Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Monday, October 30, 2006
56. Frankenstein (1931)
Directed by James Whale
Synopsis
You know the story. Dr. Frankenstein introduced meat rag doll to lightning. Havok ensues.
Review
Wow, this is perfectly timed for Halloween, Dracula and now Frankenstein! This is actually the better of the two films hands down. There is not much to be praised about it in terms of technical advances. The sets are pretty nice, in a very German expressionist way, all diagonal shadows and rickety graveyards, there are some interesting things done with the camera, like panning inside of a house through the walls following a character. The monster's entrance is also quite well done, first seen from the back, then the side, and when seen from the front he gets a zoom in.
But as with Bela Lugosi and Dracula, Boris Karloff has become the ultimate Frankenstein Monster. And remember kids, Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster. Karloff plays it perfectly, and if you want to see more of him in action watch Bride of Frankenstein, an even better film.
Some of the acting is pathetic, Frankenstein's best friend is laughable at times, as is his melodramatic bride. The Dr. himself and his father, Baron Frankenstein, are great actors, and let's not forget Dwight Frye as Fritz playing the correspondent of the role of Renfield that he had played in Dracula.
Of coure I unfortunately cannot see this film without reliving Young Frankenstein, and that is a good thing... but I am constantly replacing the dialogue by Gene Wilder of Marty Feldman quips. Buy it at Amazon UK or US.
Final Grade
8/10 (8.5, it's better than Dracula, but doesn't deserve a 9)
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
In the opening credits, Karloff is unbilled, a question mark being used in place of his name. He is, however, listed in the closing credits, which otherwise duplicate the credits from the opening under the principle that "A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating".
Bela Lugosi was originally due to star as the monster, but after several disastrous make-up tests, the Dracula star left the project, lamenting the mute role as he did. Ironically, Lugosi would later go on to play the monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.
As was the custom at the time, only the main cast and crew were listed in the credits. Additionally, however, a number of other actors who worked on the project were or became familiar to fans of the Universal horror films. These included Frederick Kerr as the old Baron Frankenstein, Henry's father; Lionel Belmore as Herr Vogel, the Burgomeister; Marilyn Harris as Little Maria, the girl the monster accidentally kills; and Michael Mark as Ludwig, Maria's father.
Jack Pierce was the makeup artist who designed the now-iconic "flat head" look for Karloff's monster.
Ken Strickfaden designed the electrical effects used in the "creation scene." So successful were they that such effects came to be considered an essential part of every subsequent Universal film involving Frankenstein. Accordingly, the equipment used to produce them has come to be referred to in fan circles as "Strickfadens." It appears that Strickfaden managed to secure the use of at least one Tesla Coil built by the then-aged Nikola Tesla himself.
Although Dr. Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant is often referred to as "Igor" in descriptions of the films, this is incorrect. In both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, an assistant is played by Dwight Frye, but he is called "Fritz" in the former and "Karl" in the latter. It was not until Son of Frankenstein that a character called "Ygor" appeared (here, he was played by Bela Lugosi). This character — a deranged shepherd whose neck and back are twisted due to a botched hanging — befriends the monster and later helps Dr. Wolf Frankenstein, lending to the "hunchbacked assistant" called "Igor" commonly associated with Frankenstein in pop culture.
This film was banned in Kansas for its portrayal of cruelty.
The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Ok, if you are looking for camera work, or technical achievements and so on, look somewhere else, actually you can look next door in the Spanish language of the same film, made for the Latin American market when making a new film was the only way to export talkies. You lose Bela Lugosi, but you get good directing...
In the end the English version is the best one. While the directing is a lacklustre affair, basically filming a parlour theatre play, there are a couple of iconic performances that make the film an enjoyable experience.
The first presence you are aware of is that of Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Lugosi was always associated to Dracula from here on, but so was Dracula associated to Lugosi, a testimony to his over the top iconic role. Watching this film is a lot of fun, it is basically for me one of those films that you know the lines by heart, and Lugosi has the best ones. "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.", or " I never drink... wine." After the move to England however Renfield starts stealing the show, and Lugosi is much more subdued, and Van Helsing is pretty good as well.
