Review: The Gold Rush (1925)

* * * *
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain

I don't know if I would call The Gold Rush Charlie Chaplin's best film (though I am going to argue that it features his best performance), but I think that it might be the film that best exemplifies Chaplin's ability to raise sentimentality to an art form. I'm not ashamed to say that as the film approached its end with The Tramp in a position of triumph and started to hint at how it might all be stripped away from him, I was actually tempted to stop the movie because I couldn't bear the thought of seeing The Tramp lose everything after all that. I should have known better, of course, since Chaplin is an unabashed master at happy endings, but it's a testament to how expertly Chaplin could play on an audience's emotions that he could potentially bring you to that point and make you feel so deeply invested in his silly little character, even if you're a cynical cinephile like me.

Review: Safety Last! (1923)

* * * 1/2
Director: Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor
Starring: Harold Lloyd

Everyone knows Charlie Chaplin. Most people know Buster Keaton. But outside of film geeks, few know Harold Lloyd, even though he was one of the most popular and influential comedians of the silent era. You can maybe chalk that up to the fact that his personal life was far less volatile than that of either Chaplin or Keaton, unmarred by the sex scandals that plagued the former or the tragic alcoholism of the latter - by not being notorious, Lloyd is doomed to the fringes of remembrance. You could also, however, chalk it up to the fact that Lloyd's films are as nonthreatening as his persona, films that are good, sometimes close to great, but ultimately lacking that extra edge that separates the best from the rest. That said, Lloyd's films are worth seeking out whether you're a film buff or simply someone curious about silent comedy, and Safety Last! is the best place to start, featuring as it does one of Lloyd's best known stunt pieces (arguably one of the best known stunt pieces in all silent comedy).

Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

* * * *
Director: Robert Wiene
Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher

Robert Wiene's German Expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is, perhaps, the only film ever made where the production design is the star. Its jagged, highly stylized sets are some of the most memorable ever put on film and go a long way to creating the film's nightmarish vision of madness and horror. Caligari is a film that stands the test of time in part because it presents a vision so weird that it can never seem dated, but also because it's simply a great piece of filmmaking.

Review: The Kid (1921)

* * * 1/2
Director: Charles Chaplin
Starring: Charles Chaplin, Jackie Coogan

Aside from being one of Charlie Chaplin's most enduring films, The Kid also has the distinction of being his first feature length film. It also has a rather storried production history in that it almost ended up being a casualty of Chaplin's divorce from his first wife, Mildred Harris. In order to keep it from being claimed as part of his assets, the unfinished film was smuggled to Utah, where Chaplin edited the footage in a hotel room. The result is a delightful comedy with just a little bit of pathos mixed in (the formula for all of Chaplin's greatest films) - or, as its opening title card proclaims, "A picture with a smile - and perhaps, a tear - and one of the treasures of Hollywood's nascent years.

Review: Haxan (1922)

* * * 1/2
Director: Benjamin Christensen

Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages) is a strange little movie. A documentary-fiction hybrid, it examines the superstitions and lack of knowledge about the nature of mental illnesses that led to the witch hunts of the middle ages, and though much of it is stark and brutal, there are also some surprisingly light moments. Haxan is a history lesson and an entertainment, a film quite unlike any other.

The Best Picture Countdown #1: Wings (1927)

Director: William A. Wellman
Starring: Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen, Clara Bow

Clara Bow had such an enormously appealing screen presence. In Wings, the very first film to win Best Picture (and the only silent film to do so), she lights up every scene, even those in which she’s playing moments of sadness, fear or desperation. Marilyn Monroe and Jean Harlow had the same quality. Wings makes the most of it, allowing her a much bigger role than any woman in just about any other war movie I can think of.

Wings tells the story of Jack (Charles “Buddy” Rogers) and David (Richard Arlen), two young men from the same small town. Both are in love with the same woman, Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston), though she only returns the affections of David. Jack, meanwhile, is the object of desire of his childhood friend and neighbour Mary (Bow), to whom he can’t be bothered to spare a second glance (our first indication that there is something seriously wrong with him). When the United States enters into World War I, both Jack and David enlist in the air force and, after a vicious boot camp boxing match, finally become friends. They head off overseas and Mary, who has enlisted in the war effort as an ambulance driver, is not far behind.

During a period of leave in Paris, Jack and David’s path crosses with that of Mary but both are so drunk that they don’t recognize her. This is anguishing for Mary, in part because she knows that MPs are scouring the city, rounding up soldiers to take them back to the front; and in part because Jack is with another woman, someone he’s picked up at the Folies Bergère. Mary borrows a dress in order to pose as a showgirl and lure Jack away then puts him to bed (or, rather, gets him in the vicinity of a bed as he’s on the verge of passing out). Since no good deed goes unpunished, two MPs barge into the room as Mary is changing back into her uniform and, seeing Jack passed out on the bed, jump to the wrong conclusion which results in her losing her job and being sent back to the States. Meanwhile, Jack doesn’t remember a thing about the night, has no idea that Mary has been let go for having been found in a compromising position, and returns to the front, where he and David have a falling out. Later, a misunderstanding leads to tragedy, forever changing Jack and forcing him to make that final transition from boyhood and manhood.

There is a lot of plot to Wings but it juggles its various storylines very well, moving easily between them and keeping the story moving forward at all times. The romantic storyline is a bit rote and perhaps not of much interest to a modern audience (though, as I said, Bow is a captivating screen presence) but the battle scenes are really fantastic. Most of the action scenes take place in the air, where director William A. Wellman stages some really exciting and visually impressive sequences. I doubt I will ever be able to be impressed by stories of actors performing their own stunts in front of blue screens after learning that the actors in Wings not only had to fly their planes themselves, but also had to turn on the attached camera while they were in mid-air, and land the planes all without breaking character. And, of course, in some scenes they had to crash their planes instead of landing them. This was before the advent of the Screen Actors Guild, obviously.

