch to the Virginia legislature and sees Nancy again.  They share a moment before Justice Montague enflames the crowd in the legislature with his Tory views.  Nancy leaves with her father and Holden returns to Lexington.  

The Montagues travel to Lexington at the same time the British are preparing to attack.  Holden has a flirtatious and comical interlude with Nancy at her balcony that is interrupted by her father.  We get a lot of historical reenactments next Paul Revere's ride, the Battles of Concord and Lexington and the Battle of Bunker Hill.  During this, Holden accidentally shoots Justice Montague and Nancy's brother Charles sides with the rebels and is killed at Bunker Hill.

Lurking in the background of these events is Captain Walter Butler, a captain in the British army who works with the Indians to brutally torture and murder the revolutionaries.  Butler has designs on crushing the rebellion and installing himself as the new emperor of America.  He also wants Nancy to become his queen.  Will Holden and the revolutionaries succeed in repelling Butler and his men?  

In watching films, there are a lot of variables affecting me in different ways, but I basically have two levels of evaluation: is it entertaining and does it make me think?  A movie can be massively entertaining so I overlook its flaws.  Or a film can be so well-constructed, I find myself lost in the structure, ignoring how dull the actual plot may be.

This movie did not entertain me and it did not make me think.

The obvious point of comparison for America is Griffith's earlier work The Birth of a Nation.  Here, Griffith is using the exact same film techniques and structural elements that served him well in his repugnant masterpiece, but that's exactly the problem.  It's been nine years and there's no more tools in his tool box.  

Beyond that, this is a far sloppier film.  The first half is charitably a mess.  Holden is embroiled in the events of the American Revolution, but almost as though he is Forrest Gump being inserted at the periphery of the frame.  He walks into a room and there's Sam Adams and John Hancock.  Why?  Because we get to name-drop some people you may have heard of.  There are other scenes like Paul Revere's ride that are thrilling, but entirely disconnected from the main plot.  And then there are moments where we cut to historic moments for their own sake.  We see the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Again, why?  Because we've all heard of that.  It has nothing to do with the characters and none of them even react to it anyway.

The second half plays more to Griffith's strengths and becomes a tale of a man trying to save the woman he loves and prove himself to her father.  Of course, Justice Montague will see the error of his ways (kind of hard not to when Captain Butler kills your brother for no good reason).  Of course Nathan and Nancy will get together (despite some of the Romeo and Juliet cues).  Griffith does some fine work in battle and chase sequences here, but none of it seems as inspired or passionate as essentially identical scenes in The Birth of a Nation.
The actors here are just okay with the exception of Lionel Barrymore.  His Captain Butler is over-the-top evil, which would normally bother me.  In the context of America though it works because he is the only character of any interest on the screen.  He has some dimension and always has more going on behind his eyes, which is an under-appreciated aspect of acting in the silent era.

There are moments that work.  Paul Revere's ride is a great short film that had no business being in the movie.  The moment where Nancy presents her dead brother to his father, but hides his rebel sympathies is moving.  And the final chase and rescue all work.

Unfortunately, Griffith appears to have lost his mojo here in America.  He goes back to a well he's visited several times to find it bone dry.  I am still interested in what else he has up his sleeve, but a lot of other directors are starting to lap him.  

** out of *****

Note: During Paul Revere's ride, Revere rides his horse up a small set of stairs.  The horse then turns to leave and falls, actor and all.  Guess the budget only called for one take?

Note 2: Neil Hamilton who plays Nathan is probably (definitely?) better known to modern audiences as Commissioner Gordon in the campy Batman television series.

Read More

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sojin, Snitz Edwards

Produced by Douglas Fairbanks Pictures 

The streets of Bagdad bustle with activity.  Merchants ply their wares and the wealthy move from stand to stand.  Seemingly oblivious to it all, a young man sleeps on a ledge.  However, once one of the bazaar's well-to-do customers pauses before the sleeping man, his eyes open and his hand finds the rich man's purse.