This film gives you that giddy fun that most cult B movies do, it is so cliched, but it also invented many of the cliches. If you want some high culture while watching it, get the version with the Phillip Glass soundtrack, it really adds something to the film. Get it at Amazon UK or US.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
Here you go, the best part of the film, in these 8 minutes, you get the most famous quotes and see Lugosi in all his glory:
From Wikipedia:
In various scenes set in Castle Dracula several armadillos are seen wandering around the set. Purportedly this is an in-joke on the part of director Tod Browning, who insisted Castle Dracula contain armadillos (an animal much beloved in his place of birth, Texas), regardless of the fact that they don't occur naturally in Central Europe.
1998 score by Philip Glass
Due to the short-lived limitations of adding a musical score to a film's soundtrack, during 1930 and 1931, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. In 1998 minimalist composer Philip Glass was commissioned to compose an original score for the classic film. The score was performed by the Kronos Quartet under direction of Michael Riesman.
Of the project, Glass said:
"The film is considered a classic. I felt the score needed to evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th century — for that reason I decided a string quartet would be the most evocative and effective. I wanted to stay away from the obvious effects associated with horror films. With [the Kronos Quartet] we were able to add depth to the emotional layers of the film."
The film, with this new score, was released by Universal Studios Home Video in 1999 in the VHS format. Universal's DVD releases allow the viewer to choose between the unscored soundtrack or the Glass score.
The Spanish language version
It the early days of sound, it was common for Hollywood studios to produce foreign language versions of their films (usually in French, Spanish and German) using the same sets, costumes and etc. Unfortunately, most of these foreign language versions no longer exist. The Spanish version of Dracula is an exception.
The Spanish language version of Drácula was made by director George Melford who simultaneously filmed the movie using the same sets at night. Melford used a different crew and cast that featured Carlos Villarías, who played the title role, and Eduardo Arozamena who portrayed Van Helsing. Carl Laemmle Jr. was the producer of both versions.
In recent years this version has become more highly praised by some than the English language version. The Spanish crew had the advantage of watching the Dailies from the English crew's version when they came in for the evening. They would work out better camera angles and more effective use of lighting. With the film being intended for a Spanish-speaking audience, they didn't have to adhere to the Hayes Code, as was the case for the English-language version. As a result, this version's supporters consider it to be much more artistically effective. The Spanish semiologist Roman Gubern considers that the longer duration allows better development of the plot in spite of the shorted shooting time and smaller budget.
The Spanish version was included as a bonus feature on the Legacy Collection DVD in 2004 and the 75th Anniversary Edition DVD set in 2006.
Boy meets girl. Girl is made holy and therefore Tabu for all the sexy bits. They elope. Being chased by old man tabu enforcer guy. Girl leaves boy so he doesn't have to die because of tabu breaking. Boy meets death at sea chasing the boat that will take girl to her death penalty. The End.
Review
This is Murnau's last film, in fact he died before it came out. There is the hand of another guy in this film, it is co-scripted by Flaherty of Nanook of the North fame, and you can tell this because of the attempt of documentary style authenticity in what is essentially a typical tragic love story.
Murnau never disappoints and here he brings a light and beauty to his film, which wasn't seen in many of his earlier works. But the darkness is very much still there, Murnau never made feelgood movies, this one follows that rule, but it is very, very pretty.
Again Murnau uses the camera excellently, there's a lot of underwater filming, and there's even a shark fight, which a shark that actually looks real, not Jaws... Just as in Psycho's shower scene much later there is actually no stabbing of the shark or any direct contact, but the montage gives you that illusion. Murnau was leagues ahead of his time, in everything but the use of voice. But this is a case of the film that wins by not having the distraction of voice, firstly most of the cast are either Tahiti islanders or Chinese, which would make the language barrier a problem in a talkie, and Murnau was always about what you see, and the landscape and people take more of a center stage without sound.
An excerpt from Murnau's 1926 Faust, which is not on the list, but should have been, could easily kick out Phantom of The Opera or yet another tedious Griffith film:
From Wikipedia:
Tapu (or tabu) is a concept existing in many Polynesian societies, including traditional Māori, and Tongan cultures. It reflects something that is holy or sacred. The cognate word in the Hawaiian language culture is kapu .