There are also battle scenes that take place on the ground and those are also extremely well staged, making for a really great climax. There is a lot going on in each shot during the battle sequences but Wellman exerts such great control over these scenes that it doesn’t end up looking too fussy and instead just adds to the sense of urgency.

The actors fare very well here. Bow is really endearing and engaging and Rogers is good as the somewhat immature Jack. Arlen, I think, delivers the best performance, conveying a sense of depth to David, largely by underplaying. He knows that Jack has it bad for Sylvia but also knows that he doesn’t have a chance with her (because she loves David), but he goes to great lengths to protect Jack from discovering this so that it doesn’t affect his morale. He’s a very self-sacrificing character and the way that Arlen plays him makes it believable that he’d be so noble.

I went into Wings without being entirely sure what to expect from it and thoroughly enjoyed it. The film is not currently available on DVD but, since it is in the public domain, it is available through youtube, as long as you don’t mind watching it in 10 minute segments. I highly recommend it.

Review: The Sheik (1921) & Son of the Sheik (1926)

The Sheik: * *
Director: George Melford
Starring: Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres, Adolphe Menjou

Son of the Sheik: * *1/2
Director: George Fitzmaurice
Starring: Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky

You know, it’s a real shame that films today aren’t as morally sound and wholesome as they used to be. Whatever happened to the days when a star’s status as a romantic lead could be made by starring in a film where his character kidnaps and rapes someone, and that status could be solidified by starring in the sequel where his character kidnaps and rapes someone? Ah, the good old days!

To start with The Sheik, Rudolph Valentino stars as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, a powerful and respected man whose mysterious/exotic aura attracts the attention of English adventuress Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayres). Diana is intrigued by the Sheik and his ways, but she’s far less interested in him than in following through with her plan to trek across the desert, an adventure she intends to undertake only in the company of an Arab guide and without the protection of a fellow Brit, which scandalizes the local society. The Sheik has other plans, however, and rides out with a posse to pluck her off course and bring her back to his camp. She warns him that people will be looking for her, but he confidently informs her that by the time anyone knows she’s gone it will be too late.

Though she makes an attempt at escape, Diana ultimately remains at the Sheik’s camp and finds her humiliation deepened by the arrival of the Sheik’s friend, Raoul (Adolphe Menjou). The Frenchman is sympathetic to Diana’s plight and pleads with the Sheik for her freedom, to no avail. His efforts, however, earns him Diana’s friendship which quickly leads to the Sheik becoming jealous. But by this point Diana has fallen in love with the Sheik and taken to lovingly writing his name in the desert sands. Everything would be perfect were it not for the fact that she’s about to be kidnapped from her kidnapper.

The sequel, Son of the Sheik, which finds Valentino reprising his role as the Sheik as well as playing the son of the Sheik, who is also named Ahmed, follows a somewhat similar plotline. Young Ahmed has fallen in love with Yasmin (Vilma Banky), a dancing girl who is essentially being used as bait to lure Ahmed into a trap so that he can be ransomed back to his father. Ahmed becomes convinced that Yasmin knowingly played him and in retaliation he kidnaps and rapes her, though by the story’s end all is well between them. Meanwhile, the Sheik and Lady Diana (played once again by Ayres) also make an appearance in which he expresses his irritation at his impulsive and rebellious son, and she lovingly reminds him that Ahmed is just taking a page out of his father’s playbook.

Obviously there are some very problematic things about these two films. Aside from violence against women, The Sheik also boasts a fair bit of racism stemming from its portrayal of the Sheik. He’s at once depicted as having this wild, untameable sexuality but also as being more “evolved” than his followers because he was educated in France. Further, the hot blooded, highly sexualized and brutal version eventually gives way to a kinder, gentler Sheik at which point we learn that he’s not an Arab at all, but the son of an Englishman and a Spanish woman. To say that the film is an ideological mess is a bit of an understatement.

As far as the skill demonstrated in the films, The Sheik is a bit shapeless and somewhat plodding, Valentino’s performance a bit broad. Son of the Sheik is the superior film, one that is better paced and more focused. It is also much lighter in tone – despite the sadomasochism involved in Ahmed’s brief period of captivity and the rape scene (implied not shown, of course) – with plenty of comic relief in the form of Ahmed’s would be captors, some of whom are surprisingly inept. Valentino’s performance, too, is better in the sequel, more controlled and nuanced in comparison to his first turn as the Sheik. I don’t know that these facts are enough to make Son of the Sheik a truly good film, but it’s certainly one worth seeing to anyone with an interest in film history.

Review: The Man Who Laughs (1928)

* * *
Director: Paul Leni
Starring: Conrad Veidt

Pity the man who laughs because he's certainly not laughing with everyone else. Adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo and directed by the German Expressionist Paul Leni, The Man Who Laughs is a much darker and more atmospheric film than a summary of its plot would suggest. Perhaps valued most today for having been one of the influences in the creation of The Joker character from Batman, it is nevertheless an interesting film in its own right and Conrad Veidt's performance as the eponymous character is one of enormous power.

The story begins in England in 1690 when a nobleman who has offended King James II is sentenced to death by iron maiden and his son, Gwynplaine (played as an adult by Veidt), is handed over to a gypsy surgeon named Hardquanonne (George Siegmann), who carves a permanent smile into the boy's face. Abandoned when the gypsies are forced to flee England, Gwynplaine wanders the snowy landscape until he comes to the caravan of Ursus (Cesare Gravina), where he and the baby girl he's saved from freezing are taken in. Gwynplaine and the girl, eventually named Dea (Mary Philbin), are raised by Ursus, who makes money through a stage show which capitalizes on people's fascination with Gwynplaine's disfigurement. Gwynplaine's tragedy is twofold: he's mocked and scorned by everyone except Dea, who is blind and does not know about his deformity. He loves Dea but feels he can't marry her because if she could see him, she would never love him.

