Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912)

So far I've been out of luck finding any available feature films from 1912 from Netflix or other sources.  Instead, here's another early genre film.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the earliest film adaptation of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson tale.  The movie is directed by Lucius Henderson and stars James Cruze in the dual role of Jekyll and Hyde.

The film opens with Jekyll drinking the formula that turns him into Hyde.  After a few moments, he takes another liquid that transforms him back.  Over the next few months, he falls in love with the minister's daughter, but he has also lost control of his transformations into his alter ego.  Can he find a cure before he destroys the lives of all those around him?

This is not a great movie. Unlike other versions I'm familiar with, Mr. Hyde here is basically an out-of-control chimpanzee.  You know he's a bad guy because he throws things around in the lab and knocks a little girl over in the street.  There's one moment of violence, but the movie never really gives Hyde the sense of menace he needs (and at an eight minute running time, never has much chance).

The only thing I thought was really done in the movie was the initial transformation.  While the camera trick they use is fairly obvious, it's very effectively done.  It is also clear that the movie industry is learning from its successes as this is much better than The Wizard of Oz from just two years earlier.

Watching this feels like a bit of a step back from the other films I've seen.  I'm curious to see how other fimmakers continue to fair against the likes of D.W. Griffith and Thomas Ince moving forward.

Available for free on YouTube.

Random film fact: In certain scenes, an actor named Harry Benham portrays Hyde in an uncredited appearance.

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The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)

Here's another by legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith.  The Musketeers of Pig Alley is the earliest example of a gangster film and features Lillian Gish in one of her first screen roles.  The film follows a musician and his fiancee as they struggle in New York City.  The musician leaves in order to make some money.  While he is away, the young woman meets the Snapper Kid, head of a gang in the slum.  The musician returns a richer man, only to have his wallet taken by the Snapper Kid.  After the death of the girl's mother, a friend takes her to a ball with the gangsters.  The girl is almost drugged by a rival gangster when the Snapper Kid intervenes.  The argument over the girl erupts into a battle in Pig Alley.  Will the Snapper Kid survive and elude the cops?  Can the musician get his money back?

Of the films I've watched so far, this is easily the most violent.  The gun battle is quick, but gives you a sense of the brutality of it despite the lack of sound.  Griffith continues to prove his mastery of both shooting and editing film. There's one shot in particular where the Snapper Kid walks into a full close-up of his face which provides a great sense of mood.  The film creates a great atmosphere with the Snapper Kid's cigarette smoke wafting into the frame in certain scenes before you even know he is there.

Some more movie tropes are on display.  Obviously, the Snapper Kid is about as stereotypically a gangster as you could expect. He cocks his hat in his first appearance and the hat stays exactly in place for the remainder of the movie.  This is essentially every gangster you've seen in the first half of the 1900s, including James Cagney.  Although her appearance is brief, the woman's friend who shows up to take her mind off her mother's death exists in just about every romantic comedy of the last 30 years.  And of course, the musician to demonstrate his lack of cash, reaches into his pocket and pulls it completely out.

I liked this film, though not as much as Griffith's previous work.  There was a lot going on over the course of 17 minutes, but I thought the pace really slowed leading up to the gun battle.  The short shoot-out was well done and the ending has some great pantomime by the actors, particularly the gangster, that made me laugh out loud.

Watched on YouTube
Image from Some Came Running

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1912: Birth of a Studio (or Three)

Time to leave 1911 and jump ahead to 1912.  The theme in this year is the birth of a lot of things we all take for granted today.  IMP and other studios merge to form Universal Pictures Company.  That's right: the studio that brought you Jaws, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future and E.T. got its start in 1912.  Paramount's precursor, the Famous Players Film Company, and the Fox Film Foundation are founded this year as well.  And notably, the Technicolor Company forms to start development of early color film.

Beyond the studios, some simple innovations occur.  Thomas Ince gains prominence for developing shooting scripts and production budgets, both unheard of at the time.  Fanboys get their start with Photoplay, the first magazine devoted to film.  Oliver Twist becomes the first feature-length U.S.-produced movie shown in its entirety.  Two films based on the sinking of the Titanic appear in theaters mere months after the disaster.  Moviegoers also get their first gangster film (D.W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley).

So what am I looking forward to this month?  I need to check availability, but I want to track down Richard III, the oldest surviving feature length U.S. film.  Quo Vadis? is considered one of the first successful feature films so that will likely be on the list. I am also trying to make a point of following Griffith and Ince moving forward, so films from them will likely be on the list.

Picture from Magazine Art.org

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L'Inferno (1911)

Today's movie marks a shift in a lot of ways. It's the first feature length presentation I've reviewed, clocking in at 67 minutes (not a lot by today's standards but more than the 13 minutes I've been averaging).  I watched it on DVD and not a computer monitor which added a lot to the experience.  It also featured modern music as the film was restored and scored ith music by Tangerine Dream, a German electronic group.