In Māori and Tongan tradition, something that is tapu (Māori) or tabu (Tongan) is considered inviolable or sacrosanct due to its sacredness. Things or places which are tapu must be left alone, and may not be approached or interfered with. In some cases, they should not even be spoken of. In Māori society the concept was often used by tohunga (priests) to protect resources from over-exploitation, by declaring a fishery or other resource as tapu. The English word "taboo" derives from this usage, and was adopted by Captain James Cook during his visit to Tonga in 1777.
Man wins lottery! Ticket is in jacket, jacket is given away! Madcap chase! Hilarity ensues! All's well... etc.
Review
Ok, this film was actually made before A Nous La Liberte, but the stupid book puts it after and I am slavishly following it. It is from the same year anyway. I have talked at length of how the Russians were such masters of image and how Murnau as well. But with Rene Clair comes a master of sound!
Rene's use of sound is nothing if not original, and he is trying to avoid the drop in artistic innovation brought about by the talkie, where the "camera became lazy" because dialog solved everything. He is quite successful in that, the whole film is built around sound, but without ever losing good camera movement and excellent directing. The visual gags are very much there and it is a pretty funny film, but when he uses sound he does it with a purpose, for example near the end there is a kind of rugby game with the jacket and Clair actually uses real sound footage of a game. Or earlier while the two main characters hide behind an opera scenery the song being sung reflects their situation, and they are perfectly aware of that, stopping to listen. Even their own conscioussness sings to characters.
In the end it is not as effective a film as A Nous La Liberte, but it is a very entertaining hour and 20 minutes. See it.
A treat for you, Entr'acte by Rene Clair, a silent film with the appearence of Eric Satie, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia. Music By Eric Satie:
An escape from jail, only one of the escapees makes it leaving his friend behind. Escapee makes it big in the gramophone business, gigantic factory not unlike prison. Friend finally escapes prison, gets job at gramophone factory. Friends Reunited! Big Gramophone man gets found out as a prison escapee by blackmailers, runs away with friend to be tramps on the road, leaving behind the world of capitalism, big cars and women.
Review
Some of the first films I saw as a kid were the Asterix animations that my father taped. Living in Portugal they were in French with subtitles. They were of course musical comedies in cartoon form. Now I can see where they are coming from.
A Nous La Liberte has many similarities to those films, and it's not only the frenchness or the sense of humor. In fact even the songs are similar, and the vocabulary used by the characters as well, a kind of comedic laid back French that didn't change much from 1931 to 1980 at least.
So, not only was this a discovery but also a trip down memory lane. The film is successful in many respects actually, it is a good comedy, with great images and a quite interesting message. You will laugh through it, there are really precious moments, but you will benefit immensely if you have some notions of French. In fact the DVD version I have has the most horrid subtitles, that leave a lot of the film unsubtitled and when they do subtitle it make a butchery of it. I would advise getting the Criterion Collection version (Region 1) as the Region 2 one is very crappy indeed. If you know French you are fine however. In terms of message it is an interesting leftist point of view, where capitalism creates a system where theose on the bottom of the scale are slaves and prisioners of those on top of it, and those on top are themselves slaves to greed. The scene towards the end where a huge group of men in top hats, white gloves and canes run around trying to catch the money that is falling from the sky is at the same time deep and absurd. It will make you laugh and think... so a good film in my books. Buy it at Amazon UK or US.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
The first 5 seconds of the clip are fucked, but its the only one, better than nothing:
From Wikipedia:
The film later created controversy with the release of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, which bore some similarities to this film -- such as the conveyor belt gags. In the end, instead of going to court, they reached a settlement, but the whole controversy took around a decade. Chaplin maintained that he had never seen the film, as did everyone else at the studio. René Clair himself, was never a part of the case and was actually quite embarrassed by it, since he had great admiration for Chaplin and had always maintained that they were all in debt to him, and any inspiration Chaplin might have gotten from his film would be an honor for him. A speculation over this case was that it was a conspiracy from Nazi Germany to discredit Chaplin; À Nous la Liberté's production company, Tobis, was German. It is notable that the out-of-court settlement was reached only after the end of World War II.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"... or not really.