At the English court a battle of wills is being played out between Queen Anne (Josephine Crowell) and the Duchess Josiana (Olga Vladimirovna Baklanova), who lives on the lands stolen from Gwyplaine's family. When word gets to the Queen that the rightful owner of those lands is alive in the form of the famous Man Who Laughs, she orders that he and Josiana marry so that the rightful heir might be restored and her rival humiliated. What she doesn't count on is that Josiana isn't entirely opposed to this match or that Gwynplaine will have it in him to stand up for himself.

While The Man Who Laughs suffers from a few moments of turgid melodrama surrounding the relationship between Gwynplaine and Dea, it's still a quite interesting and engaging film. It is surprisingly bold, given the time period, in terms of its depiction of female sexuality through the character of Josiana, who has a very brief nude scene at the beginning. Josiana is depicted as being very loose with her favours (with everyone except her foppish fiancee) and as having a fetishistic interest in Gwynplaine's deformity. There is a scene in which she lures him to her chamber with the intent on seducing him that subverts traditional notions of gender dominance and subserviance in a really fascinating way and works to solidify Gwyplaine's status as a victim.

The Man Who Laughs plays on the idea of "monster" as victim in a lot of ways and the success of this depends largely on Veidt. With that grotesque grin immobilizing the lower half of his face, Veidt is at a distinct disadvantage in terms of being able to express himself and yet he pulls it off brilliantly. There is a rawness to all of his emotions, almost a desperation to convey them to the people around him who largely refuse to see. His lips are smiling, but his eyes are not. The performance he renders is quite moving and conveys so much about the psychological state of the character. It's one of the best performances I've ever seen in a silent film and definitely helps raise The Man Who Laughs above the melodrama its story is always threatening to sink into.

Review: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

* * *
Director: Wallace Worsley
Starring: Lon Chaney

First published in 1831, Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of those stories that has really taken on a life of its own in popular culture. It’s one of the more frequently adapted books in film history (though it hasn’t been adapted nearly as often as Hugo’s Les Miserables), perhaps because it’s in the public domain and therefore fair game, but more likely because it’s a rich and compelling story. It’s about outcasts and misfits, injustice and cruelty, with liberal doses of sex and violence mixed in as well. It is not a “nice” story, though you might not know it by this particular adaptation.

Directed by Wallace Worsley and starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo, this version of the story sticks to certain plot points while rewriting others in order to give it a happy ending. In this film, as in the book, Quasimodo is a deformed foundling whose only joy in life comes from ringing the bells of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Hated by others because of his appearance, he seldom leaves the sanctuary of the Cathedral, which is presided over by the Archdeacon Claude Frollo (Nigel De Brulier). In the film Claude Frollo is the spirit of kindness while his brother, Jehan (Brandon Hurst) is pure evil – you can tell because the former is dressed all in white and the latter is dressed all in black. Jehan is enamored with the gypsy girl Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller) and manipulates Quasimodo into attempting to kidnap her. When the kidnapping goes awry Quasimodo is sentenced to a public lashing and Esmeralda, despite his attempt to abduct her and despite the fact that she is as disgusted by his appearance as everyone else, is the only person to show him any kindness, bringing him water to alleviate his suffering.

Jehan continues to plot to have Esmeralda to himself, but his schemes are complicated by Phoebus de Chateaupers (Norman Kerry), who rescued her from Quasimodo and now wants to marry her. Jehan stabs Phoebus and frames Esmeralda, who is sentenced to death but saved by Quasimodo, who claims sanctuary for her in the Cathedral and proceeds to defend it against the hordes of people trying to break down its doors. The scenes involving the rescue of Esmeralda and the defense of the Cathedral are the best in the movie, brimming with a high level of action and excitement that Worsley handles well. This high point, however, is followed fairly switfly by the film's conclusion, an odd ending that finds Quasimodo dying unceremoniously without Esmeralda even noticing because she only has eyes for Phoebus, who once again shows up just in the nick of time.

One of the strangest things about this adaptation (and, from what I understand, a common change in many adaptations of the story) is that it has been turned into a love story between Esmeralda and Phoebus. In the book Phoebus makes a lot of false promises to Esmeralda in order to get her into bed, fully intending to abandon her and marry Fleur-de-Lis, a wealthy woman of standing. When he recovers from being stabbed and learns that Esmeralda is about to be executed for his “murder,” he does absolutely nothing. Here, however, he’s the film’s hero, even more heroic than Quasimodo, whose deformity apparently prevents him from being really “good.” Quasimodo is characterized here as more animal than human, his devotion to Esmeralda more like that of a dog towards its master. Chaney, indeed, plays Quasimodo as if he was an abused dog (although, given how Quasimodo swings around from the heights of the Cathedral, monkey might be a more apt word), though the performance is powerful nevertheless. Chaney mixes an intense vulnerability together with a simmering anger towards his tormentors that makes his interpretation of Quasimodo particularly memorable.

The other major change to the story concerns the brothers Frollo. In the book, it’s Claude who is the evil catalyst for events, whose lust for Esmeralda leads to destruction, while Jehan is just his lay about younger brother. This gives the book an anti-clerical aspect that the film is lacking and makes for a very different set of dynamics overall. I suppose these changes work in terms of compressing the story, but they also rob it of some of its more potent themes and scenes. Still, helped in large part by Chaney's great performance, this version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is definitely worth seeing and has aged relatively well.

