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THE BLACK PIRATE
***
USA
After pirates kill his father and sink his ship, a nobleman swears
revenge.
A popular Fairbanks swashbuckler with many of his most memorable
stunts, including the one where he slides down a sail on a knife. It's not
among his best pictures though - the action moves at a slow rate and the
production design seems particularly lazy when compared to some of his
other vehicles. This one was actually shot in early two-colour Technicolor
process but it also exists in black-and-white prints.
dir: Albert Parker
cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove, Anders Randolf, Donald
Crisp
BY THE LAW
*****
USSR
One of a group of gold prospectors on the Yukon murders two others, and
the surviving two are left to decide what to do with him.
The rare Soviet production that is free of even the slightest trace of
propaganda. Also fascinating in that the setting is American. The
overacting doesn't preclude psychological insight, the imagery is
spectacular and the story tense, gripping and devastating.
dir:
Lev Kuleshov
wr: Lev Kuleshov, Viktor Shklovsky
ph: Konstantin Kuznetsov
ad: Isaak Makhlis
cast: Vladimir Fogel, Pyotr Galadzhev, Aleksandra Khokhlova,
Sergei Komarov, Porfiri Podobed
ELLA CINDERS
***
USA
A put-upon small-town-girl wins a beauty contest and a trip to Hollywood.
A famous vehicle for the period's most popular comedienne, who is quite
funny and charming in her insistence to play for laughs but play it
straight. There's been better variations on this story though. The ending is sure to enrage feminists.
dir: Alfred E. Green
cast: Colleen Moore, Lloyd Hughes, Vera Lewis, Doris
Baker, Emily Gerdes, Jed Prouty, Jack Duffy, Harry Langdon
FAUST
****½
Germany
Faust sells his soul to the devil.
A flawed visual tour de force. The story gladly succumbs to melodrama and this
particular Mephisto is a distractingly campy one, but the visuals are
among the most spellbinding in cinema history, particularly the image of
the caped figure of Mephisto towering above the meticulous model of a
small German town as well as the famous, still breathtaking flying sequence.
dir: F. W. Murnau
ph: Carl Hoffman
ad: Robert Herlth, Walter Röhrig
cast: Emil Jannings, Gosta Ekman, Camilla Horn, Yvette
Guilbert, William Dieterle
THE LODGER
***½
MÉNILMONTANT
****½
France
Pauline Kael’s favourite movie this was. It begins with a startling
sequence of an axe murder as witnessed by the victims’ two teenage
daughters and the film ends up faintly disappointing since no other part
in it quite matches the raw, hypnotic force of this opening. But it is a
remarkable achievement. Russian émigré Dimitri Kirsanoff – evidently a
significant figure in early avant-garde cinema – directs with great
sensitivity and lyricism, combining Soviet montage techniques with a
French Impressionist’s fascination with light.
wr/dir/ph/ed: Dimitri Kirsanoff
cast: Nadia Sibirskaīa, Yoland Beaulieu, Guy Belmont, Jean
Pasquier |
METROPOLIS
**** MOTHER
*****
USSR
During a workers' strike in
1905, a Russian mother naively and inadvertently betrays her son to the
police.
One of the greatest examples of filmmaking, rarely matched in its
visual beauty and potency. Pudovkin's credentials as the greatest of the
Soviet filmmakers are most evident here, through his ability to
present an epic narrative as well as a stronger sense of its impact
through a focus on individuals rather than a collective.
dir/ed:
Vsevolod Pudovkin
wr:
Nathan Zarkhi
ph: Anatoli Golovnya
cast: Vera Baranovskaya, Nikolai Batalov, Ivan
Koval-Somborsky, Anna Zemtsova, Aleksandr Chistyakov, Vsevolod Pudovkin
A PAGE OF MADNESS
*****
Japan
An old man works as a janitor
at an insane asylum, where his wife is an inmate.
An arresting, accomplished, powerful and progressive Japanese
masterpiece,
employing a complex narrative and vision far ahead of its time (including
flashbacks and several stylish, visceral
dream sequences). It exploits every cinematic technique
available at the time, including expressionist
lighting, tilted camera angles,
slow and fast motion, multiple exposures, blurred focus, subjective point
of view, frantic, elliptical montages and many many superimpositions - but no
intertitles. Like Murnau's "The Last Laugh" (1924), it relies solely on imagery
to tell its story. Long considered lost until
rediscovered in a rice barrel at its director's country home in the 19 70s,
it was then reissued, but remains rarely seen.
dir: Teinosuke Kinugasa
cast: Masuo Inoue, Yoshie Nakagawa, Ayako Iijima, Hiroshi
Nemoto, Misao Seki, Eiko Minami
SPARROWS
***
USA
An evil farmer keeps an army of orphans captive at his farm deep in a
swamp in the South.
You would naturally approach this type of material with a pinch of
salt, but you might wanna stack up on the salt shakers for the scene where
Pickford's character speedily grows content with an infant's death because
he's with Jesus now. And then the picture moves on like nothing happened.
It's difficult to bear with it as it shamelessly exploits every shred of
your humanity for dramatic purposes, but it's also difficult to look away.
At some points, it might remind you of Charles Laughton's (far superior) "The
Night of the Hunter" (1955). There's a few moments of gentle
humour thrown in amongst all the orphan terrorising. More of those would
have helped.
dir: William Beaudine
cast: Mary Pickford, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Roy Stewart,
Charlotte Mineau
THE STRONG MAN
*****
USA
A Belgian soldier goes to
America to meet his pen-pal.
Harry Langdon was not as artful and elaborate as his more celebrated
contemporaries and his acrobatic skills were limited, but he was
endearingly naïve and huggable and ready to fall down just about
anything, always at the right time. In this particular picture, widely
cited as his best, the comedy is shapeless, the action inconsequential,
the plot - like Capra's claims for its status as a moral parable -
ridiculous. But his bittersweet clown persona is irresistible, and his
antics, very very funny.
dir:
Frank Capra
cast: Harry Langdon, Priscilla Bonner, Gertrude Astor,
Brooks Benedict, Arthur Thalasso, Robert McKim
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