Data Dump #1: The Silent Era

 

How to get the most pleasure out of silent cinema:

— Avoid the terrible public domain dupes that too often are found on YouTube and Amazon Prime.  There's been a huge amount of restoration work done in the last couple decades, and good 2K or 4K restorations can easily be found and should be supported.  This is an especially visual form, and print quality is especially important.

— There are too many generic "Shakey's Pizza" solo piano scores, and even some of the recent hip, modern orchestral scores (Mont Alto, Alloy) can get tedious at times.  If you're losing patience, use ear buds and create your own soundtrack.

— Consume laudanum or bathtub gin before viewing to ease into the period atmosphere.

The Birth of a Nation, rw (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

It's often noted that if only the first half (depicting the war) were released, there'd be little controversy today.  The second half is truly jawdropping in its myopia, as it focuses almost exclusively on how the end of slavery brought financial hardship and the threat of cultural extinction to Southern White land owners, who rose up from their sorrows and... well, you know the rest.  [Kino Blu-ray]

Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919): 4/5

A poetic, opium-laced fever dream, or so I thought after consuming similar intoxicating substances. [Streaming on Amazon]

Way Down East, rw (D.W. Griffith, 1920): 3.5/5

A creaky, overlong, but seminal American melodrama, redeemed by Lillian Gish's luminous talent and her adventure on the ice floes.  [Kino Blu-ray]

Blind Husbands, rw (Erich von Stroheim, 1919): 3.5/5

The most accomplished directorial debut in American cinema prior to Citizen Kane.  Stroheim, age 34, first wrote a novel, then adapted it and convinced Carl Laemmle to produce it.  All the trademark "Von" traits are here: marital philandering, fetishes, sadism, military regalia, feats of physical endurance (mountaineering here) and an obsession with pictorial realism and spectacle that he absorbed from working on Griffith's Intolerance.  Such extravagances would doom Stroheim to be exiled from Hollywood within a decade, whereas Lubitsch wisely produced similar naughty psycho-sexual narratives on the cheap with studio interiors and thus thrived for decades. [Kino DVD]

The Merry Widow (Erich von Stroheim, 1925): 5/5

The same but more, with bigger budget and bigger stars: flamboyant John Gilbert and an appropriately merry and trashy Mae Murray.  Contains a humorous shoe fetish allusion that would make Buñuel smile.  [TCM streaming]

Safety Last, rw (Harold Lloyd, 1923): 3/5

The Freshman (Harold Lloyd, 1925): 2/5

Of the three major silent comedians, Lloyd is the least interesting and most annoying.  While Chaplin and Keaton were developing their definitive screen personas in the late 1910s, Lloyd was floundering with his "Lonesome Luke" character, which he finally abandoned.  His "glasses" character is a product of the Roaring Twenties, embodying the decade's "pep" and can-do enterpreneurial spirit; for this character, there's no obstacle that can't be overcome by simply running faster or climbing higher.  There's no doubt that Lloyd's films are well made, with lots of inventive stunts and visual gags.  And he certainly got the last laugh by avoiding the perils of divorce and drink to become the richest of all silent film stars (Jeff Bezos' newly purchased mansion in Beverly Hills sits on just a portion of Lloyd's former estate).  But the overeager glasses character's single-minded pursuit of success, never questioned, feels spiritually empty compared to the raggedy pathos of Chaplin and the deadpan angst of Keaton.  If Chaplin is for poets and Keaton for philosophers, then Lloyd is for MBAs.  (*)  [Criterion DVD]

Zaza (Allan Dwan, 1923): 1.5/5

Gloria Swanson stars as Zaza, a tempermental stage actress and insufferable bitch beyond redemption.  This was Swanson's first of six pictures with Dwan at Paramount, and it was a hit — but it's difficult to comprehend how anyone could find this character attractive. [Kino Blu-ray]

Manhandled (Allan Dwan, 1924): 4/5

Solid romantic comedy in which Swanson plays a shopgirl who gets a taste of high society.  Opening scene of Gloria fighting for space on the subway is classic. Only extant print (from 16mm elements) is missing her Chaplin impersonation that was praised by contemporary reviewers; for now we’ll have to settle for her bit in Sunset Blvd. [Kino Blu-ray]