Review
All Quiet On The Western Front is a truly great film, it does have its flaws but the good point vastly outnumber the flaws. Firstly it is based on a great novel, which helps it have a good plot with well rounded characters. Secondly this is the film which makes the best use of sound until now, the sound of bombardments and machine guns follow you throughout the film and through them you get a bit of the notion of what it is like to be there.
On the minus-side the acting is not that great in some parts, mainly due to the younger actors, Paul, although he has his good moments also has some really bad throwbacks to Griffith's melodramatic overacting. In the whole scope of the film this is quite minor however. Also, there are plenty of things here that were done in Vidor's Big Parade and therefore it is not so original as it is sometimes said. Still, All Quiet has the advantage of being the grittier film, while Big Parade had plenty of moments of relaxation and even comedy, All Quiet is relentlessly brutal, which helps it put across its message.
The message os the film is another interesting thing; firstly, it chooses to show WWI through the eyes of the Germans. Secondly, it is uncompromising in its anti-war message. This is represented in pretty interesting ways, for example Paul only becomes the main character towards the middle of the film, for the simple fact that every one of his coleagues is either dead, injured or gone. Paul returns home on leave just to feel disgusted by the beligerent ideas of those who never saw battle, disgusted by nationalism and couch generals. A great film, and you can buy it at Amazon UK or US.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
Quotes from IMDB:
Paul Bäumer: You still think it's beautiful to die for your country. The first bombardment taught us better. When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all.
Paul Bäumer: We live in the trenches out there. We fight. We try not to be killed, but sometimes we are. That's all.
Tjaden: Me and the Kaiser, we are both fighting. The only difference is the Kaiser isn't here!
Paul Bäumer: And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death.
Paul Bäumer: War isn't the way it looks back here.
Meteoric rise to gangsta power! Meteoric fall from gangsta power!
Review
Finally a gangster film! I loves me gangsters! Really, and this is where you get the seed for all mob films of the future, from Goodfellas to Godfather. In post-depression USA there were two kinds of films, the totally escapist musical or the depressing films made by Warner, and this falls squarely in the second category.
There is no avoiding a strong sense of deja vu when watching this film, in fact you have probably watched it a thousand times without knowing it. All the stereotypes of the gangster film are here, but that is allright because they are being invented here. All mobsters are Italian and all policemen are Irish, drive by shootings on church steps, against shop windows, the gangster loved by the people in the street, the big banquet with all the mob sitting around a U shaped table. Even Edward Robinson's way of speaking became a gangster staple, repeated endlessly in Bugs Bunny cartoons.
If you haven't seen it, you are really missing out, not because the story is so amazing, which it isn't, but Robinson's performance and the sheer influence that this film exerted on later directors make it essential viewing. Although the story isn't really that complex, it is still entertaning, particularly in the way in which it critiques the idea of the American Dream, and mimics the stockmarket crash in the life of this little man. Buy it at Amazon UK or US. Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Famous Quotes
"Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" - Ed. G. Robinson as "Rico" Bandello saying his final words.
(This is an early example of Hollywood censorship- in the novel the line reads "Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?")
Acclaim and Legacy
Little Caesar was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Adaptation.
Little Caesar was remade in 1973 as Black Caesar.
In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the original film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
It has been speculated, but never confirmed, that the anti-organized crime statutes in the United States were dubbed RICO in a sly homage to Little Caesar. The original drafter of the RICO bill has refused to confirm or deny this.
Old Man Dies. Young Man wants tractor. Tractor gets to town, there is much rejoicing. Young man ploughs over a rich farmers fence, gets killed. Gets buried.
Review
Ahh, Soviet cinema! Very few people made films as pretty as the Soviets and this is no exception. It is not as frantic with its montages as Eisenstein or Vertov but it compensates that with just plain beautiful shots.
This film is set in the Ukraine and the shots of both cenery, animal life and peoples faces is enough to make this a great film. What Dovzhenko lacks in editing frenzy he makes up for in camera shots. The close up is a staple as is the long shot, where about 5% of the screen is earth and 95% is sky, giving us a feeling of imensity that was unequaled before this.