The thief moves on to other adventures on the Bagdad streets.  He steals bread from a balcony.  He slips the ring off the finger of an aristocrat.  And he steals a remarkable magic rope that rises into the air like a pole with the slightest gesture.  At the end of his day, he takes his loot back to his home, an alcove in the bottom of a well that he shares with another thief.

The magic rope allows him to formulate a plan.  He can use it to scale the walls of the caliph's castle at night and steal some valuables inside.  His plan is successful until he is captivated by the beauty of the sleeping princess in the castle.  He is almost captured, but escapes with only one treasure, the slipper of the girl he has fallen for.

Soon, we find out that the princess is to marry and that princely suitors are arriving in Bagdad to win her hand.  The thief is not a prince, but he can steal some clothes to look the part.  He becomes one of four potential husbands for the girl.  And the princess is instantly drawn to our thief in his guise of Prince Ahmed.  She has to choose her prince and she chooses Ahmed.

Unfortunately, one of the princess' slave girls saw the thief the night before and recognizes him.  The slave also happens to be a spy for the Mongol prince who covets both the city of Bagdad and the princess.  The Mongol hopes to marry into the object of his desire, but is prepared to take it by force.

Ahmed reveals his criminal past to the princess, but not before the slave has ratted him out to the king.  Ahmed is captured, beaten and sentenced to death, but the princess helps him escape.

The king now forces the princess to pick another husband.  To draw out the decision, she decides she will wed the man who bring her the rarest treasure a week later.  The three remaining princes set off to find treasure and win the princess' hand.  Before leaving though, the Mongol prince begins bringing disguised troops into the city as a contingency plan.

However, our thief learns of a treasure that may allow him to become a prince.  He must set off on a quest through many trials to attain it, but at the end he can be with his love and earn happiness.

Will the thief succeed in his quest?  And what of the 20,000 Mongol troops who have snuck into the city?

In The Thief of Bagdad, we have another lavish Douglas Fairbanks production.  The biggest difference between this and his previous work?  The Thief of Bagdad is a massive spectacle filled with special effects and trick photography that provide thrills.  In Robin Hood, Zorro and The Three Musketeers, Fairbanks WAS the special effect.

The production here is appropriately massive in scale.  The action moves from the streets of Bagdad to the cavernous palace to the various trials the thief must complete and all of them are impressive.  The production design is one of the great strengths of the film.

The last third of the film provides a perfect template that numerous other films and video games have followed.  The thief must complete a series of tasks, earning mystical items along the way to help him complete future trials.  And each of the tasks is more thrilling than the previous ones.  Among the items he uses in his inventory: a medallion that brings a tree to life, a flying horse (a crude but really effective special effect), and a cloak of invisibility.

His ultimate prize is a chest that will allow him to conjure whatever he wishes; it operates like a magic lamp without an annoying genie or an arbitrary limit on the number of wishes.  The way the thief uses the chest are pretty obvious, but also perfectly realized.  In order to fight the Mongol forces, Ahmed conjures his own army from the sands.  The effect of the puffs of smoke as each soldier is created is simple, but again perfect.

The primary issues I had with the film come in the first half.  I hated the first half hour of the film.  It was repetitive, overly-long and had that acting style that causes people to be turned off by silents.  Once the thief meets the princess, the movie switches gears from annoying to dull.  The audience knows where it is all going, but the movie plods along to get there.  Once the thief sets off on his quest, the set pieces take over the film and elbow out the opportunities for overacting by Fairbanks and the rest of the cast.

In a film with several bad actors, Fairbanks is actually the worst for me.  His every arm gesture and look reminded me of a bad Vegas magician.  Think Gob from Arrested Development.  He reminded me of something Will Smith said when he moved from television to the big screen: actors on a large canvas can communicate more with small movements; on the small TV screen, you need bigger movements to communicate with the audience. 

Fairbanks does every movement with a flourish.  It's frustrating to watch.  I know some claim that this type of overacting was typical of the silent era, but I have seen too many examples that shatter that myth to give Fairbanks a pass here.  Fortunately, the spectacle and story take over the latter half of the film and Fairbanks has less opportunity to mug for the camera.

