Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

FRANKENSTEIN (1914):
You've almost certainly seen a still from this one - most likely the one famous still I and tons of other people saw and knew this film for, through the 20th century. IIRC that still was all that was known to survive for many years, and then at some point some amount of this film was recovered. Maybe what I watched (14 minutes) was all of it, but it's hard to tell as the story feels pretty truncated (more or less "complete", but highly simplified) and the famous, haunting, indelible aforementioned still doesn't actually appear in the movie.

That famous still is fuh-ire and the Monster never looks as cool or scary in the extant 14 minutes - actually it looks kinda' lame much of the time........ but there are a couple cool things about this FRANKENSTEIN. One is the creation scene, which is unlike any I've seen in another Frank movie. It's clearly reversed footage of the upper-half of a puppet of the Monster burning up - and it looks quite "metal" (to quote a Letterboxd user). The other cool thing is how the director (J. Searle Dowley) uses a mirror in the film's final sequence. It's highly effective and it's not immediately clear how it was pulled off - which I appreciate in a primitive genre film!    3.5/5    Thomas Edison produced it.

[Dr. Whom]

JEANNE D'ARC [JOAN OF ARC] (1900):

We see major tableau from the life of Joan in wide-shot for about 45 seconds each on average. If you know the Joan mythos then you know what's goin' on but sans dialogue or close-ups you lose a lot of the drama of later renditions. Also there's one scene (the Siege of Orleans, I think) that commits one of my pet-peeve film-crimes - staging an epic battle w/ about 10 dudes, including a few who have to be recycled on the opposing side. However, the homemade quality of the sets is oddly charming (instead of off-putting) and the static staging of each tableau likewise predicts the self-conscious pageantry of Peter Greenaway or Roy Andersson (or Wes Anderson for that matter). That's kinda' cool.

It is my firm conviction that early movies drew heavily on the existing tableau vivant tradition. Mind you, I haven't actually tried to find out if this is really the case