Review: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

* * * 1/2
Director: Rupert Julian
Starring: Loney Chaney, Mary Philbin

In spite of the fact that films made today are more permissive when it comes to violence and sex, silent horror films have an impact that few films made after can match. The unromanticized monsters of films like Nosferatu and The Phantom of the Opera are effective figures that seem to have been plucked right out of a nightmare and onto the screen and remain frightening eight decades later. Though it sometimes veers a little too far into melodrama, Rupert Julian's version of Gaston Leroux's novel is intense enough to make you forget every other version of the story.

The story of The Phantom of the Opera, in case you didn’t know, is this: beneath the Paris opera house a disfigured composer, known to all as The Phantom (Lon Chaney), lives and nurses an obsession with the young singer Christine Daae (Mary Philbin). In order to help his beloved achieve fame and success, he forces the opera’s star Carlotta (Mary Fabian) off the stage through a campaign of terror that includes sending the chandelier crashing down onto the audience. With Christine’s status as a star secured, it is time for her to meet her mysterious mentor. After opening a secret passage in her dressing room, she descends with The Phantom deep underground to his lair, realizing with each step what a dangerous error in judgment she’s made. The Phantom is not the romantic hero of her fantasies, but a clearly unhinged man who tells her she must never attempt to remove his mask.

Any guesses as to how long it takes her to unmask him? Believe me, it isn’t long and what she finds isn’t the semi-scarred face of Gerard Butler as in the 2004 musical film version, but a truly horrific visage designed by Chaney, whose motto when choosing characters was, apparently, the more disfigured and grotesque, the better. Seeing his skull-like face, Christine shrinks away from him but there’s no escape: The Phantom has traps set everywhere and no one can navigate them safely but him. This of course won’t stop Christine’s lover Raoul (Norman Kerry) from trying, which leads to the dramatic and exciting finale.

Chaney is commonly known as "the man of a thousand faces," a moniker which does him a slight disservice because it draws all the attention to his makeup. The makeup is, of course, wonderfully grotesque, but his isn't a performance built on makeup alone. His Phantom is a monster, yes, but one who has suffered wounds of his own, who inflicts pain on others because he is himself so intensely vulnerable. In his twisted way he does love Christine and covets her both for her beauty and for what that beauty represents: the key to being adored by others. The Phantom is a gifted composer but because of his face he can never stand before an audience to receive applause. He lives vicariously through Christine and accepts her triumph as a triumph of his own. The Phantom is a fascinating character, a frightening character, but above all, a character to be pitied and Chaney's performance brings all of those elements together in a wonderful, intriguing way.

Aside from Chaney’s performance, I think what makes this version of the story so much more effective than others is the fact that it’s silent. There’s a moody, nightmarish quality to the film that draws you in almost against your will. The production values of later versions are more impressive – the chandelier sequence and the masked ball of the 2004 musical version are certainly stylish and memorable, albeit in a film that is completely soulless – but they are unable to capture the darkly magical quality of this one. Everything just seems so sinister in this version and as the story gathers steam, it becomes outright horrific. From the point when The Phantom is unmasked onward (“Feast your eyes! Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!”), the film is absolutely riveting and the final act, as The Phantom is chased through his lair and then the streets of Paris, is pitch perfect. Although the film starts a bit slow, it ends up being a very satisfying viewing experience.

Review: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)

* * *
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Ivor Novello

A man who calls himself “The Avenger” has been going around killing blond women. The landlady and her husband wonder… could their mysterious new tenant, who seems to have an unhealthy preoccupation with their golden haired daughter, be the killer? In a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the answer is of course not simple and The Lodger keeps you guessing and second-guessing for most of its duration.

The film opens with the words, “To-Night Golden Curls,” blinking on and off the screen, the full meaning of which is explained at the end of the film as a kind of framing device. The film then moves on to a killing and a fresh wave of panic sweeping through the residents of London. The Avenger strikes again! This time, however, there was a witness, who describes the man as having his face half covered by a scarf. Cut to the home of The Landlady (Marie Ault) and Her Husband (Arthur Chesney), who have just welcomed a new tenant into their home, one who arrived at their door with a scarf covering half his face. If the scarf was all the evidence against him, there wouldn’t be much suspense with regards to the intentions of The Lodger (Ivor Novello, who would reprise the role in the 1932 remake), but his subsequent behavior certainly makes you wonder (as do his marvelously crazy eyes). He’s captivated by his landlords’ daughter, Daisy (June), who has the golden curls so coveted by the killer and he’s intensely private, particularly about the mysterious bag he keeps locked up in a cupboard. And then there are those nights when he sneaks out of the house…

When Daisy falls in love with the Lodger, the film begins to turn somewhat, casting him in a less suspicious and more ambiguous and sympathetic light. Maybe he’s being set up? He isn’t the only man who wants Daisy, as Joe (Malcolm Kenn), the police detective investigating the murders can attest. Early in the film Joe has a throwaway line in which he remarks on the similarities between himself and The Avenger, and what better way to get away with murder than to be the one investigating it? He states at one point his intention to “put a rope around The Avenger’s neck and a ring on Daisy’s finger,” and if the Lodger is the killer, well that’s two birds with one stone, isn’t it? But, then again, the contents of that bag, once opened, offer some damning evidence.

Although the film drags in places, it is for the most part very well-plotted and paced. There is enough ambiguity about the characters and their actions to keep you guessing long into the film and though the ending is considerably more sentimental than you’ll find in later Hitchcock films, it’s still a fairly strong effort. The Lodger is Hitchcock’s third feature length film and though it includes some of the recurrent features of his later work (the obsession with blonds, the theme of the wrong man), it is rudimentary Hitchcock and his style isn’t as pronounced or keenly developed here as it is in later films. If you went into this film not knowing that it was directed by Hitchcock, you might not guess that he was behind it.

As far as the acting goes, Novello renders a performance that just skirts the line, almost going over the top but somehow always pulling back in time. The Lodger is a strange character, sometimes sinister, other times incredibly vulnerable, and the ease with which Novello goes back and forth between the two helps the film in terms of maintaining suspense. He also has good chemistry with June, whose character isn’t particularly well-developed but who nevertheless gives the film a spark of playfulness.

