Past Meets Present: Silent Films Influence Young Filmmakers

I've recently been talking with some young filmmakers who explained to me that they are greatly influenced by the early silent film-style of filmmaking. Not that they are making "silent films" of course, but shooting on locations whenever possible, using just a digital camera and an idea, the style of production that was, in many cases, forced upon independent filmmakers in the wake of Edison's attempts to control a stronghold on production in the East.
I found it genuinely interesting that they drew this parallel, and I think in many ways it is indicative of the future of film production. Like they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Fewer and fewer young people studying film express any desire to "go to Hollywood", partly because it has become such a tough industry to crack, but also because they would prefer to be able to work independently, and to tell stories about what they know best and can share with audiences willing to watch. Many of these people also have a great appreciation for foreign films, I presume precisely for the reason that they represent a sharing of cultures/ideas/thoughts/experiences that you're unlikely to find if you only watch the next Ice Cube or Steve Martin movie.
It's that type of excitement, the thrill of something new, that can be found in many silent films that still make them so exciting to watch today. To keep this more on topic, watching the early films of D.W. Griffith, recently, I was struck by the constant invention and innovation in each one of them. Same with early DeMille-in fact, he was even quoted once as saying something to the effect that "we are not great artists, but we are making it possible for future generations to be great artists." At any rate, it's this type of excitement of doing something new, experimenting for the sake of innovation, that could help direct a new generation of people with interesting stories to tell and the drive to tell them and share them with people. The technology is now extremely available to everyone-I've got a MiniDV camera myself and combining that with a program like FinalCut or Avid creates a finished film that looks and sounds just as professional as annything playing in cinemas. Between the sagging box office and the rise of new forms of communication on which you can broadcast or show entire feature films, it seems an incredibly exciting time for films. Now that the technology is open to everyone, it's the strong ideas and quality work that will define the films.

Clean (2004)

As part of the Charles Theatre's Cinema Sundays program, I attended a screening of the new Olivier Assayas film CLEAN, starring Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte. What follows is my review of the film.

I went in to see CLEAN not knowing anything about the film. In fact, I had only heard the title of the film a mere ten minutes before it began. If ever I have sat down to watch a film with absolutely no pre-conceived notions, this was it.

The film is a look into a woman, played by Cheung, who is struggling with a heroin addiction and attempting to launch a singing career. After her lover dies of an overdose, she sets about trying to straighten her life out and re-unite with her son, living with his grandparents in Vancouver.

The film weaves in and out between the different incidents in Cheung's life on the path to recovery. I did not find the depiction of addiction to be "harrowing", in the same way that films such as THE LOST WEEKEND depict it. Instead, it was simply matter-of-fact, filled with small touches to help the audience sympathize with the main character.

In the Q & A following the screening, it was commented on that many audiences have responded to the film feeling that Cheung's performance is the best thing about it. That may or may not be true; director Assayas keeps the pace moving with fluid cinematography and, on a number of occasions, Godardian jump-cuts. (Assayas, a former editor with Cahiers du Cinema, was obviously heavily influenced by Godard.) Aside from Nolte, in an interesting role as Cheung's father-in-law, the secondary cast is not given much to do, and their characters do not feel developed fully.

There is also a David Cronenberg-like objectivity with which Assayas paints his characters. He shows their faults as well as their strengths, and this works particularly well in the scenes later in the film, which could have bordered on schmaltzy but are kept quite effective by their matter-of-factness.

The film benefits from location work; San Francisco is glimpsed briefly in the film's final shot, and Canada is used effectively in the early sections, but the best locations, London and Paris, are used for the majority of the film.

Overall, I would rate this film **1/2 out of ****; it felt like an average film, with an excellent lead performance, that left me somewhat detached from its center and secondary characters.

Abel Gance's NAPOLEON

Few films in the history of the medium have trumpeted the technical innovations of the art form in quite the same way Abel Gance's NAPOLEON did.

NAPOLEON could quite possibly qualify as the single most innovative motion picture ever made, in that it put on display a number of techniques that had not really been seen before, or at least, not used within the context of a narrative feature film. Yet, the film is not merely a technical demonstration a la THIS IS CINERAMA, nor is it a film that is only remembered today for having introduced some new process, such as THE JAZZ SINGER or BECKY SHARP.

Rather, NAPOLEON is one of the great human epics of all time. It is a controversial film, to be sure. Many resent Gance's deification of the Little Emperor who conquered much of Europe in an attempt to create a centralized French culture. Regardless of one's political views, I maintain that the film must be viewed objectively, and in doing so, will increase one's appreciation of the masterpiece that it is.