There are a couple of actors whose performances were fantastic.  Sojin as the Mongol prince always conveyed that aura of menace without moustache twirling (and he certainly had the moustache to twirl).  Anna May Wong as the Mongol spy was brilliant.  You could always see there was more going on behind her eyes than she was letting on.

There is one plot point that bugged me.  SPOILERS AHEAD.  All three of the other suitors find magical items as their rare treasure to present to the princess.  The Mongol prince finds a magical apple that can restore life and health to someone who is dying.  The other two procure a flying carpet and a crystal ball that shows events in other places.  To give himself a leg up, the Mongol prince sends someone ahead to Bagdad to poison the princess so he can swoop in and restore her to health.  I thought that was a diabolically clever plan.

Sadly, he executes it by asking the one prince to look into the crystal ball to see that the princess is dying and then all three use the magic carpet to speed to the princess' rescue.  Once the princess is saved, they all have a legitimate claim to having saved the princess.  Why didn't he just head to Bagdad on his own?

So now the king has to decide.  So the Mongol prince states he will bide his time.  And apparently, in Mongolia, "bide your time" translates to "unleash your army of 20,000 soldiers on the city" because that's what happens immediately after he says it.  I can't help but feel like there are scenes or lines of dialogue missing to explain this.  I acknowledge I am nitpicking, but I was impressed enough with the villain's initial plan that the way it failed felt like a cheat.

I almost turned off The Thief of Bagdad a half an hour into its running time.  I'm glad I stuck with it.  The entertainment value of the second half of the film is off the charts and the special effects are fantastic in a "how did they do that in 1924?" kind of way.

*** out of *****

Read More

The Iron Horse (1924)

Laying the rails for Western expansion

Young Davy Brandon loves his life in Springfield, Illinois in the mid 1800s. His father is a local surveyor and he plays games pretending to be a surveyor with his best friend Miriam. However, when his dad decides to find his fortune by going west to survey the best route for a hypothetical railroad, Davy packs up and heads off with the same grim determination his father displays. Their friend Marsh thinks the Brandons are crazy, but a neighbor named Abe admires their tenacity.

One night, they come across a pass through the mountains. Davy's father is excited to find the shortcut as it will save time and money in traveling by rail. His satisfaction is short-lived however; Indians descend upon the camp site, killing the senior Brandon while his son watches, hidden in the bushes. Davy's father's killer? A white man with two fingers who has cast his lot with the natives.

Years pass. Abe is now President of the U.S. (what? Like there could have been a different Abe from Springfield, Illinois?). President Lincoln signs a bill authorizing the construction of two railroads: one starting from Sacramento, California and going east, and the other from Omaha, Nebraska headed west. Marsh is now working to build the railway and his daughter Miriam is engaged to her father's chief engineer Jesson.

The life of a worker on the railway is tough. The men sing songs to pass the time and, when the Indians perform their hit and run attacks, the workers pick up their rifles and return fire.

Managing the railway work is a precarious juggling act. One fierce Indian attack robs the pay train, meaning no wages for the workers. The men are about to strike, when Miriam steps in and appeals to the workers' patriotism to keep them on the job.

Marsh is running low on money and has to find a new passage through the mountains for his railroad. The powerful Bauman owns the the land along the more expensive route so he maneuvers Jesson to prevent any deviation from the longer, but more expensive path.

One day, as Marsh is inspecting the railway by locomotive they find a Pony Express rider being attacked by Indians. They save the man and discover it is Davy Brandon all grown up. Davy is thrilled to see Miriam, but disappointed to learn she is engaged.

Marsh explains his need for a shorter path to Brandon and Davy remembers the pass his father showed him when he was a boy. Brandon agrees to locate the pass and heads out with Jesson, but Bauman has convinced the engineer that life would be better if Davy never returned from the trip.

Will Bauman succeed in his plans? Will Davy or Jesson end up with Miriam's hand? And will Brandon discover his father's murderer?

Movies are tricky. There are so many variables that go into whether or not a film works. The right cast, a good script, casting the right actors, getting a good crew. When you add locations and hundreds of extras to the normal issues, there is the potential for disaster.

All of which makes the achievement of John Ford's The Iron Horse all the more remarkable.

