Friday, September 01, 2006
Silent Movie Mondays August 2006
The Paramount’s Silent Movie Mondays are perhaps my most favorite Seattle movie experience. (The other choices are SIFF or the art museum’s movie series.) This summer Denis James has come up with the Adventure Series, and Trader Joe's has come up with the goodies.
Don Juan (1926)
Director: Alan Crosland
Don Juan was unique to my experience of silent films since it is primarily a character study. John Barrymore, with his superb acting skills on display, plays Don Juan as a bored and brazen upper class Spaniard living in a palatial home in an Italian town. Although it seems the director would be happy making a standard plot driven story filled touches of racy sexuality and exciting swashbuckling, Barrymore high-jacks the film and turns it into something far more significant in the history film. Barrymore’s portrayal of Don Juan is the prototype for all the angst ridden, reckless and mostly young characters throughout film history. Don Juan brazenly flouts sexual morality and rules of fidelity by having affairs with every woman in town, both married or unmarried, for his own amusement. He makes only half-hearted attempts to hide his numerous affairs from the women’s husbands and from his other women. In fact in the opening scenes three women and a husband all stumble across each other in his Don Juan’s home and he must charm himself out this delicate entanglement.
Barrymore chooses to play Don Juan as too bored and lackadaisical to worry about the consequences of his sexual dalliances. In this way he is reminiscent of Bill Murray’s Don in Broken Flowers. In the opening sequence Don Juan can hardly get off the couch to confront irate lovers and violent husbands, just as Don can hardly get off his couch to break up with his girlfriend at the opening of Broken Flowers. Don Juan has a reckless disregard for his own well being. He is lost in meaninglessness even as his world is overflowing with luxury and comfort. In fact Don Juan courts suffering and even death as he defies the town’s violent ruling family by rejecting the sister’s sexual advances and loving the girl the evil cousin wants for himself. Don is less brave than disillusioned, depressed and reckless. In this strange way this silent film of a Renaissance story has the germ of the modern angst ridden reckless teenager. The core of Barrymore’s Don Juan is the same core as such later characters as James Dean’s Jim and other characters who act recklessly because their world bores them, is unfulfilling or hopelessly alienates them.
My question is are there any of these reckless, alienated characters between Don Juan and Rebel Without a Cause?
Prisoner of Zenda (1922)
Director: Rex Ingram
I have seen enough silent movies now on the big screen (somewhere between 20 and 30) to realize this film has one technical but major flaw. There were too many title cards. This overabundance of words continually brought the action and drama to a screeching halt and critically deprived it of momentum. And if there is anything a film about evil brothers, identical cousins, and a fight for the thrown needs it is momentum.
It is only once you see a film ruin by title cards that you realize title cards are a significant part of silent film art hidden in plain view. (With this experience in mind two weeks later I realized The Iron Mask has fantastic title cards: funny, few and out of the way.)
Sparrows (1926)
Director: William Beaudine
(Except when you are thinking of the great silent film comics), this is what you think of as a silent film: unembarrassed, unapologetic, overflowing melodrama. Mary Pickford plays a teenager, the oldest child and therefore caretaker of the other children by default, on a ‘child farm’ run by a selfish, ugly and evil family. The children are forced to do hard farm labor, sleep in a cold barn, eat almost no food and care for the sick baby without any needed medicine. Why not run away? Well there is the vicious attack dog, the quick sand bog surrounding the farm and, of course, the alligators. Regardless, they try to escape after hearing the evil family is going to kill the kidnapped child and throw her in the bog because the police are after them. An exciting escape through the swamp is the grand finale. What adventure!
I must mention one absurd yet highly effective, even beautiful scene that represents the death of the sick little baby. You see this pastoral biblical scene with Jesus surrounded by lambs in a beautiful field. It is an image of Jesus you probably saw as a child in a kid’s book. Well, Jesus steps from the meadow into the barn, cradles the baby in Molly’s (Mary Pickford’s) arms and walks back from the barn into the meadow. That is all, there is cut to day time, and we neither see nor hear from or about the baby again. It is a surprisingly stirring and effective death scene, even for the non-religious.