L'Inferno is based on the Divine Comedy by Dante and was directed by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro.  The film follows Dante as he is led through the rings of hell by Virgil.  The film took over three years to complete and was the first feature film to be shown in its entirety in the U.S.

The movie is on the whole great for its time, though modern audiences will find it a bit slow. The special effects were amazing for the time period with very detailed costumes and some great camera tricks.  This is also the first film I watched where production design was really notable.  The sets and locations used really evoke a gothic mood and are very effective at making the viewer feel like the leads are descending into hell.  The movie stacked with extras as the denizens of hell which gives you a sense of Hell being endless.

The film has some effects that stand up today.  When Dante and Virgil encounter the cardinal sinners blown by winds, a combination of effects including some stop motion gives a real sense of the vastness of hell. The effects used to create Lucifer are also very effective (saying more would spoil it).  Other effects, while amazing for the time do not hold up so well (Cerebus, I'm looking in your direction).

The film is well done, but moves very slowly.  It manages to be simultaneously very literal and very impressionistic.  The general format of the movie is to show us text describing a scene and then act out exactly that scene.  Repeat.  Because the movie is basically following two characters who are witnessing evenets and not really interacting with anyone, you never have any real sense of danger. It's more of a travelogue than a drama.

Finally, I have to say that Tangerine Dream's modern score made me want to take ice picks to my ears. It almost never synched with what was happening on the screen and the vocals were really distracting.

Final word is that this is a good movie for people with an interest in film history or early special effects, but is otherwise a monotonous undertaking.

DVD rented from Netflix.

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Random 1911 Movie Thought...

A movie titled "Friday the 13th" came out in 1911.  I'm going to go ahead an assume that this was not a turn of the century slasher movie about coeds at a summer camp.

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Little Nemo (1911)

Now for a touch of the surreal.

This movie is an adaptation of a weekly comic strip created by Winsor McCay that ran from 1905 to 1914.  The strip was a journey into the dreams of a young boy named Nemo.  Through his sleep, he was trying to reach Slumberland to play with the daughter of King Morpheus.  This strips would end with Nemo awakened from his dream, usually because of some terrifying event taking place in his subconscious.

The movie of course takes this fantastical world and does its own meta take on it. The basic plot is that McCay boasts he will create 4000 images from his strip and create an animated movie, an idea that is mocked by his friends.  The rest of the movie follows a comedic interpretation of McCay's attempts to bring his strip to life.

The plot of the movie is slight and not terribly interesting.  McCay ends up contending with bumbling assistants and a ridiculous amount of paper.  Modern audiences will know exactly how this is going to end.  Also, after discussing some fun movie tropes with The Lonedale Operator, here we get the equivalent of the money bag with the '$' sign on it as laborers bring in barrels and boxes that helpfully labeled 'INK' and 'DRAWING PAPER'.

That said, this movie has two things to recommend it.  First, throughout the film there are shots of McCay drawing his elaborate creations freehand. It really is amazing to watch his hand move over the paper and see these strange characters come to life.

Second, the animated feature at the end is very surreal.  We've seen a lot of this type of imagery before, but his work still felt completely fresh and in a strange way even contemporary.  And it is in COLOR.  Yes, I am seeing my first colors on screen much earlier than I ever thought.

In the end, the movie served to make me more interested in seeking out Little Nemo comic strips.  The idea of the fantasy world he created on paper sounds more fascinating than the slight diversion the film represents.  But the animation is amazing.

Watched on YouTube.

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The Lonedale Operator (1911)

It's been over a week, but we are back with what seems to my eyes a leap forward for cinema, The Lonedale Operator.  The film is about a telegraph operator at a train station who uses her wits to outsmart a couple of would-be robbers.

This movie is another directed by D.W. Griffith and continues to show his mastery of the medium.  It is a great example of using any number of techniques that we take completely for granted today.  Jump cuts, changing camera angles within the same scene and most notably a close-up which is essential to the story all are on display here.  The close-up (watch and you'll see it) was amongst the first in movies and certainly the most notable to date.


Watching The Lonedale Operator after the previous movies makes me feel like an anthropologist unearthing the people responsible for inventing the language of cinema.  Beyond the technical accomplishments, there are a ton of movie tropes crammed into this short film.  You see the plucky heroine (who is also a damsel in distress), the hero racing against time, bad guys with facial hair.

For modern audiences this will be nothing more than a curiosity. For cinephiles, this is an envelope pushing accomplishment from the man who will ultimately introduce the feature length film as a commercially viable property (1915's controversial Birth of a Nation).

Viewed at VodPod (warning: no sound at all with this one).

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