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

[M.10rda]

I would say you are largely correct. Cameras were unwieldy and tough to move around, for one thing. It was definitely quicker and easier to just leave the darn thing in one place and stage everything on a 180-line in front of it. Melies did mix it up a bit in some of his other films.

[M.10rda]

ELDORADO (1921):
Here's a silent film that definitely "mixes it up" (per the conversation above). Director Marcel L'Herbier really loves an artistic composition and there are plenty of them in ELDORADO, though tbh there are also plenty of bland, boring, and conventional shots, too, which I guess emphasizes the really lovely ones but there's little enough going on in this film that I'd just as soon it was one painterly banger after another. This is a well-made and Good film but a hard one to recommend. The renowned L'Herbier's later L'ARGENT is almost 3 hours long but is so clear (in spite of being silent) and compelling that it was a joy to watch and little effort at all; ELDORADO however is about 100 minutes where very little seems to happen yet it happens very very slowly and yet is also quite confusing!  There are few intertitles, you only get some expository info-dumps in (lengthy) close-ups on letters, and much of the film is folks walking, partying, holding hands, crying near the bedside of infirm loved ones, looking out windows and appearing nonplussed, etc etc etc. The actual plot is rather straightforward and probably could have been related in 25 minutes instead of 100; it's also the same old tiresome early 20th century Nobility of Female Suffering crap. Okay, I'm making ELDORADO sound like a Bad film.

The good/cool things about ELDORADO don't really justify a viewing but are worth mentioning. For one thing, it may have been a partial inspiration for LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. Much of the quote-unquote intrigue takes place at the Alhambra Hotel, which isn't the famous one in California but instead one in France that - might also be famous for all I know! It's definitely cool looking and I feel like I've seen it in other foreign movies (maybe Franco flicks?!) and L'Herbier obviously had a ball photographing sad/angry/lovelorn people moping around the Alhambra, being sad and in love, staring cryptically offscreen, etc. One of those characters is the protagonist, who does the most moping and wandering and staggering of all, within the Alhambra and outside of it, and as she's a pale dark-haired European woman in a black dress, as she runs in a frenzied/neurotic fashion through stark European landscapes it's hard to avoid seeing her as an early ancestor of Daliah Lavi in THE DEMON and Isabelle Adjani in POSSESSION. Finally, ELDORADO seems to me to be the earliest motion picture to do the "not revealing the title until the end of the movie", which was virtually unheard of for 100+ years notwithstanding APOCALYPSE NOW though lots of movies do it these days. When L'Herbier finally does post up the title at the end of ELDORADO, it's done in an extremely stylish/artistic way and also provides a final diegetic "moment" to the female lead's sad story. So that's real darn cool. (...Though maybe the print I watched was just missing the title in the beginning...?) 

Unquestionably an early/silent Art Film.    3/5    L'Herbier definitely improved a great deal as a director during the 20s.