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Author Topic: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New  (Read 24782 times)

pixote

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #50 on: August 28, 2016, 09:16:42 PM »
1923 (Poll)

Films Graded                Films RememberedWatchlist
None!Our HospitalityThe Burning Crucible (Mozzhukhin)
Safety Last!Cameo Kirby (Ford)
The Smiling Madame Beudet            Coeur fidèle (Epstein)
Crime and Punishment (Wiene)
The Extra Girl (Normand)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Chaney)
La roue (Gance)
Little Old New York (Davies)
The Pilgrim (Chaplin)
Scaramouche (Ingram)
Souls for Sale (Boardman)
The Ten Commandments (DeMille)
Three Ages (Keaton)
The White Sister (Gish)
Why Worry? (Lloyd)
A Woman of Paris (Chaplin)
Zaza (Swanson)



I put the films I'm most eager to see/revisit in bold. Safety Last! is an easy choice for my Something Old film for 1923. After my recent marathon of Keaton shorts, I'm especially eager to compare Lloyd's style of comedy. Apparently he was more popular than Keaton at this time.

As for my Something New film, Souls for Sale and Coeur fidèle are really tantalizing options, but I've been dying to watch La roue ever since catching the beginning of it on TCM a few years ago. The 273-minute running time is daunting, though.

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« Last Edit: August 30, 2016, 12:20:33 AM by pixote »
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1SO

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #51 on: August 28, 2016, 09:33:48 PM »
I thought Souls For Sale was lost. Didn't realize they found and restored it in 2006.

Jared

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #52 on: August 29, 2016, 12:29:31 AM »
I think that find prompted Ebert's Great Movie review of it. I watched it maybe a year or two ago and thought it was pretty good. I think La roue is better though.


pixote

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #53 on: August 30, 2016, 02:01:50 AM »
1923: Bonus Shorts



The Balloonatic  (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1923)

There's not much in The Balloonatic to recommend it, certainly nothing as wonderful as the title itself. That title, it worth noting, references just a small part of the film, to the point of being misleading. I was looking forward to seeing Keaton's efforts to build his own hot air balloon or maybe his attempt to circumnavigate the globe, challenged to showcase his acrobatics while riding in the small basket; but that isn't this movie at all.

The Balloonatic opens with fresh energy, as Keaton, alone in the dark for reasons that aren't immediately clear, confronts in quick succession a skeleton, a devil, and a demon. The in medias res aspect of it all is a fun change of pace — so much so that it's a bit of a let-down that the scene is no more than a non sequitur. But the scene sets up the film's most eye-popping stunt, as a woman crashes down onto an unsuspecting Buster from the air above. I can't imagine that wasn't painful, but it is still a joy to watch. Soon thereafter Keaton finds himself accidentally stranded on top of a hot air balloon, which he quickly proceeds to crash land. There are very few laughs to be had after that point, not until the final seconds of the film, when the balloon makes a fantastic reappearance.

There's sort of a loneliness to Keaton's comedy in The Balloonatic, as he operates without his usual foil, Joe Roberts, or any comedic surrogate. It's just Buster versus the wilderness, and it never quites clicks. It's like watching a kid trying to play on the seesaw by himself, but not as funny.

Grade: C





The Love Nest  (Buster Keaton, 1923)

The black comedy in Keaton's shorts rarely works for me, usually because it doesn't go quite far enough and thus ends up being a bit punchless. In The Love Nest, for instance, Joe Roberts plays a ship's captain who is prone to throwing his crew members overboard when they irritate him. What makes that especially funny is that being thrown overboard is a death sentence — but the film is just a bit too cutesy about that dark aspect to bring the joke home. By comparison, it's absolutely hilarious at the end of the film when a navy ship blows Buster to complete smithereens, because there's no tiptoeing around the comedy there. It's delightfully larger than life.

Just seeing those navy ships is pretty cool, as is seeing whales in the water near the ship. (Why wasn't there ever a Keaton collaboration with Robert Flaherty?) Less cool are the minutes devoted to shipboard puns, with Buster responding to "All hands on deck!" by literally putting his hands on the deck; and responding to a call to "port" by fetching some wine. Not the height of hilarity.

The Love Nest, Keaton's last silent short, is definitely not his best, continuing the trend of diminishing returns seen in the few films prior. But as the final entry in the collection of nineteen shorts he made between 1920 and 1923, it's a key part of a remarkable achievement. I'm very excited to see him turn his energy to features.

Grade: C

pixote
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pixote

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #54 on: September 05, 2016, 06:36:51 PM »
1923: Something New



La roue  (Abel Gance, 1923)

Having just spent 273 minutes watching La roue, I don't really want to spend too much additional time reviewing it, even though there's so much to say. If this were a verdict in the 1920s Bracket (how amazing will that be!), this would probably be a 2,000 word review accompanied by twenty to thirty screenshots. Better yet would be to record an audio commentary, analyzing in real-time the film's many, many virtues ... and many, many flaws. There'd be a fair amount of hyperbolic mockery on that commentary, and I'd read along to the intertitles with histrionic passion, capturing each and every exclamation point.