Ford has crafted a 2-1/2 hour epic that functions as drama, melodrama, historic documentary and propaganda, with healthy doses of comedy and romance.

The Indian attack on the Brandon camp is a study in editing and camerawork, dripping with suspense and perfectly executed. The way the father becomes suddenly serious, his eyes darting around as he grabs his son. The close-up on the feet of the Indians as they creep toward the camp. Ford knows how to get your heart pumping.

The Iron Horse also features some amazing shots of the American landscape. There's the opening shot of a flock of sheep being herded. Numerous shots of horses sweeping over the plains. Epic views of a massive cattle drive. All gorgeous and perfectly shot.

However, when the scene calls for movement, Ford's camera flies with kinetic energy. My personal favorites are the numerous tracking shots following horses in full gallop, though there are also ones mounted from the train's POV and even one where the train rides over top the camera (a common shot today that must have been jarring to the audience of the time).

For comic relief, we get a trio of soldiers working on the railroad. Corporal Casey, Sargeant Slattery and Private Schultz are the movie's self-proclaimed "three musketeers," and their banter is both fun and character-revealing. Halfway through the film, their appearance on-screen becomes enough to elicit a smile. Their interactions demonstrate a relationship that has existed long before the cameras started documenting it. In the end, they prove their mettle as much more then a set of clowns.

The casting throughout is spot-on. Everyone looks the part. You believe the cast of rugged adventurers and grizzled soldiers. The most movie idol looking actor is George O'Brien in the lead, but he's big enough and good enough that he sells it.

There are some remarkable moments of American history here. I was particularly struck by the way the headquarters for Union Pacific would move along the railroad as it was being built. Seeing hundreds of people pack up their homes and stores to caravan to the next location was astonishing, raising practical issues from my country's history I never considered. How accurate is the movie? No idea, but it has me asking questions I never thought of before. And that is worth a lot.


The film crescendos into a finale that resolves all of the film's major plot points. The Union Pacific workers face off against the Indians over the path of the railway. Davy confronts his father's murderer. Even the massive cattle drive we've got documentary-like glimpses of becomes a minor plot point. Characters we have come to love do not survive. It's high drama and great action.

That's not to say the movie is perfect. It isn't. Miriam is a weak character. Her rousing speech to the troops is not particularly rousing and she remains more a plot device than a character throughout.

The movie also has a moment where one additional sentence would have resolved a massive conflict. Davy promises Miriam he won't fight Jesson. When Davy walks into the saloon, he tries to reconcile with his rival, but Jesson refuses. Then, when Davy tries to leave, Jesson tries to shoot him in the back. They get into a fight (which is poorly choreographed but brutal). When Miriam enters and tells Davy he broke his promise, it comes off as silly.  And Davy never points out that her prince of a fiance tried to kill him.

The Iron Horse is a movie of big ideas and small moments, told on an expansive canvas with American history as its compelling backdrop. Ford shows himself to be a masterful storyteller. More than the narrative though, what sticks with you is the portrait of America as a place where, working together, people can move heaven and earth. Is this slice of Americana propaganda? Absolutely. And I mean that it the best way.

***** out of *****

Read More

Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924)

Directed by Yakov Protazanov
Starring Yuliya Solntseva, Igor Ilyinsky and Nikolai Tsereteli
Produced by  Mezhrabpom-Rus


Engineer Los is a good Soviet.  He believes in the cause.  And thanks to a mysterious message he is convinced emanated from Mars, he is building a spaceship.

Los and his wife Natasha are compelled to take on Ehrlich as a tenant by the government.  Ehrlich longs for the good old days when he had plenty.  Living in a society that rations food is cramping his style.  So, he works the black market to procure luxuries like sugar.

Ehrlich gets the attention of Natasha through chocolates and other forbidden goods.  One day, Los comes home and catches his wife being affectionate with Ehrlich.  He loses it and shoots his wife.


Los moves outside Moscow and adopts the persona of Spiridinov, a colleague of Los who could be his twin save for a beard and shaggier hair.  He works feverishly to complete his rocket ship.