Dovzhenko also enjoys doing what Tarantino calls "the Sergio Leone", the very close close-up. People's faces are as much a part of the landscape of the Ukraine as the land itself. Plotwise it is the typical Soviet modernisation fare, one must fight the forces of capitalism, religion and superstition in order to bring progress. This is done however with quite a light touch, unlike Eisenstein's films for example. You can actually engage with the story itself instead of just the agit-prop. The funeral scene for Basil is particularly compelling as is the montage of the life-cycle of bread.
The film is not however without its boring moments- Some scenes, like Basil's walk before he gets killed take too long, of course this is meant to create a build up to the central plot mover of the film, but, as you don't know it's coming it becomes just a bit over-drawn. Recommended, buy it at Amazon UK or US.
Final Grade
8/10 Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Earth was simultaneously lauded and derided by Soviet authorities due to its fairly ambiguous political message. Soviet influence is clear if one looks for it, particularly in the nearness to the "earth" of the peasants, but exactly why or how the symbol functions is unclear. Indeed, the film also deals with subjects such as death, destruction, and poverty.
Earth is widely considered Dovzhenko's best film, and is often cited alongside Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) as one of the most important films of the Soviet era.
It was named #88 in the 1995 Centenary Poll of the 100 Best Films of the Century in Time Out Magazine. The film was also voted one of the ten greatest films of all time by a group of 117 film historians at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.
The starting scene of Earth, showing an old man dying among pear trees, probably influenced the music video of the 1994 Enigma song Return to Innocence.
Scorpions! Bishops! A kind of Resistance group! Dead Bishops! People on Boats! A Rape! An arrest! A big city! A Cow On A Bed! Stuff! A Party! Sucking on statuesque toes! Kissing the Maestro! Christ as a Perv! Finis.
Review
We had gotten Buñuel before in Chien Andalou and that was the superior film. This is not to say, however, that this is not a great film, which it is, but the surrealism is much more digestible in the 15 minutes of Chien Andalou than on the full hour of this film.
The themes are the same, sex and death, but L'Age D'Or diverges from Chien Andalou in the sense that it has a kind of loose plot, it is not completely disjointed and not as "crazy" as Chien. You still have to admire the dementia that led to the production of this flm. It is absolutely insane, the description of Imperial Rome is particularly amusing for example, such as the fact that sometimes on Sundays buildings crumble.
L'Age D'Or still manages to shock, there is the execution of a child, Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List style, there is the veiled references to female masturbation (or was it just me who noticed the hand in the advert perilously close to a mass of hair, or the position of the woman on the chaise longue, or the fact that that woman later has a bandaged finger and mentions she has felt sore all week?) as well as the allusion to fellatio, when Lya Lys finds herself alone in the garden, without her sexual partner she sucks the toe of a statue in a very suggestive way. I can only imagine what this was like for the audiences in 1930.
Buy it at Amazon UK or US. Or watch it with YouTube (at least until Google decides to take down videos from YouTube) here!
Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age) is a 1930 surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
The film was financed to the tune of a million francs by the nobleman Vicomte de Noailles, who commissioned a film every year for the birthday of his wife Marie-Laure de Noailles. When it was first released, there was a storm of protest. The film premiered at Studio 28 in Paris on 28 October 1930 after receiving its permit from the Board of Censors. In order to get the permit, Buñuel had to present the film to the Board as the dream of a madman. On 3 December 1930, a group of incensed members of the League of Patriots threw ink at the screen, assaulted members of the audience, and destroyed art work by Dalí, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and others on display in the lobby. It was subsequently banned for nearly 50 years, and did not have its official US premiere until 1-15 November 1979 at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco.
In the final vignette, the placecard narration tells of an orgy of 120 days of depraved acts and tells us that the survivors of the orgy are ready to emerge. From the door of a castle emerges a Christ-like figure. This scene is alluded to in the opening sequence, which resembles a short science film about a scorpion. The narrator tells us that the Scorpion has five parts, but the sting is in the tail. Pauline Kael described L'Âge d'Or as "Surreal, dreamlike, and deliberately, pornographically blasphemous."
