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.

[Rev. Powell]

BEBA (2021): In her mid-20s, struggling/aspiring artist Rebecca (Beba), daughter of a Dominican and a Venezuelan immigrant, creates a video portrait of herself and her family. It's hard to be too hard on this, because it's made with skill and admirable honesty, but it's egregiously self-indulgent and seems like the kind of thing Beba herself will be embarrassed by in about 10 years. 2.5/5.

[M.10rda]

IN THE GRIP OF ALCOHOL aka VICTIMES D'ALCHOL aka VICTIMS OF ALCOHOL (1911):
This film is a great example of a little bit of a good thing being great and a lot of a good thing being not-so-great or even borderline ludicrous....... come to think of it, not unlike the film's subject: alchohol!

As Dr. Whom and I were discussing up the page, ITGOA is another early silent film that commits to tableau vivant or static wide shots as we call 'em today to tell nearly its entire story. (There is a pan near the end of the film.) An upstanding hardworking middle-class family man likes a nip now and then or even a bit of the old down-the-pub, which eventually turns into a nip every time no one is looking and a bit of the old down-the-pub pretty much all day and night when he oughtta' be working or family-manning. As is too often the case w/ alcoholics, he has to suffer (severe, Tragic) consequences before he acknowledges he's got A Problem, and by then it's too late. Pretty standard PSA/Afterschool Special circa 1911.

Here's the good thing about ITGOA: every scene is a one-to-two minute static shot of the Alcoholic at home, at work, at the pub etc, and almost all of these are beautifully staged and directed, w/ careful consideration given to foreground/background and w/ extremely clear, vivid performances from essentially all the major players. Although there's no dialogue titles, every intention and action of every key character is always entirely transparent. Basically this whole cast is doing the crystalline screen acting that the justly-legendary Conrad Veidt would be doing at the end of the same decade. I suspect that a lot of these actors are students of (or students of students of) Stanislavski, who was still alive and popular and working all over Europe in 1911. There are a ton of big Stanislavskian gestures and poses, but also a lot of perfectly realistic facial expressions that you still see in movies (and in life) today.

Here's the excessive and ultimately tiring thing about ITGOA: One gets the point after about 10-15 minutes and is ready for the (perfectly constructed) movie to end... but no, it keeps going for 35 whole minutes, and by the end, the melodrama and the operatic Stanislavskian acting goes on so long it threatens to become self-parody. The final scene is a couple of minutes of the lead literally beating his breast, bellowing to the Heavens, and throwing himself on the ground.  This movie, like its main character, needed to Know When to Say When!

3/5    The male and female lead are clearly strong professional actors. They appeared in other silents I've never heard of. The director (who also never made anything else I've heard of) was named "Gérard Bourgeois". No, really.

[Rev. Powell]

WETIKO (2022): A Mayan boy delivers hallucinogenic toads to a jungle love cult led by a Western shaman and is sucked into their petty intrigues. The bland protagonist is swallowed up in feverish atmosphere and anti-colonialist metaphors, losing his way inside his own hazy bad trip. 2.5/5.

[Trevor]

CITIZEN VIGILANTE: yikes 😳😳

[M.10rda]

So you actually watched it? I read that the lead character murders an entire family (including children) just to Make A Point...?