The Iron Mask (1929)
Director: Allan Dwan
This is an extremely well made silent film. When I was watching the grandeur of the opening scenes of The Iron Mask, showing the birth of the King’s son, my mind flashed ahead one year to the beginning of the talkies. The early talkies I have seen stand in stark contrast. They are far less grand, less spectacular – more gritty and cheap around the edges. It is the difference between 1950s Technicolor films and early television. Which is strange, given it is the same studios making these productions. Was it the depression that so starkly contrasts the early 1930s talkies with the late 1920s silents?
Most impressive is The Iron Mask’s opening scenes when the French king’s heir is born and the there seem to be 1000s of extras populating the French kingdom, which we know is a massive set in Hollywood. In fact these opening scenes are more impressive to me than the current day equivalent - computer generated special effects. These are 1929 brick and mortar and flesh and blood ‘special effects’. Douglas Fairbank’s studio was able to create a kingdom and round up 1000s of bodies to fill its streets and squares. It is a lavishness that ended with this film. 1929 was the first year more sound films were made then silents. For the next few years all the creative energy went into trying to hide the microphone in a plant and get the actors close enough to that plant to pick up their voices. Even as sounds technical details were worked out we never really returned to the overwhelming grandeur of productions, in particular the massive sets and hordes of people, that populated such as films as Griffith’s 1916 Intolerance through Fairbanks 1929 The Iron Mask. It is a bit sad, after seeing the silents at the top of their game in The Iron Mask, to know this is the end.
And speaking of the end, the final scene is The Iron Mask is a stirring good-by to Douglas Fairbanks as silent film star and to silent films in general. In the final minutes of the film, the evil twin is captured and will be hanged, the king is restored and the kingdom is saved. But Fairbanks is mortally wounded outside the castle while the other Musketeers have all died in the battle. The three dead Musketeers hang in the air and cheer on D'Artagnan to die and join them. He does die and they help him into heaven and rush off as happy as can be for “even greater adventures” in the sky. It works perfectly for the ending of the film, the ending of Fairbank’s career (the greatest male star) and the ending of silent films. It been a great run, we have dazzling, we have been killed at the top of our game, yet we will live on in an after life. And the Paramount movie series is part of that after life where 77 years later the film is still playing to a cheering house in a silent movie palace with live music from Dennis James on the original Mighty Wurlitzer. HO-LA!
Don Juan (1926)
Director: Alan Crosland
Don Juan was unique to my experience of silent films since it is primarily a character study. John Barrymore, with his superb acting skills on display, plays Don Juan as a bored and brazen upper class Spaniard living in a palatial home in an Italian town. Although it seems the director would be happy making a standard plot driven story filled touches of racy sexuality and exciting swashbuckling, Barrymore high-jacks the film and turns it into something far more significant in the history film. Barrymore’s portrayal of Don Juan is the prototype for all the angst ridden, reckless and mostly young characters throughout film history. Don Juan brazenly flouts sexual morality and rules of fidelity by having affairs with every woman in town, both married or unmarried, for his own amusement. He makes only half-hearted attempts to hide his numerous affairs from the women’s husbands and from his other women. In fact in the opening scenes three women and a husband all stumble across each other in his Don Juan’s home and he must charm himself out this delicate entanglement.
Barrymore chooses to play Don Juan as too bored and lackadaisical to worry about the consequences of his sexual dalliances. In this way he is reminiscent of Bill Murray’s Don in Broken Flowers. In the opening sequence Don Juan can hardly get off the couch to confront irate lovers and violent husbands, just as Don can hardly get off his couch to break up with his girlfriend at the opening of Broken Flowers. Don Juan has a reckless disregard for his own well being. He is lost in meaninglessness even as his world is overflowing with luxury and comfort. In fact Don Juan courts suffering and even death as he defies the town’s violent ruling family by rejecting the sister’s sexual advances and loving the girl the evil cousin wants for himself. Don is less brave than disillusioned, depressed and reckless. In this strange way this silent film of a Renaissance story has the germ of the modern angst ridden reckless teenager. The core of Barrymore’s Don Juan is the same core as such later characters as James Dean’s Jim and other characters who act recklessly because their world bores them, is unfulfilling or hopelessly alienates them.
My question is are there any of these reckless, alienated characters between Don Juan and Rebel Without a Cause?