Few epics before or since have had such a strong central figure. Napoleon is portrayed by Albert Dieudonne, who seems to be channeling an intensity in his performance that sweeps the audience away in his passion and fervor. Dieudonne is not terribly well known for any other film performances, so in a sense, he really immortalized himself as Napoleon in this film. Certainly, it is one of the most impressive, career-defining performances an actor has ever delivered.

In his introduction to the cast and crew before filming commenced, Gance called for complete devotion and commitment to the project, even suggesting that they keep in mind the very drive that their ancestors had in bringing about the Revolution and applying it to the making of the film.

The film itself begins with Napleon's boyhood at the Brienne school, where he displays military strategy at an early age in a large scale snowball fight. Napoleon is shown as an intense youth, devoted to his studies, and to his homeland, the island of Corsica. The film continues with his political victory in Corsica over Pozzo Di Borgo, and his military victory in the Battle of Toulon. Rising tensions lead to the triumphant Italian Campaign of 1796, where the film ends. In the currently available US version, running three hours and fifty-four minutes, the story moves briskly and with an epic scale that never backs down.

Among the technical innovations referred to earlier are a rapid-cutting editing style, unlike anything seen before or since, in which images last only for a frame at a time; a split screen that breaks off into a number of different cubes; a camera mounted on horseback to photograph an exciting point of view shot for the chase across the marshes; a camera mounted on a pendulum, swinging dizzyingly over the hectic and chaotic National Convention; and finally, the famous "Triptych" technique used during the Italian Campaign sequence, a widescreen process predating Cinerama by about 25 years, and with multiple images on each of the three screens.

NAPOLEON was a very difficult film to see for a long time. Gance himself re-cut the film a number of times, including a 1934 version that is said to have been the first film to use a stereophonic soundtrack (actually, it was more an approximation of stereo-there was a mono track that was controlled through different speakers to create a dynamic effect), as well as a 1971 version that would be his final film. The original 1927 version ran close to 7 hours-about 6 of which have so far been restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow.

Brownlow's restoration project began in the 1960s, and by 1979, he had put together a comprehensible version running close to four hours. At the premiere, Brownlow telephoned Gance in his hotel room to let him listen to the thunderous applause of the audience. American distribution rights were handled by Francis Ford Coppola, who insisted on letting his father write the score (replacing the Brownlow-commissioned Carl Davis score, that is still used for European showings). Perhaps more crudely, Coppola insisted the film be cut to just under four hours to prevent having to pay overtime to musicians hired to play the score at live performances. The "Coppola" version is still the only one available in the US, despite Brownlow's current restoration running more than two hours longer.

Much has been said about the re-vitalization effect the NAPOLEON re-release had on silent film. It is hard to say whether it was NAPOLEON or the advent of video cassettes around the same time that really led to the massive re-interest in silent films, but regardless, NAPOLEON's place in cinematic history became a certainty with its restoration and new presentation.

Gance lived just long enough to see massive re-appreciation for his most famous and personal achievement. At the time of his death, he was working on a film on the life of Christopher Columbus, that was never completed.

Gance made many other films (LA ROUE and LUCREZA BORGA among them), of course. But with the possible exception of Jean Vigo, it is rather difficult to think of another filmmaker whose career rests so solidly, and whose reputation is ranked as highly, as Abel Gance, deservedly so, on the basis of a single film.

Beware the Public Domain DVD...

When the DVD format first hit the market in 1997, many people (myself included) hoped that it would only include the finest, most pristine versions of any given film available.

El cheapo video companies such as Madacy (the most notorious), Alpha, Brentwood, etc. looked like they would be a thing of the past. But just as DVD took off on the consumer market, the PD companies got into the game as well, much to the chagrin of serious collectors. I once purchased a two-tape set from Brentwood of Lon Chaney's HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME on tape one, and a documentary about different films adapted from the story, on tape two. When I put the tape in the VCR, however, I discovered that there was no documentary to be found on tape 2. The first tape consisted of the first half of Chaney's HUNCHBACK, and the second tape contained the second half (and this version only ran 63 minutes total, so each tape contained only about a half hour of the film). To top it all off, the whole thing was a blurry black and white ripoff of the Paul Killiam/Republic Pictures video version. This was such a ripoff I actually returned the tapes.

PD is not all bad-some titles are only available because of their public domain status. Recently, Brentwood redeemed themselves with an excellent Bob Hope collection. Madacy had a short-lived "Hollywood Classics" series (that included HIS GIRL FRIDAY and AND THEN THERE WERE NONE) that was actually decent, but other than that, it's been the same usual garbage from them.

We've all experienced the disappointment with finding out you got really ripped off when purchasing a DVD. Following are some of my worst experiences:

1. Last Christmas, I bought a black and white DVD of MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS, expecting an uncolorized version of one of my favorite films. What I got instead was the colorized version with the color turned down. It did contain a nice, complete version of LUCKY DOG, though.