Highschool teacher falls in love with loose moraled singer. Spiral of decay. Death.
Review
We had seen Von Sternberg here before with Docks of New York. As I said in that review it was a very stylish, yet empty film. The Blue Angel solves that by adding great actors and a very well executed plot to a very stylish film.
Firstly let's get Marlene Dietrich out of the way. She's fabulous. There, she's not a great singer, or particularly pretty, neither has she got a particularly amazing body, but there is something. She is fantastic, a great actress full of je ne sais quois (trans: I have no fucking idea why she is so great, but she is). Now let's talk about the actual star of the film, Emil Jannings, who had already impressed me in Murnau's Last Laugh. Again he plays the part of the once dignified man spiralling into despair, and does it perfectly.
Jannings interpretation is at the same time funny, pathetic, sweet, despairing, insane and suicidally depressed and spectacularly believable. Towards the end, the humiliation scene is particularly chilling. And if you thought this film was a musical light romp you are wrong. I will never listen to Falling In Love Again with the same ears. Dietrich is the flame and Jannings is the moth, and the end is inevitable.
The film's plot is also interesting, almost a perversion of Shaw's Pygmalion. Watch it comparing it to My Fair Lady and it is quite funny. There are two versions of the film, and English and a German one. The German is far superior, firstly the camerawork is better and secondly German is the native language of the actors, which makes them more comfortable. Buy it at Amazon UK or US. Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
* In the movie Aliens, actress Cynthia Dale Scott, who plays Corporal Dietrich (as in Marlene Dietrich) has the words "BLUE ANGEL" written on the back of her helmet. * Jean-Marc Lofficier wrote Superman's Metropolis, a trilogy of graphic novels for DC Comics illustrated by Ted McKeever, the third of which was entitled Wonder Woman: The Blue Amazon, with the plot partly derived from The Blue Angel.
Lulu is a high class man's lady, to what point she is an actual prostitute at the beggining of the film is not clear. She marries, kills husband by accident, runs away with husband's son. Runs away to London, street walks and gets killed by Jack the Ripper.
Review
This was an interesting and pretty progressive theme. The camera work standard is what we are now used to, nothing too fancy, but some camera movement and beautiful lighting. Where the film shines however is in its characters and plot. Louise Brooks is amazing as Lulu, she exudes sensuality and the secondary characters are equally interesting. There's her father/ first client/ first pimp (you are never sure), the lesbian countess who is in love with her, her rich costumer who marries her, his sone who loves her and even Jack the Ripper.
The main attraction here is Louise Brooks however, and that alone is worth the ticket. She is a very good actress and has a great character, a Madonna-whore who is at the same time joyous, damaged, beautiful, fragile and ultimately destructive to all who surround her. Ideal woman, then. And she pulls it off terribly well.
The settings in the film are equally amazing as is the wardrobe, which showcases Louise Brooks to perfection. From her beautiful evening dresses, to the widow's gown with a fantastic veil and even in her dead husband's bathrobe she is tantalising. And that is actually an essential part of the plot and the point of the film, it is not just me drooling, but all men and women in the film itself. And that is where her unwilling destructiveness comes into play. All who surround her are destroyed by her, directly or indirectly. In the end only Jack the Ripper is even more damaged and destructive, killing her.
French film historians rediscovered her films in the early 1950s, proclaiming her as an actress who surpassed even Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo (Henri Langlois: "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks!") as a film icon, much to her amusement, but it would lead to the still ongoing Louise Brooks film revivals, and rehabilitated her reputation in her home country. James Card, the film curator for the George Eastman House, discovered Louise living as a recluse in New York City about this time, and persuaded her to move to Rochester, New York to be near the George Eastman House film collection. With his help, she became a noted film writer in her own right. A collection of her witty and cogent writings, Lulu in Hollywood, was published in 1982. She was famously profiled by the noted film writer Kenneth Tynan in his essay, "The Girl With The Black Helmet", the title of which was an allusion to her fabulous bob, worn since childhood, a hairstyle claimed as one of the ten most influential in history by beauty magazines the world over.