Through it all, the mysterious Queen Aelita is watching Los from Mars through a telescope designed by a Martian scientist.  She catches a glimpse of the scientist and immediately falls in love.  The emperor of Mars Tuskub prohibits her from looking through the device, but she sneaks a peek whenever she can.

Los and Aelita are destined to meet of course.  Will it be love at first sight for the alien and the human?  Can Los help Aelita overthrow the totalitarian Martian ruler?  And if she succeeds, will she be a better ruler?

Aelita, Queen of Mars is the first Soviet science fiction film.  It's sci-fi, but it is also an historical account of early Soviet life, a melodrama and a propaganda film.  So how was it?

Absurd.  Silly.  And half of it is a lot of fun.

The overall story is the weakest link.  The first half of the movie focuses primarily on the day-to-day existence of the denizens of Moscow and it's pretty boring.  The same themes are repeated over and over.  Los looks ineffectual as his wife falls for the profiteer Ehrlich.  The guy's not much of a hero to center the film around and any heroic notions you have about him evaporate when he pulls a gun and shoots his wife.

From that moment on though, the movie is goofy fun, particularly for a modern audience.  Los disguises himself and finishes construction of the rocket.  An idealistic soldier named Gusev gets married to a nurse, but is quickly bored and signs onto the mission to go to Mars.  How does he do this?  He walks into the warehouse where they are building the rocket and asks to go.  Moments later he's professing to his wife how excited he is to go to Mars tomorrow.  Goofy fun.

Meanwhile, an inept police non-detective (they never really explain what he is) named Kravtsov investigates the murder of Natasha.  He does this by having a dog sniff a glove at Los' home in Moscow and then follows the animal directly to the rocketship and the disguised Los.  More goofy fun.

The ship takes off with some impressive-for-their-time special effects.  There are miniatures and other slight of hand that sell the experience.  Obviously, today we know that three guys building a rocket in the country and taking a day trip to the next planet over is patently silly, but that only adds to the charm and fun of it.

Soon, we are on Mars and the spectacle completely supplants the plot.  It does not really matter because the production design of the alien planet is visually captivating.  It's a series of M.C. Escher staircases, sliding doors and angled walls.  The queen sports a hair style that would make Princess Leia say "Now, THAT is over the top."

The martian society is under-developed on screen, but is interesting in its own right.  There is an upper ruling class and a lower worker class.  The worker class wear dehumanizing boxes on their head.  At one point, the emperor decrees that a third of the workers shall be frozen.  We get a striking image of workers entering a revolving door-like machine that spits out their lifeless bodies on a conveyor belt.  The bodies are stacked in piles underground.  Crazy ideas and imagery, but the director doesn't dwell on them much.

We also see one of the first tropes of many a science fiction film: the assembly of the spaceship crew.  Let's see, you have the scientist, the muscle and the comic relief.  How many times have we seen that combo in movies over time?

Can you find the Soviet symbolism hidden in this frame?

In the end, the queen and Los lead an uprising of the workers. The propaganda elements of the film, which have been drifting just below the surface, emerge like Shamu through a flaming hoop.  There's literally an image of a buff, chained guy hammering a strip of metal into a sickle.  Subtle it is not.

The mix of melodrama and sci-fi never quite congeal to provide a coherent tale or point.  The plot ultimately lurches from point to seemingly-contradictory-point. The final images of the film call into question everything that came before.  If it's propaganda, doesn't the epilogue eliminate the point of the battle and struggle on Mars?

In the end, it does not really matter as long as you go for the ride and don't think too hard.  The final half of the Aelita, Queen of Mars is cinematic junk food wrapped in sci-fi candy shell.  The propaganda?  That's just a slightly bitter aftertaste.

*** out of *****

Read More

Michael (1924)

The master and his model

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring Walter Slezak, Benjamin Christensen and Nora Gregor
Produced by Universum Film (UFA)

Claude Zoret is a master painter, having made a fortune off of his portraits.  His paintings are in high demand, none more than those featuring his adopted son Michael as the model.

However, there's more going on between Michael and the Master.  The way Zoret's face lights up when the young man enters the room.  The way Michael rubs the older man's feet.  The hand holding that lingers a few seconds more than a friendly greeting.