Stage Struck (Allan Dwan, 1925): 3.5/5

Smalltown waitress Gloria dreams of becoming a famous actress and connives to meet a riverboat theater actor who could be her ticket to the big time.  First and last reels are shot in early Technicolor, the first depicting Gloria's fantasies of being feted as a successful actress and playing Salome (another perf referenced in Sunset Blvd). The color intro's mannered, Art Deco invocation of an actress in exotic ritual immediately brought to mind Kenneth Anger's Puce Moment.  [Kino Blu-ray]

A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin, 1923): 3/5

A girl from the provinces becomes the titular woman of Paris and must decide between earnest, starving artist and wealthy philanderer (Adolphe Menjou, in a role that established him as Hollywood's leading cad in tails).  It's sad to see Edna Purviance, Chaplin’s rom-com beauty, looking a bit bloated and dowdy here, and she lacks the ego and charisma to pull off a feature-length dramatic role.  A box office dud due to Chaplin's screen absence, its underplayed acting style and the realism of the relationships were influential in Hollywood, and greased the wheels for Lubitsch's mature explorations of marital infidelity.  Great party scenes, all too brief.  Chaplin composed the stiff, overly formal score at age 86; I played Tycho's moody electronica instead, and it energized the experience considerably.  [DVD]

The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924): 2.5/5

The blueprint for Lubitsch's "sophisticated" romantic farces, depending on a series of now-familiar misunderstandings, miscommunications, and missed elevators.  Florence Vidor is lovely; Marie Prevost is a tart; and 34-year-old Adolphe Menjou already looks like an old man.  [DVD]

He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjostrom, 1924): 3/5

Story and play predating The Blue Angel, in which humiliated scholar Lon Chaney is reduced to playing a clown in the circus — but in this case intent on revenge.  Lots of weird visual effects and dissolves with clowns and globes.  I've never been enamored with the commedia dell 'arte clown shtick, whether it's done by Chaney or Crazy Joe Davola.  Early star-making perfs by the cross-eyed Norma Shearer (who looks pretty only in profile) and John Gilbert as young lovers.  First appearance of MGM's Leo the Lion.  [Criterion Channel, Film Foundation restoration]

Variety, rw (E.A. Dupont, 1925): 5/5

A real treat: a frothy backstage melodrama involving a love triangle of acrobats, featuring the visual dazzle of Karl Freund photography, and Emil Jannings actually demonstrating youth, physical agility, and masculine appeal before he characteristically descends into tragic self destruction.  Dupont, a journalist, never made another film approaching this quality.  Credit is given to UFA producer Erich Pommer, who kept the project away from Murnau ("too sexy" for him), and to Freund, who continued the "unchained camera" experiments he had unleashed with Murnau the previous year in The Last Laugh. [Kino Blu-ray, restored to full-length 95 min.]

It’s the Old Army Game, rw (Edward Sutherland, 1925): 5/5

W.C. Fields doing silent versions of several routines that will appear with sound—and to better effect—in It’s a Gift: the pharmacy, the sleep porch, etc.  Fascinating nonetheless, with an added bonus: a stunning 19-year-old Louise Brooks as his shop assistant.  [Kino Blu-ray]

Sparrows (William Beaudine, 1926): 3/5

The most artistically satisfying Pickford feature I've seen (but I have yet to view Lubitsch's recently restored Rosita from 1923).  Mary is held captive with ten younger kids in a human trafficking operation in a swamp, eventually leading them to freedom.  Astonishing photography by Charles Rosher in the swampland--esp. Jesus with lambs appearing to take a dead child to heaven.  Many of Rosher's camera experiments here would be continued the following year on Murnau's Sunrise. [Amazon Prime, poor transfer]

La Boheme (King Vidor, 1926): 3.5/5

Oh, how wispy, angelic Lillian suffers for her self-respect (and for cinema), while next door neighbor Jack Gilbert hams it up in this adaptation of the Puccini opera about starving artists in Rome.  The first of several Gish films at MGM in which she had unprecedented power to choose her stories and directors.  [WB DVD, poor transfer from 16mm elements]

The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjostrom, 1926): 5/5 

The first Gish-Sjostrom collaboration is every bit as good as The Wind, only less uniquely cinematic due to the familiarity of the Hawthorne novel.  Sjostrom and lead actor Lars Hanson bring proper Scandinavian restraint to the grim proceedings, and Gish is a revelation as Hester Prynne.  For reasons both economic and selfish, MGM/TCM have never released The Scarlet Letter, The Wind, nor King Vidor's The Crowd on DVD.  [TCM streaming]

Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice, 1926): 2.5/5

Not much to recommend here, other than the fact that it's Valentino's last picture. [Kino Blu-ray]

The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926): 3/5

Epic western of desert settlers attempting irrigation, in the mold of James Cruze's The Covered Wagon and John Ford's The Iron Horse, where the focus is on profiteering vs. community, rather than fighting the natives.  Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky are the star-crossed lovers, with a young Gary Cooper, in his first credited role, as the humble third wheel.  Cooper is the only reason we're able to see this today: producer Sam Goldwyn's wife destroyed most of the archived Goldwyn silents but kept this one because of Cooper.  [Restored print on Amazon Prime]

Underworld, rw (Josef von Sternberg, 1927): 5/5

Sternberg always maintained that he wasn't interested in gangsters, but screenwriter Ben Hecht, who started as a Chicago newspaperman and grew up around organized crime, was interested.  Hecht went on to write the original draft of Scarface, which repeats some of the motifs seen here, such as "The City is Yours" advertising sign and the steel-walled apartment hideout.  The foundations of the genre are here, just not as pronounced, given Sternberg's nocturnal stylizations.  Interesting casting of oddball slapstick comedian Larry Semon as Bull Weed's right-hand man, which would be like casting Jerry Lewis as consigliere in The Godfather.  [Criterion DVD]

The Docks of New York, rw (Josef Von Sternberg, 1928): 4/5

Sternberg's visual style gains full realization.  It's still hard to believe that, before Marlene came along, dumb mug George Bancroft was Sternberg's star in four pictures.  [Criterion DVD]

Ramona (Edwin Carewe, 1928): 3/5

Stars a beautiful Dolores del Rio as the titular tragic mulatto (White/Native American) who rejects her White benefactors to marry a native (Warner Baxter in brownface) and then is persecuted and terrorized until she comes crawling back to the safe haven of White patriarchy.  Written in 1884 as an Uncle Tom's Cabin to expose Southern California's exploitation of native peoples, this is considered the truest film adaptation (DWG did a short version starring Mary Pickford).  Curiously, gorgeous canyon exterior scenes were shot in Utah.  [LOC restoration on Amazon Prime]

The Circus, rw (Charles Chaplin, 1928): 5/5

Chaplin returns to his carny roots and the physical comedy of his two-reeler days.  Made between The Gold Rush and City Lights, this eschews their high concept and sentimentality and provides more physical and visual gags—probably the most Keatonesque of the Chaplin silent features.  An absolute delight.  [Criterion Blu-ray]

The General, rw (Buster Keaton, 1926): 5/5

Not just one of the best silent features, but one of the greatest American movies.  Astonishing in its inventiveness, technical prowess, and sheer entertainment.  [KL Blu-ray]

The Cameraman, rw (Edward Sedgwick, 1928): 4/5

Buster’s first and best film at MGM, and the last good film of his career.  [Criterion Blu-ray]

Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick, 1929): 3/5

Entertaining at times, but you can see Buster straining to do sit-com gags per a continuity script required by the execs at MGM.  Contrary to legend he was eager to experiment with sound in this film, but MGM doubted his abilities and allowed only a synchronized score.  MGM was the last major studio to convert to sound.  [Criterion Blu-ray extra]

Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929): 3/5

Another pairing of Sunrise couple Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell at Fox.  Farrell goes off to WWI, returns a paraplegic, and must compete with the small town bully for Gaynor's hand in marriage.  Good thing Farrell's got a "lucky star" that will enable a fantastic but ludicrous finish to this slow, poetically told tale.  Confirms Borzage's reputation as a director of "dreamy" stories in soft focus, but sometimes they can be a chore to get through.  [DVD]

Earth, rw (Alexandre Dovzhenko, 1930): 4/5

If cinema had been produced in the 12th century, it might look something like this — more biblical than socialist.  Then again, after multiple viewings I still hadn't realized that the stranded tractor wouldn't start until men filled the radiator with their own urine, a demonstration of collectivization so genuine that neither I nor Stalin himself could ever have thought of it.  [Kino DVD]

 

(*)  Apologies to Justin, who, in addition to having an MBA, is a philosopher and poet, partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction.  I'm pretty sure he prefers Keaton.