In the end, while The Lodger isn’t great Hitchcock, even lesser Hitchcock is better than a lot of films and it’s interesting to see the roots of a cinematic genius.

Review: Pandora's Box (1929)

* * * 1/2
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Starring: Louise Brooks

Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Pandora’s Box is an epic, atmospheric tale that travels from the theatres of Germany to gambling dens in France and finally to the foggy streets of London, where the heroine falls into the arms of Jack the Ripper. It’s a big story, and perhaps just a touch "soapy," but it's expertly told and wonderfully entertaining.

As the title suggests, the film is about a woman who unwittingly unleashes turmoil on those around her. She is Lulu (played by the divine Louise Brooks), an impulsive and vibrant vaudeville performer and prostitute who, through the course of the film, will: marry her wealthy and much older lover and accidentally kill him at the wedding reception, be convicted of manslaughter, escape her prison sentence and run off with her stepson, almost be sold into sexual slavery… let’s just say that things keep going from bad to worse. When she finally meets Jack the Ripper, it almost seems merciful given the depths of misery and degradation to which she falls.

The film is significant for a number of reasons, not least of which is the “Lulu look” which is echoed in films such as Cabaret and Chicago. It is also credited with being the first film to feature a lesbian character, the Countess Augusta Geschwitz (Alice Roberts). Like most of the male characters in the film, the Countess falls under Lulu’s spell and then meets her doom. Roberts was apparently uncomfortable with the idea of playing a lesbian and it shows, as she never seems particularly at ease in the role, which is in sharp contrast to Brooks, who owns every moment that she’s on screen. Marlene Dietrich was the second choice to play Lulu and perhaps Pabst should have cast her as the Countess – lord knows she could work a tuxedo.

Although Lulu is condemned throughout the film, mostly by the men around her, she nevertheless seems to be a sympathetic character. There is an innocence to her, a child-like quality that ensures that her actions never seem malicious. She's the kind of character that things just sort of happen to, but the energy and life with which Brooks infuses the character allows her to seem like more than just a mere cypher. Lulu isn't stupid, though for a woman who has spent much of her life as a sex worker, she's awfully naive about the jealousy she inspires in men. On the other hand, perhaps she's just careless and self-centered. It can be hard to tell at times what's behind the mask of flirtatious innocence that Brooks wears for most of the film.

Pandora's Box is a well-crafted, well-paced film, though not without its tiny problems. I've already mentions Roberts' somewhat limp performance and aside from that there's the slight issue that the storyline sometimes goes a little too far over the top (the courtroom scenes, for example). Structurally, there's also a framing device wherein one episode transitions to another with "End of Act X, Beginning of Act Y," which gets a little irritating towards the end. These are, however, very minor flaws and the film is overall very watchable and entertaining.

Review: The Last Laugh (1924)

* * * *
Director: F.W. Murnau
Starring: Emil Jannings

For a visual medium, film tends to rely a lot on words – from dialogue to voice-overs to inter-titles, words can play a large part in conveying and advancing stories. With The Last Laugh, F.W. Murnau shows just how effectively a story can be told in the absence of words. This is a silent film with just one inter-title (officially, that is; at the beginning there’s a close-up of a letter and at the end a close-up of a newspaper article, both of which could qualify as inter-titles in a casual sense), which might sound daunting but the end result is a thing of absolute beauty.

The story is simple. Emil Jannings stars as a doorman at a fancy hotel who takes pride in his work and especially in his uniform. One day he arrives at the hotel to find another man - a younger, more virile man - standing at the door in the uniform and he’s informed by the management that he’s no longer seen as fit for the physically demanding job. Rather than being fired, though, he's simply demoted to bathroom attendant - a symbolic last stop if ever there was one given that the man he's replacing is being demoted from bathroom attendant to resident in a home for the elderly.

This transition is devastating to him because being a doorman isn’t just his job, but his entire identity; when they strip him of the uniform, they might as well be stripping the very skin from his bones. He becomes desperate and steals the uniform back, wearing it home so that his family and neighbours won’t know the truth. It isn't long, however, before the truth does come out and he finds himself the subject of derision by the people around him, who take great pleasure in taking him down a peg.

The doorman is thoroughly humiliated, defeated and demoralized as he's forced to accept that he's lost his uniform and his position. If the film ended here, it would be pure tragedy, but then there's that one inter-title, the one which introduces an epilogue that only works because it acknowlegdes that it shouldn't work at all. The filmmakers take pity on the doorman and allow him to have the last laugh and we the audience allow them to get away with it because after watching him get kicked around for the better part of an hour and a half, we want to see him turn it around no matter how fantastical the circumstances.

After seeing Nosferatu and Sunrise and loving both, I’ve been trying to seek out more Murnau and with just three films he’s solidified himself as one of my favourite filmmakers. Much like Sunrise, The Last Laugh unfolds in a graceful and dream-like fashion; at times it seems more like a ballet than a film, particularly a dream sequence in which the doorman imagines himself restored to his former glory. The film comes out of a period of time when movies didn’t actually move that much, when cameras didn’t have the same freedom that they do now. In this film and his others, Murnau consistently breaks free of the limitations standing in the way to create works of art that seem truly alive. His ability, as well as the performance by Jannings, which is so rich and full that it does not require words to support it, make it easy to forget about the lack of titles.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Director: F.W. Murnau
Starring: George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston

To call Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans simply a film is to do it an injustice. This is poetry in motion, a graceful and haunting gift to anyone who loves the art of filmmaking. Even today, with technology so far advanced from what F.W. Murnau had to work with, it is rare to see a film that moves so fluidly and with such ease. This beautiful, atmospheric film is a must-see for any movie lover.