Their relationship is upended by the arrival of a destitute countess.  She's looking to bilk someone out of some money.  Zoret wants nothing to do with her, but agrees to paint her portrait.  Michael on the other hand falls for the temptress.

Zoret finishes the painting of the countess, but cannot get the eyes right.  He lets Michael try to paint the eyes and he does an expert job.  He does so well in fact that the reviews come in identifying the eyes as the only good part of the painting.

Zoret discovers his masterpiece The Victor, which he gave to his young lover as a gift, is being sold.  Michael is selling the piece to get some cash for the countess.  Rather than confront Michael, Zoret purchases the painting back and returns it to his former lover's apartment.

Will Michael return to Zoret?  Does the Master have one more painting in him?  And how far will Michael go to make a buck for his new love?

Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael is my first introduction to the German director's oeuvre.  I have had some experience with the German expressionists, but this is a more straightforward drama.

And one I did not care for.

The story does not work very well as a love triangle story.  As I described above, Zoret and Michael's relationship is implicit, while Michael and the countess is on the back burner for much of the movie.

I think Michael is more successful as a rumination on art.  Zoret is not a successful painter until he meets and falls in love with his young model.  That passion is what inspires Zoret's pen, and when he loses Michael, he loses his muse.  However, in the end, he is able to produce his ultimate masterpiece, born not out of love, but out of suffering.  A work featuring a man lying in pain on a beach with a background of skies inspired by his sketches from Algiers, sketches completed during a trip with Michael.

What does not work is the way this story is told.  The editing is incredibly choppy in moments, followed by 90 seconds of characters giving each other knowing looks and stares.  The movie plays like Soap Opera Acting 101.  Look angry, look hurt, look confused.  Perfect!  Now, hold that for a minute.

The result is a pace that moves like a snail on Ambien moving through molasses.  The camerawork is beautiful throughout, but the tale could have been told as effectively in half the time.

Benjamin Christensen is great playing Claude Zoret.  He provides you a map of his pain and suffering throughout that grounds the story for the viewer.  The rest of the cast is unremarkable.  Walter Slezak's Michael in particular seems to exist not as an actual person, but as a concept in the movie.  You never really feel much sense of why he's doing what he is doing.

There's a subplot in the film involving another love triangle, but it is not terribly well-fleshed out and exists as a counterpoint to the central relationship.  The editing means we violently lurch into the tale and just as quickly exit it throughout the film's runtime.

Some good camera work and a fine central performance, but other than that, Michael is a chore.  Watch it for a few minutes for the sense of atmosphere, then move along.

** out of *****

Read More

A Couple of Disney Shorts (1924)

Directed by Walt Disney

Starring Virginia Davis

Produced by Walt Disney Productions

As I thought about approaching my first Walt Disney-created footage, I reflected on the animator's place in film history.  There are obvious cinematic pioneers like D.W. Griffith, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese... but I think Disney has got to be in the conversation at least.  He was a pioneer of not just animation, but musicals and camera movement (albeit drawn at 24 frames a second).  Half a century later, he is still the producer of the definitive versions of Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio.  Seeing how I can't get my kids interested in anything over 12 hours old, that's a feat.

All that as prologue to say how disappointed I was in my experience watching these Disney cartoons.

In Alice's Day at Sea, an alarm clock comes to life to wake up Alice's dog, who dresses himself and wakes up Alice.  The dog then drives Alice (yes, you read that right) to the beach where she talks to a sailor and falls asleep in a boat.  She awakens to discover her boat has been whisked out to sea where it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  She interacts with animated fish and a menacing octopus, before waking up to discover it was all a dream and she's still on.

In Alice's Spooky Adventure, she's playing with a group of kids when their ball flies into the window of a spooky old house.  Alice is the only one with the courage to go and retrieve the ball.  Once in the house, she encounters a box that moves on its own (thanks to the black cat inside it).  She ends up covered in a sheet, looking like a ghost, before pulling off the impromptu costume and having a ceiling collapse on her.  Unconscious, she dreams of an animated haunted town where she is being chased by ghosts.  One of the ghosts asks her to "take it off" (minds out of the gutter, people!) and under the sheet is a black cat.  Alice and the cat successfully battle the ghosts and the cat professes his love for her, kissing her hand.  Alice awakes to find the black cat from earlier is licking her hand.  She finds the ball and runs out to find a policeman who noticed the broken window.  The officer takes Alice to jail for the crime.