She rarely gave interviews, but had a special relationship with John Kobal and Kevin Brownlow, the film historians, and they were able to capture on paper some of her amazing personality. Running 50 minutes, Lulu in Berlin (1984) is a rare filmed interview, produced by Richard Leacock and Susan Woll in the year before her death. She had lived alone by choice for many years, and Louise died from a heart attack in 1985, after suffering from arthritis and emphysema for many years.
A continuing inspiration
Louise is considered one of the first naturalistic actors in film, her acting being subtle and nuanced compared to many other silent performers. The close-up was just coming into vogue with directors, and Louise's almost hypnotically beautiful face was perfect for this new technique. Louise had always been very self-directed, even difficult, and was notorious for her salty language, which she didn't hesitate to use whenever she felt like it. In addition, she had made a vow to herself never to smile on stage unless she felt compelled to, and although the majority of her publicity photos show her with a neutral expression, she had a dazzling smile. By her own admission, she was a sexually liberated woman, not afraid to experiment, even posing nude for "art" photography, and her liaisons with many film people were legendary, although much of it is speculation.
Louise Brooks as an unattainable film image served as an inspiration for Adolfo Bioy Casares when he wrote his classic science fiction novel The Invention of Morel (1940) about a man attracted to Faustine, a woman who is only a projected 3-D image. In a 1995 interview, Casares explained that Faustine is directly based on his love for Louise Brooks who "vanished too early from the movies." Elements of The Invention of Morel, minus the science fictional hardware, served as a basis for Alain Resnais' enigmatic Last Year at Marienbad (1961), one of the most influential films of the 1960s.
In 1987, the first book devoted to Louise, "Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star", by Rolland Jaccard, was published in France. Soon after, in 1989, Barry Paris wrote the definitive biography, "Louise Brooks", an exhaustively researched book hailed as a model for film biographies, and was an uncompromising look at Louise's life and times.
Louise also had an influence in the graphics world - she had the distinction of inspiring two separate comics: the long-running "Dixie Dugan" newspaper strip by John H. Striebel that started in the late 1920's and ran until 1966, which grew out of the serialized novel and later stage musical, "Show Girl", that writer J.P. McEvoy had loosely based on Louise's days as a Follies girl on Broadway; and the erotic comic books of "Valentina", by the late Guido Crepax, which began publication in 1965 and continued for many years. Crepax became a friend and regular correspondent with Louise late in her life. Hugo Pratt, another comic artist, also used her as inspiration for characters, and even named them after her.
In 1991, the synth-pop group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released "Pandora's Box (It's a Long, Long Way)", and the collage-pop band Soul Coughing released "St. Louise Is Listening" in 1998, both inspired by Louise Brooks' life. She continues to inspire other musicians and there are more than a few references to her in current popular music.
The 1986 film Something Wild, directed by Jonathan Demme, features a main character played by actress Melanie Griffith, who sports Louise Brooks' trademark hairstyle, and goes by the moniker Lulu. She is a very free spirited character, obviously inspired by Brooks personality.
A documentary, Louise Brooks: Looking For Lulu, was broadcast in 1998 on the Turner Classic Movies network. Narrated by Shirley MacLaine, the program gained the actress a whole new legion of fans.
In the late 1990s, BBC Books based their description of the third incarnation of Doctor Who character Romana on Louise Brooks. The rock band Marillion also have a song inspired by her. 'Interior Lulu' appeared on their 1999 album Marillion.com
45. Man With A Movie Camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom) (1929)
Directed By Dziga Vertov
Synopsis
Man With a Movie Camera Films Stuff Happening.
Review
This film is more than anything an encyclopedia of movie making techniques available to the 1929 director and editor. It is pretty amazing at that. The editing, camera movements, and even use of stop-motion animation are brilliant.
Man With A Movie Camera is at the same time a documentary style silent film, with no intertitles and a dig at the idea of documentaries. The so called kino-eye that Vertov defended, the imparciality of the camera etc.. is actually disproved by his own film. The power of the editing, and what the camera chooses to film show how the kino-eye is anything but imparcial. And who is the cameraman filming the cameraman? Who watches the watcher?