The plot of the film is straight forward. The characters are the Man (George O’Brien) and his Wife (Janet Gaynor, who won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for this film), and a Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston). The story takes place in the countryside where the Man is a farmer and has fallen under the spell of the Woman, who wants him to kill the Wife so that they can run off together. “Spell” is the only way to accurately describe their relationship. The film begins with the Woman creeping near the couple’s home and whistling to the Man. He stands as if in a trance and follows her out to the woods. The scene that follows him through the woods to his meeting with the Woman is breathtakingly beautiful, one of many examples in the film of Murnau freeing the story from the conventions of contemporaneous filmmaking and letting it move. The Woman plants her idea in the Man’s head. He’s horrified at first but quickly acquiesces. He will kill the Wife so that he and the Woman can be together. He takes the Wife on a boat ride (another beautifully shot scene) and attempts to kill her but can’t bring himself to do it. She flees and he chases her, trying to convince her that it was all a mistake. They spend time together in the city and fall in love once again. This sequence is the most charming of the film, alternating between romance and comedy. Happy once again, they return to the country where tragedy strikes – the circumstances and resolution, I won’t reveal.

This is a very simple story, but it’s the way that the story is presented to us that makes this film brilliant. Murnau creates a mood here, not only through the seeming weightlessness of his camera and the tone set by the cinematography, but also through the inter-titles which, though spare, contribute a great deal to the style of the film. When The Woman suggests that the Man kill his Wife, it isn’t shown to us with a flat title, but rather she suggests that he drown his wife and the words run down the screen like water. Murnau also seems to use all the technology at his disposal in order to let the film glide from one moment to another. In one sequence the Man and the Wife are crossing the street, the shot dissolves to them walking through a woodland and then dissolves back to the street where the Man and Wife are kissing and bringing traffic to a stop. The ways that Murnau finds to engage us in the world on screen and convey the changing relationships of the film are wonderfully innovative from both a technical and an artistic standpoint.

I know people who shun silent films like the plague because they’ve convinced themselves that these films will be hard to follow (I usually find that these same people claim that films shot in black and white make things on screen more difficult to distinguish, a notion I find ridiculous), but that idea really couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a film that is better for not having dialogue because to have the characters speak to each other would spoil the dreamlike quality of the way the narrative unfolds. The dialogue would perhaps ring false, too sentimental, and therefore drag the film down; but freed from dialogue, the film is able to soar above what words would convey and present the emotions at play – desire, jealousy, love, fear, remorse – with an urgency and intensity that remains undiluted. There are many films that are great but flawed. Sunrise is a film that is perfect. A truly unqualified masterpiece.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The General (1927)

Director: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Starring: Buster Keaton

Genius. It’s the only word grand enough to describe Buster Keaton, but still manages to come up just a little short. What’s amazing about him in films is that even though you can see that a great deal of work is going into the set-up, he still manages to make the execution look effortless. The scope of his vision, the intricacy with which he constructs his story and the perfection with which it plays out, is simply staggering. Never before and never since has there been anyone like him. He was a man apart and, like him, his masterpiece The General stands apart from all other films.

I know a number of people who reject silent films outright due to the vague notion that pre-sound films are somehow inherently “boring” and such assertions always make me want to sit them down and show them The General. This is an exhilarating film not only because it features some great stunts and terrific moments of comedy, but also because it is plotted to perfection, telling its story in a brisk, symmetrical way in which every scene builds upon what came before so that your excitement is at peak level by the time the film reaches its climax.

Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a Southern engineer who has been rejected from service in the Confederate army because he’s more useful to the South as an engineer. Of course, no one bothers to explain the reasoning behind his rejection to him so he can’t explain himself when everyone, including his beloved Annabelle (Marion Mack) assumes that he isn’t in uniform because he’s a coward. When his engine, The General, is hijacked by Union soldiers, Johnnie takes chase, first running after it, then employing a push cart, then getting hold of another train (but accidentally failing to bring along the car carrying the Confederate soldiers who want to help get The General back). Along the way from Confederate to Union territory, various schemes are employed by the Union soldiers to foil their capture, and by Johnnie to keep the Union soldiers from getting away. One of the best sequences involves Johnnie setting up a canon to fire at the other train, only to have circumstances first knock it out of position so that its aiming directly at Johnnie, and then have it so slow to detonate that it doesn’t fire until Johnnie is going around a bend so that the cannon ball clips the back of the Union soldiers' train, causing them to panic, convinced that a band of Confederate soldiers is chasing them rather than just an engineer who wants his train back.

The thing that stands out most about the film is the stunt work performed by Keaton. From the scene at the beginning when he sits on the side rod of the train and is gently moved up and down by the motion as he moves out of frame, to various scenes of him crawling around the moving train (especially the sequence where he climbs down the front to knock planks off the track in front of him), he performs some astonishingly dangerous feats. If made today, you would know that what you were watching wouldn’t be “real” and it would just seem like another cool effect, but Keaton really is doing these things and could easily have been killed. That he pulls all these stunts off with such comedic grace and perfection is a testament to his abilities as a performer. He makes it look so easy even though, obviously, it is not.

What elevates this film, and Keaton in general, to the level of genius is the scale of ambition. This isn’t a film that is content to simply connect a series of comedic and physical set-ups, but instead gives an equal amount of time to developing the story and then executes it in a way that is technically very strong. The chase sequences are constructed symmetrically, so that what we see the Union soldiers doing as they escape back to their territory, we see Johnnie and Annabelle repeating as they flee from Union territory back to their own. And while all these train hijinks are taking place, we see the movements of the Union and Confederate armies in the background, alternately advancing and retreating.