First, the good.  I think some of the live action sequences that bookend the cartoons are interesting and humorous.  There are some subtle and innovative animation and effects incorporated into those sequences that work.  Disney takes Alice's dog and makes him a real character (in fact, he's a lot like a real life version of Mickey Mouse's pet Pluto).  I found myself wishing the cartoons were about the dog and not Alice.

The animated sequences that are the meat of the films come off as a pale imitation of the Fleischer Brothers' Out of the Inkwell series.  Where that series has some truly remarkable interaction between the cartoon and real worlds, here Alice basically stands around looking cute in the middle of the animated environment.  There is not a lot of physical contact between the worlds and when they do touch, it's not a great effect.  It seems like a step backward.

Virginia Davis (Alice) looks the part, but is not that great an actress.  When she stretches after waking up, it looks exactly like someone telling a kid to pretend they are waking up.  Of course, for most of the film, she's just pointing and laughing at things going on around her so it's not like there is much heavy lifting.

The narrative here is just an excuse to get to the animation.  And the animation is that style that annoys me.  I get why in the early days of the medium they had a lot of repeated movements (you can reuse the same drawings), but it makes me impatient watching it.

Overall, these feel more like exercises in film-making than actual short films.  I loved everything with the dog, but that was about it.  I'll probably check out more in future years to see if there's a progression, but so far I am underwhelmed.

Alice's Day at Sea: ** out of *****
Alice's Spooky Adventure: *1/2 out of *****

NOTE: While Alice's Day at Sea was the first released short, it was not the first one Disney made.  He created Alice's Wonderland with Davis in the lead role while heading up Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, MO.  The studio went bankrupt, Disney moved to Los Angeles where he raised money to get a fresh start and he asked Davis' family to relocate.  The rest is history.

Read More

1924: Greed Is Good... but Can You Cut It to Two Hours?

Cut my film? You amuse me...

Welcome to 1924!  This is the year we raise a glass for the start of Toastmasters International.  Huzzah!

In world news, Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin campaigns for the leadership spot in the Soviet Union.  And by "campaigns," I mean brutally kills anyone else with designs on the job.  In the Summer Olympics in France, Johnny Weissmuller wins three gold medals, instantly qualifying him to be Tarzan.  Because you remember what the last Tarzan looked like, right?  This is also the year that brought us the founding of IBM and the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (now becoming a movie representing the new nadir of creativity in Hollywood).

In the film world, Walt Disney begins pumping out short films centered around a character called Alice.  The Fleischer Brothers produce animated films with soundtracks and audience participation (leading directly to cross-dressing at midnight showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show).  MGM is born out of the merger of three other studios and Columbia Pictures gets its name (it was previously called the far less catchy CBC Film Sales Company).

One of the other big stories was the production of one of Erich von Stroheim's masterpieces, Greed.  The film was originally ten hours long, but MGM demanded it be cut down to two hours.  The director disavowed the film.  I would love to report that this is the first use of Alan Smithee as a pseudonym, but that sadly does not occur until 1968.  The unedited version is lost, though there is apparently a four hour version out there.  Bottom line: MGM demands a cut of a film called Greed to make more money with no sense of irony.

So, what are we watching?  Unfortunately, Greed is not available on DVD.  Disney's short is on YouTube (yeah!) with Dutch subtitles (ugh).  Netflix is streaming The Thief of Baghdad (featuring Douglas Fairbanks being roguish I imagine), Aelita, Queen of Mars (1st Russian sci-fi film ever? I am SO there!), Michael (a German drama) and The Gold Rush (by some guy named Chaplin... think he might be big some day).  There's also America from D.W. Griffith (been some time since we checked in with him), The Iron Horse by John Ford (which is a must watch for me), and The Navigator (Buster Keaton!).  So settle into your seats: we may be here a while.

Read More