I've been eager to watch La roue every since I caught the opening scene on TCM years ago. Gance begins the film with a literal bang, and his filming of the train crash captures him at his best. The dynamic editing and cinematography remain impressive achievements, with Gance bringing tons of excitement to the screen with any number of pioneering techniques. I really wish La roue were a pure action film — Abel Gance's Under Siege or Abel Gance's Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Those are films I could recommend without caveat.

Gance doesn't hide his aspirations towards Art, however, and that's where the flaws begin. La roue is probably the most overwrought film I've ever seen. I should've known: it's right there in the title. The Wheel — an allegory so all-encompassing that it spins me around and makes me carsick. The screenplay, in theme and scope, feels like the imitation of a great novel, Flaubert written in crayon.

Here's a taste of the story: Our hero protagonist, Sisif, is an engineer on the railroad. In the wreckage of a crash, he finds a baby girl that he secretly decides to raise as his own daughter, because she's beautiful and his son needs a sister and the girl is pretty much an orphan anyway. The girl grows into a young woman without knowing her origins; Sisif isn't her kidnapper, just Papa. But, alas, Sisif falls in love — romantically — with his adopted daughter. That's his cross to bear, along with the guilt over taking her in the first place. (Late in the film, he literally bears a cross because Art demands that even anti-heroes be Christ-like.) Oh, and guess what? The boy and girl are also in love with each other, even though they think they're brother and sister. Quelle tragédie!

Sisif, as played by Séverin-Mars (who died during filming), isn't recognizable to me as a human character. If this were an animated movie, and Sisif was a grizzly bear, he'd make much more sense. Séverin-Mars is a master of wild gestures and crazy eyes, but his performance is bizarrely over-the-top, even by silent film standards. During some scenes, I just imagined Gance shouting at him during the take, "You stare at her, but not just at her! At every woman on the Wheel! And you see, all at once, all their joys and sorrows! Yes, feel the weight of their tears in your shoulders! It cowers you! The weight of the Wheel is too much! Yes!"

I'm not criticizing Séverin-Mars. His overwrought performance fits the surrounding film perfectly. Sisif is a character who tries to kill himself on two different occasions! — and both times with a train! I wished him success both times. After the first attempt, he receives a letter of reprimand from his bosses. After the second attempt, he receives a second letter, plus a demotion, but he's still allowed to drive trains. The railway labor union in France must be super powerful.

The cinematography, despite being distinctly cinematic, is almost painterly in its ambition. The results, on a shot-by-shot basis, are generally wonderful. Gance and cinematographer Léonce-Henri Burel (I think he was the main contributor, among the listed DPs) do beautiful things with lighting and irises and mattes, obsessively controlling the focus of the audience's eyes. Like with most new techniques, though, there are some growing pains, and I don't think La roue finds the right balance between the impressionistic beauty of a single shot and the overall impression created by a series of shots. As exciting as some of the rapid editing is, there's still something disconcerting about seeing ten shots in a three second span that all have different lighting, different matting, and inconsistent character blocking. There's not enough visual continuity. The film is like a preemptive "f—k you" to Bresson's Notes on Cinematography.

So, there you have it. La roue is a very impressive film and an exciting cinematic acheivement. But La roue is also a pretty silly movie. Had I watched it when I was younger, I would have called it a masterpiece and assumed any possible flaws belonged to me as a viewer. I'm older than that now.

Grade: C+

pixote
« Last Edit: September 05, 2016, 07:24:21 PM by pixote »
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Junior

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #55 on: September 05, 2016, 07:06:44 PM »


That's one hell of a review. I'm glad you took the time to write it. Everybody should take the time to read it.
Check out my blog of many topics

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pixote

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #56 on: September 06, 2016, 12:46:17 AM »
Thanks, Junior. I really appreciate that.

My other option was just to link to this video review by Kristin Thompson, which is still worth watching.

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oldkid

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #57 on: September 08, 2016, 11:07:40 PM »
First time I've heard of this film.  Sounds interesting, but too long.
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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #58 on: September 08, 2016, 11:17:47 PM »
I was more generous but I don't remember much at all about the film, which probably says something.

pixote

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Re: Year-by-Year: Something Old, Something New
« Reply #59 on: November 04, 2016, 07:35:22 PM »
1923: Something Old



Safety Last!  (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)

A disappointing revisit. Safety Last! remains a nice, genial comedy, but I wanted more. The first fifty minutes feel a bit like filler, leading up the film's main set piece. Keaton spoiled me perhaps, but Lloyd seems so bland by comparison — so devoid of personality and lacking in innovation and gags per minute. There's too little surprise to the comedy, too. The joke of the friend saying "one more floor, one more floor" is typical. Keaton, at his best, would find ways to reinvent that joke each time, but Lloyd lets it stay largely repetitive. Some of the acrobatics of the climb are impressive — but Lloyd does them so nonchalantly that I failed to appreciate everything fully. The way he doesn't stop for applause from the audience is admirable, at least on a theoretically level, but there's maybe a little something lacking in his comic rhythm here. And, it's horrible to say, but I wish I felt more worried for his safety, especailly given the movie's title. It's a well photographed film, and the matte shots are beautiful, but only very few shots really bring home the dizzying heights and the associated thrill.

Grade: B-

pixote
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