This seems however to be too self-conscious not to be intended. Nothing happens in the city where the film is set until the man with the movie camera gets in a car and starts filming. Events exist because they are being documented. As the very good bfi introduction on the DVD's sleevenotes says, the fact that the film producing aspect is at the forefront of the action (the camera man, the editor) shows how this is a manufactured artefact and not a neutral fly-on-the-wall viewpoint.
Anyway, the film is great, fast, frantic and beautiful. And if you've seen Koyaanisqatsi or the Ray Of Light Madonna video, this is where they come from. Buy it from Amazon UK or US.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
With Lenin's admission of limited private enterprise through his New Economic Policy, Russia began receiving fiction films from afar, an occurrence that Vertov regarded with undeniable suspicion, calling drama a "corrupting influence" on the proletarian sensibility ("On 'Kinopravda,'" 1924). By this time Vertov had been using his newsreel series as a pedestal to vilify dramatic fiction for several years; he continued his criticisms even after the warm reception of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in 1925. Potemkin was a heavily fictionalized film telling the story of a mutiny on a battleship which came about as a result of the sailors' mistreatment; the film was an obvious but skillful propaganda piece glorifying the proletariat. Vertov lost his job at Sovkino in January 1927, possibly as a result of criticizing a film which effectively preaches the Communist party line.
Vertov says in his essay "The Man with a Movie Camera" that he was fighting "for a decisive cleaning up of film-language, for its complete separation from the language of theater and literature." By the later segments of "Kino-Pravda," Vertov was experimenting heavily, looking to abandon what he considered film clichés (and receiving criticism for it); his experimentation was even more pronounced and dramatic by the time of Man with the Movie Camera. Some have criticized the obvious stagings in Man With the Movie Camera as being at odds with Vertov's credos "life as it is" and "life caught unawares": the scene of the woman getting out of bed and getting dressed is obviously staged, as is the reversed shot of the chess pieces being pushed off a chess board and the tracking shot which films Mikhail Kaufman riding in a car filming a third car.
However, Vertov's two credos, often used interchangeably, are in fact distinct, as Yuri Tsivian points out in the commentary track on the DVD for Man with the Movie Camera: for Vertov, "life as it is" means to record life as it would be without the camera present. "Life caught unawares" means to record life when surprised, and perhaps provoked, by the presence of a camera. (16:04 on the commentary track). This explanation contradicts the common assumption that for Vertov "life caught unawares" meant "life caught unaware of the camera." All of these shots might conform to Vertov's credo "caught unawares."
Girl goes out with artist... artist tries to rape girl, girl kills him. Girl gets blackmailed, hence the title. Blackmailer gets falsely accused and dies, assassin goes scot-free.
Review
So, Britain's first talkie. In fact Hitchcock is quite smart about it, the film starts as a silent movie, and about 5 minutes into it it goes into a talkie and remains that for the rest of the film. It throws you a curve-ball, you think you are watching a silent film, but no!
Ok, I really love Hitchcock, and this is not one of his best films, but it certainly has his mark in it. There is the obligatory cameo, sitting in a train, there are great camera angles and voyeurism is very much present, as we identify with Alice's boyfriend chasing her and her artist lover.
Yet, this is quite a simple film for Hitchcock's standards, it is the simplest of blackmail stories and although compelling and exciting throughout it is not one of his most accomplished plots.
The voices are quite well dubbed except for Anny Ondra's, the main actress as she was a Czech and not very fluent in English she was dubbed by a very annoying voice which doesn't always fit the character. Sound is actually a pretty powerful weapon in Hitchcock's arsenal, he uses sound to reinforce psychological moods, like the repetition of the word knife in a certain scene, or simple background speech. He doesn't feel the need to have all words be perfectly pronounced, they are there to add texture to the film. Good film overall, but not that interesting really. Buy it from Amazon UK or US. Final Grade
6/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film was not originally intended to be a talkie and began production as a silent film. However, the film's producers, British International Pictures, decided part-way through the production to make the film Britain's first sound film. This has several implications on the film. A significant amount of footage had been filmed without sound before the decision was made. Some of these scenes were re-shot with sound, though some remained without sound, as shot.
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