The timing of this film, both in terms of plot movement and comedy, is perfect. By virtue of the fact that they’re both geniuses of the same era of filmmaking, Keaton and Chaplin are often compared, which is like comparing apples to oranges. Both are deft physical comedians, but they have such different styles and get their laughs in such different ways. Chaplin is the clown, Keaton is the everyman; Chaplin mugs, Keaton shrugs. Both are great, but they’re so very different. The comedy we get from Keaton here is both simple (as in the scene at the beginning where he walks to Annabelle’s house with two young boys behind him, unaware that Annabelle is also walking behind him until he gets up to the door and knocks) and more intricate (as in the sequence towards the end where a Union soldier picks off the Confederates around a cannon one by one, much to Johnnie’s confusion and then, just when it seems as though it’s Johnnie’s turn, the Union soldier is accidentally killed when the blade of Johnnie’s sword goes flying off its hilt).

The General is a terrific film on both technical and performance levels. It’s funny, it’s exciting, and it unfolds at a quick pace. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to make their first foray into silent films because it’s so very accessible, so fast and full of action that you don’t really even notice that it’s free of dialogue. It is every inch a masterpiece.

100 Days, 100 Movies: City Lights (1931)

Director: Charles Chaplin
Starring: Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Harry Myers

There’s a reason why Charlie Chaplin remains one of the most recognizable figures in film, and it isn’t simply because he played The Little Tramp so often. Chaplin was a multi-talented artist both in front of and behind the camera and knew instinctively how to play on the audience's emotions, and how to draw the comedy out of any situation. He is to comedy what Astaire is to dance, and what Hitchcock is to suspense. What you get from all three is craftsmanship and execution without compare.

City Lights finds the Little Tramp pretending to be a millionaire after a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) mistakes him for one, and after a chance encounter with an actual millionaire (Harry Myers) enables him to pull off the act. His relationships with the flower girl and the millionaire serve to separate the film into two spheres, each with its own distinct tone and mood. His scenes with the flower girl are the human side of the film meant to tug at your heartstrings – he finds someone more vulnerable than himself and is determined to take care of her by taking odd jobs (including entering a prize fight, which results in one of the film’s best uses of physical comedy) in order to pay her rent so that she and her grandmother don’t get evicted, and in order to pay for the surgery which will allow her to see. In contrast, his scenes with the millionaire are the comedy side of the film, meant simply to make you laugh. They meet when he stops the millionaire from committing suicide (this scene, too, provides some absolutely fantastic physical comedy). They drink together and have parties, much to the consternation of the millionaire’s butlers. When the millionaire sobers up, he kicks the Tramp out. Later, drunk again, he welcomes his “friend” back into his house. The recognitions and disavowals are significant not only from a structural standpoint, but also in the way that it connects the two sides of the film. Neither the millionaire nor the flower girl can really “see” the Tramp, a character who exists on the margins of society and is openly mocked by other characters in the film. When the millionaire regains his figurative sight through sobriety, he pushes the Tramp away. When the flower girl gains her sight and realizes who the Tramp is, she is taken aback at first but ultimately accepts him, and we know that she has a good heart.

The brilliance of City Lights lies in how well the film balances all of its different elements. There are moments of satire (though the film is essentially silent, it opens at a political rally where we hear a speech, but the words of the speech are unintellible, just meaningless sounds that convey nothing real), moments of slapstick (following the speech a curtain is raised to unveil a statue and we see the Tramp sleeping in the statue’s lap. His attempts to get down from it take his situation from bad to worse), toilet humour (one of the Tramp’s first jobs is picking up animal waste in the streets. In one scene he manages to avoid picking up after horses, only to turn around and be confronted by an elephant), and just about everything else in the gamut of comedy. Part of the reason why Chaplin films work so well – and hold up so well – on a comedic level is that as much effort and skill is put into the set up of the gag as into the payoff. Chaplin doesn’t just throw a series of potentially funny moments at the audience, hoping that some of them stick. He takes his time constructing the joke and he has a sense for its lifespan, knowing when it has gone on long enough and how to bring it to a successful resolution. He doesn’t let his jokes run themselves into the ground.

Another reason why his films work so well is that he knows how to play your heartstrings without making you resent him for it. It is perhaps because he’s so upfront about his aims (no one mugs for the camera like Chaplin, and no one else would ever get away with it), because he acknowledges that he’s manipulating you, that you let yourself be carried along by the film and allow it to take you where it wants you to go. Chaplin doesn’t pretend that he’s putting one over on the audience or that he’s getting away with something during the film, especially during the scenes with the flower girl. He knows that he’s manipulating the audience, and he knows that audience knows it, so that the audience then becomes complicit in it, as if a pact has been made between himself and the viewer. Very few filmmakers have ever managed to hold their audience so completely in the palm of their hand.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Nosferatu (1922)

Director: F.W. Murnau
Starring: Max Schreck, Greta Shroeder, Gustav von Wagenheim

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror isn’t an especially scary film, but it is a particularly haunting one. Directed by the brilliant F.W. Murnau, this is a horror film less concerned with gore and creatures jumping out from their hiding places, and more concerned with creating an atmosphere of terror and anxiety. Max Schreck’s performance as the vampire, Count Orlock, creates one of the most lasting impressions ever made on screen and adds immensely to the sinister genius of the film.

Nosferatu is an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but the names of the characters were changed in an attempt to avoid a lawsuit by Stoker’s widow - which didn’t work and her victory in court almost resulted in the film being lost forever. In the film, the protagonist, Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), is summoned to the dwelling (“home” is too warm a word for so dark a place) of Count Orlock. The mere mention of Orlock’s name is enough to cause dread in the hearts of the people who reside in the village below the manor, but Hutter carries on regardless. Orlock emerges from the darkness to greet Hutter and invites him to sit down to dinner. During the course of the meal, Hutter cuts himself (“Your precious blood!” Orlock exclaims) and Orlock looks lustily at Hutter’s wound, then sees Hutter’s picture of his wife, Ellen (Greta Shroeder), and transfers his lust to her (“What a lovely throat…”). His growing determination to have her will ultimately lead to his destruction.