Prisoner of Zenda (1922)
Director: Rex Ingram
I have seen enough silent movies now on the big screen (somewhere between 20 and 30) to realize this film has one technical but major flaw. There were too many title cards. This overabundance of words continually brought the action and drama to a screeching halt and critically deprived it of momentum. And if there is anything a film about evil brothers, identical cousins, and a fight for the thrown needs it is momentum.
It is only once you see a film ruin by title cards that you realize title cards are a significant part of silent film art hidden in plain view. (With this experience in mind two weeks later I realized The Iron Mask has fantastic title cards: funny, few and out of the way.)
Sparrows (1926)
Director: William Beaudine
(Except when you are thinking of the great silent film comics), this is what you think of as a silent film: unembarrassed, unapologetic, overflowing melodrama. Mary Pickford plays a teenager, the oldest child and therefore caretaker of the other children by default, on a ‘child farm’ run by a selfish, ugly and evil family. The children are forced to do hard farm labor, sleep in a cold barn, eat almost no food and care for the sick baby without any needed medicine. Why not run away? Well there is the vicious attack dog, the quick sand bog surrounding the farm and, of course, the alligators. Regardless, they try to escape after hearing the evil family is going to kill the kidnapped child and throw her in the bog because the police are after them. An exciting escape through the swamp is the grand finale. What adventure!
I must mention one absurd yet highly effective, even beautiful scene that represents the death of the sick little baby. You see this pastoral biblical scene with Jesus surrounded by lambs in a beautiful field. It is an image of Jesus you probably saw as a child in a kid’s book. Well, Jesus steps from the meadow into the barn, cradles the baby in Molly’s (Mary Pickford’s) arms and walks back from the barn into the meadow. That is all, there is cut to day time, and we neither see nor hear from or about the baby again. It is a surprisingly stirring and effective death scene, even for the non-religious.
The Iron Mask (1929)
Director: Allan Dwan
This is an extremely well made silent film. When I was watching the grandeur of the opening scenes of The Iron Mask, showing the birth of the King’s son, my mind flashed ahead one year to the beginning of the talkies. The early talkies I have seen stand in stark contrast. They are far less grand, less spectacular – more gritty and cheap around the edges. It is the difference between 1950s Technicolor films and early television. Which is strange, given it is the same studios making these productions. Was it the depression that so starkly contrasts the early 1930s talkies with the late 1920s silents?
Most impressive is The Iron Mask’s opening scenes when the French king’s heir is born and the there seem to be 1000s of extras populating the French kingdom, which we know is a massive set in Hollywood. In fact these opening scenes are more impressive to me than the current day equivalent - computer generated special effects. These are 1929 brick and mortar and flesh and blood ‘special effects’. Douglas Fairbank’s studio was able to create a kingdom and round up 1000s of bodies to fill its streets and squares. It is a lavishness that ended with this film. 1929 was the first year more sound films were made then silents. For the next few years all the creative energy went into trying to hide the microphone in a plant and get the actors close enough to that plant to pick up their voices. Even as sounds technical details were worked out we never really returned to the overwhelming grandeur of productions, in particular the massive sets and hordes of people, that populated such as films as Griffith’s 1916 Intolerance through Fairbanks 1929 The Iron Mask. It is a bit sad, after seeing the silents at the top of their game in The Iron Mask, to know this is the end.
And speaking of the end, the final scene is The Iron Mask is a stirring good-by to Douglas Fairbanks as silent film star and to silent films in general. In the final minutes of the film, the evil twin is captured and will be hanged, the king is restored and the kingdom is saved. But Fairbanks is mortally wounded outside the castle while the other Musketeers have all died in the battle. The three dead Musketeers hang in the air and cheer on D'Artagnan to die and join them. He does die and they help him into heaven and rush off as happy as can be for “even greater adventures” in the sky. It works perfectly for the ending of the film, the ending of Fairbank’s career (the greatest male star) and the ending of silent films. It been a great run, we have dazzling, we have been killed at the top of our game, yet we will live on in an after life. And the Paramount movie series is part of that after life where 77 years later the film is still playing to a cheering house in a silent movie palace with live music from Dennis James on the original Mighty Wurlitzer. HO-LA!