2. Anything from Platinum: The quality in and of itself isn't bad, but all their discs contain their logo burned onto the bottom right of the screen as if you're watching TV. It's distracting, unprofessional, and totally unnecessary. They do offer some neat titles that are worth it if you can get past the presence of the logo.

3. Alpha's THE KENNEL MURDER CASE: For a PD DVD, it's not bad. But it's frustrating when Turner has such superior material on this title, and even my VHS copy looks better. The other major distraction is the sound dropping out periodically towards the end.

4. THE PRINCESS AND THE PIRATE (from MGM DVD): This is a very strange case...some scenes in this wonderfully funny Bob Hope comedy appear to be slightly off-center, creating a blurred "double vision" effect on the DVD. It occurs several times throughout the DVD and is very unusual for such a glitch to appear on a professional release.

5. And the winner for worst quality DVD is...
Madacy's W.C. FIELDS COLLECTION. I thought I had seen terrible-this set a new standard. Their videos were bad enough...recorded in EP speed, filled with static, blurry images, etc. The DVD was even worse, if such a thing is possible. It starts out okay, with POOL SHARKS, but by the time it gets to THE PHARMACIST, any watchability the discs could have had goes out the window. I cannot even understand the technical deficiencies that had to take place for the disc to look and sound so bad. The sound is barely even audible under all the static, and the image looks as though it were photographed through a cloudy fishbowl. This is the only DVD I have thrown out due to poor quality.

I guess the lesson to be learned is you get what you pay for. DVD did not clear out the PD garbage as collectors had hoped. Thankfully, most of what is available on PD discs are also available in quality versions from Image and Criterion.

The Uniqueness of Chaplin and Keaton

This is paraphrased from a USENET posting I wrote on 2/5/2006:
Chaplin's comedy is almost difficult to pinpoint in the bigger picture because there was no one else quite like him in terms of how he worked. I can't think of any other comedian who was in as total control of his whole comic world as Chaplin was. Aside from his early years on the stage, Chaplin *never* had to appear in any single comic film, act or show in which he didn't have complete control. Audiences never got to see Chaplin in someone else's film (unless we consider a few of the early Keystones). He never had to make a single allowance for anything but his own creative circumstances. He never had to perform on the stage again. He never even had to make a single appearance in any other medium other than film. And he never had anyone to tell him no. Lloyd had a similar situation, but even he went into radio for a while, and after he retired from film went into other unrelated ventures. Plus, he made nearly hundred early short films in which he wasn't the primary creative force. It's almost hard to evaluate Chaplin's talents in relation to anyone else because he simply never had to work under the conditions that every other comedian has had to work in. Keaton, on the other hand, had his period of total creative control, then worked as a writer/gagman, director, supporting actor, TV performer, stage performer, etc.
Can you imagine a star of Chaplin's stature today not doing a single appearance in any other medium besides film? No tours, no radio interviews, no TV show, not even cameos in other peoples' films. Chaplin did what he did better than anyone else ever could. However, Keaton seems to be the far more versatile comedian, for many of the reasons people have already mentioned on here. Imagine, just for the sake of argument, Chaplin being told, in 1962, that he had to concoct a TV commercial for a given product, within a certain budget/timeframe, and that he couldn't use any actors or crew of his choice. I wonder how successful he would have been under the circumstances as Keaton was?

Reasons for Marx Bros. Decline at Paramount

From USENET post 3/1/2006:
The two reasons I most often hear for the Marx Bros. leaving Paramount are that DUCK SOUP essentially flopped at the box office, and also that they were overexposed to audiences in too many movies.
While DUCK SOUP may have underperformed at the box office, it seems odd considering all the pseudo-political satires that were out around the same time, such as MILLION DOLLAR LEGS and DIPLOMANIACS.
As for the issue of overexposure, it doesn't seem to make sense when you consider that other popular comedians of the time, like Wheeler and Woolsey (who are hilarious, by the way), were making 4-5 films a year at that time, and continued making at least 2-3 films a year until the mid-to-late 30s.
I've also heard the argument that the Marx Bros. were seen as slightly "highbrow" or even "intellectual" comedians, at least compared to the average vaudeville acts being transferred to film at the time. I believe several of Groucho's ideas for MONKEY BUSINESS were met with disapproval from the front office who feared the references would go over the heads of average audiences. Then, as now, I'm sure, the majority of audiences wanted to see the cheapest, quickest laughs possible for a good time at the movies as opposed to having to think or worry about understanding references. Could this have been part of the reason the Marx Bros. began to slip in popularity after HORSEFEATHERS?