Part of the reason why Nosferatu works is that it’s a very economical adaptation. Murnau and writer Henrik Galeen knew how to focus the story for maximum effect and cut out the parts of Stoker’s novel that aren’t really necessary for this kind of story, things like Stoker’s fascination with emerging technologies (incidentally, if you want to see a Dracula adaptation that fully embraces all the quirks and asides of the novel, I recommend Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which may not be the “best” vampire film ever, but is a guilty pleasure movie if ever there was one). Another reason is the underlying sexual aspect to the terror. The most obvious sexual connotation of this film (and other vampire films) is that the menace comes in the form of an exchange of bodily fluid, and that the terror reaches its peak when the menace comes to visit a woman while she’s in bed. The anxiety that runs through this film isn’t an anxiety about death but about sex, specifically about the connection of sex to women. It’s interesting that vampire films begin here with sexual threat framed clearly as something monstrous, a “creature” who inspires revulsion from those around him, and evolve over time (beginning with Tod Browning’s Dracula) into the trope of the “seductive” vampire, to whom victims succumb almost willingly. There is nothing seductive about Orlock. He appears terrifying and inhuman – a assemblage of ugliness almost beyond imagining.

Murnau is a master of tone and style, creating here a film that is hypnotic in the way that it unfolds. The first sighting of Orlock is especially memorable and enduring, as he emerges from the darkness looking ghoulish and alien – the level of creepiness established here would have been enough to carry the film to its conclusion even if the story didn't take us into Orlock's mansion. According to IMDB, Orlock only appears in about nine of the film’s ninety or so minutes, which is startling when you consider how deeply his presence seems engrained in the film from beginning to end. It’s a credit not only to Schreck’s acting, but also to Murnau’s direction that the character is able to loom so large over the film, becoming larger than the narrative itself. By confining the character, limiting his space within the film, Murnau gives him license to run loose in our imaginations (off the top of my head I can think of two other big screen terrors whose limited time in the film has the same effect: the shark in Jaws and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs).

Nosferatu is a film that can be watched today without seeming dated because it exists so firmly in the realm of fantasy. It floats before us like a nightmare, touching on our deepest fears and twisting them into shapes all the more frightening for their unfamiliarity. This is a definite must see for anyone who loves movies.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Passion of Joan of Ark (1928)

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring: Maria Falconetti

This is a film unlike any you will ever see. Filmed almost entirely in close-up, it limits the viewer’s visual stimuli and concentrates attention on the faces of the characters, most notably that of Joan of Ark. The film is about the trial, torture and condemnation of Joan of Ark and conveys her anguish not through rousing, impassioned speeches, but simply by looking at her face. The performance by Maria Falconetti as Joan has been called one of the best ever committed to film, and that is exactly right. She gives us so much and does it without flash or histrionics, just with her face. When the film is finished, you simply sit there, amazed at what you’ve just seen.

The set design – what little we get to see of it – is stark. It basically consists of a couple of rooms, the dimensions of which we never really get a handle on. Sometimes the rooms seem large, sometimes small, and we’re never confident about what shape they take or where the characters are situated in them or where, exactly, any given character is in relation to another. This aids in our identification with Joan because we, too, feel confused and disoriented in this setting, unable to get our bearings. This isn’t to say that the vagueness of the setting is distracting; quite the opposite. The simplicity of its design is its strength, allowing director Carl Theodor Dreyer to take complete control of the audience’s focus as he arranges his images in very exact ways. You soon forget about the setting itself and concentrate fully on those images, especially those of the quietly suffering Joan.

The film makes no secret of where its sympathies lie and very directly establishes Joan as good and her judges as bad, but it isn’t about whether or not Joan communicated with God. It’s an indictment of the system of justice that put Joan on trial, tortured her, mocked her beliefs and eventually burned her at the stake. Whether she heard the voice of God or not isn’t the point – whether she did or not is no excuse for the way she is punished. The film is quick to establish her judges as villains, focusing on their hard, hateful faces and contrasting them with the serene blankness of Joan’s face, shooting them from below so that they loom over Joan (and us) monstrously, while shooting Joan from above so that we look down at her, and feel protective of her. There are characters who sympathize with Joan and want to help her, but it’s the mob mentality of the rest that wins out, pushing her allies aside, and determining her fate. We look at these men, these ghoulish figures who seem to surround her, shot in some instances so that it appears as if they’re stacked one atop the other, an insurmountable wall of hate. We’re chilled by their eagerness to condemn her, the way that her fate has been decided before she’s even entered the room.

Not enough can be said about the performance by Maria Falconeti. There is a scene where her tormentors place a crown of thorns on her head and proceed to mock and laugh at her as she sits there, completely still in her suffering. It’s a shattering scene in which she seems to do nothing, and yet does everything. At no point in the film does she play up for the camera. Her movements and expressions are always minimal, but manage to communicate so much about what she’s thinking and feeling. She believes that she’s heard the voice of God, that she’s been chosen by him, and therefore believes that there is a plan and a reason for her suffering. She doesn’t seek death, but accepts it as what must happen. Her body may be fragile, but her spirit and her mind are strong - these ideas all come across through the way that she relates to her tormentors, through glances and gestures that wouldn't be sufficient now, when actors have to verbalize everything and scream to express passion.

In describing the film, I’m perhaps doing it a disservice. Some people, when they learn that it is a silent film and shot predominantly in close-up, will immediately shut their minds to it as being something that only a film snob would enjoy, but that couldn’t be less the case. This is an absolutely engrossing movie, one of the best examples of the power of film to express feeling and thought. It’s a film that must be seen to be believed, and once seen, it will never be forgotten.