Halloween 2015 #1: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) - Robert Wiene

Okay turns out summer is a time for relaxation, so I took the summer off from seeing movies in the organized manner that I’ve done in the past, which led me to believe that I was off the hook from writing reviews. Some of my favorite movies I saw over past three months, however, have been Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011), The Hours (2002), Nightcrawler (2014), and Thelma and Louise (1991). 

But now I had the crazy idea where instead of me coming up with just a random list of films to make my way through (which would actually be my sixth time doing that, which is insane!), I am doing a themed movie-cation list. In October! Can you guess the theme?

And what better way to start a scary movie-cation list with perhaps the first horror film of all time? The German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, released in 1920, marks the so-called beginning of the horror genre. It tells the story of a hypnotist, Dr. Caligari, who uses a somnambulist (which is apparently a sleepwalker, like everyone knows what that word means?) to commit murders in the small village of Holstenwall. Dr. Caligari brings his spectacle to the town fair, where our protagonist, Francis, and his friend, Alan, first witness the bewitching gaze of the sleepwalker, Cesare. 

Scary, right? Well, Alan makes horror movie mistake #1, and asks Cesare how long he’s going to live, to which Cesare replies, “Until dawn.” Cue murder!

Also this awesome shot of their shadows. Who knew shadows could be so scary? I picture people in audiences fainting left and right, as they were wont to do in the 1920s. 

Those Germans really knew fear. The writers of the film, Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, have actually stated that the film is a metaphor for the German people’s penchant for dictators, and how they are easily seduced by a powerful leader into becoming mindless drones for world domination. Both the writers were pacifists who were distrustful of the German government after World War I, so the character of Cesare represents the German people who are forced to carry out acts of violence in the name of a mad authority figure. 

He reminds me of Peter Pettigrew. 

But there’s a lot of stuff going on in this film besides the subtext that is really impressive. First, the set design feels like it took a page of out Tim Burton’s book… well… okay never mind.

I’m not sure why this gif is sped up, but you can get a sense of the shadows and jagged shapes that make up this spooky visual style.

Also cool to note is that the film features a frame tale, an incredible precedent for the medium of film, despite having been around for centuries in literature (including one of the first horror books of all time, Frankenstein). In it, Francis tells an old man how he had to leave his hometown with his fiancée (the woman in the first gif), but they are still haunted by the events that took place in Holstenwall. 

The twist ending actually contradicts this setup, which leaves the viewer questioning the validity of any of the storylines. Who can we trust if not our protagonist!? Is anyone safe from the psychological damage brought on by World War I? Spooky stuff.

I have a list of about fifteen or so classic horror films that I will see for the first time this month, so follow along as I try not to give myself nightmares until Christmas.

Spring 2015 #17: Battleship Potemkin (1925) - S.M. Eisenstein

Happy First Day of Summer! I finally completed my Spring 2015 Moviecation List. The theme was “IMDb Top 250, AFI 100 Films, and Best Picture Winners on Netflix.” 

Battleship Potemkin. I saved the shortest film for last, thankfully. At 69 minutes it’s barely longer than an episode of Orange is the New Black. Except instead of being about a prison, it’s about the 1905 mutiny by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin. Russia was operating under a Tsarist regime at the time, and the crew of the ship finally took a stand against their officers, resulting in an even larger rebellion in the Ukrainian town of Odessa.

The film is actually an experiment in the theory of Soviet Montage, or the belief that the well-planned juxtaposition of shots can create an emotional response in an audience. Here we have three separate lion statues, but the response created from their alignment is one of growing fear and concern. Eisenstein, originally a film theorist, applied these ideas to his film to create one of the most powerful propaganda films of all time.

Here, in one of the most famous sequences in this film and possibly in any film, the citizens of the town run from a hired militia and are massacred by their own government. A combination of shots of robotic military men, dying children, and weeping women expertly come together to move the audience, making “The Odessa Steps” as influential today as it was back then.

One thing that amazed me was the sheer number of extras in this film. It reminded me of the Babylonian scenes in Intolerance. I guess people back then were really excited to be apart of this new medium called film.

Of the film’s five parts, three of them take place aboard the Battleship Potemkin. In Part 2, “Drama on Deck,” a fierce battle between the commanders and the crew takes place over the quality of the food served on deck.

I’m still not sure if this is God or just the ship’s priest like Wikipedia implies. He looks weirdly magical?

Anyway, Battleship Potemkin is a beloved exercise in montage and political manipulation. Orson Welles listed it as his favorite film (he died four years beforeThe Little Mermaid). But the film has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I guess it’s a big deal.

Thank you for following along as I work my way through every important film of the past 100 years! Summer 2015 Moviecation List is in the works!

Spring 2015 #15: Modern Times (1936) - Charlie Chaplin

I can feel summer coming, but I still have two films left after this one for some reason! So here were are, back in the Silent Film Era… although not really because the first talkie came out in 1927. How did Charlie adapt?!

Well, apparently, he originally wrote a full script for the film, but abandoned it when he realized that his lovable “tramp” character just didn’t work when he spoke.

Modern Times works both as a slapstick comedy (one of Chaplin’s most revered) and as a biting commentary on the abuse of the working class due to industrialization during The Great Depression.

Here, A Factory Worker’s boss orders him to stop smoking on his break. The boss has cameras watching every worker at all times, and Chaplin’s character just isn’t cut out for that regimented work ethic.

After an awesome scene where he gets sucked into a machine, he begins to have a mental breakdown.

Chaplin ends up getting arrested, where he meets the down-on-her-luck orphan girl with a knack for petty theft.

She even looks fierce stealing a banana. The character, “the Gamin,” is played by famous actress Paulette Goddard. 

Chaplin also goes through a series of mishaps where he is mistaken for a union leader. The film offers a pretty dark depiction on the way the organization of laborers were treated.

But it’s easy to watch the film for what it is, a silly comedy about two lovable misfits falling for each other.

There’s also a great scene where Chaplin’s boss tests out a device that can eliminate the lunch breaks of his workers by mechanically feeding them.

Not sure how he could continue working during this, but okay.

The film culminates in A Factory Worker and A Gamin getting jobs as performing waiters, and Chaplin’s voice is actually heard for the first time ever in a film when he sings a gibberish version of Léo Daniderff’s “Je cherche après Titine.”

Modern Times is all good fun, and it is certainly one of the greatest hits from the king of the Silent Era. The IMDb Top 250 lists it at #39, while the AFI 100 Films puts it at #78. At only 89 minutes, it’s a nice little retreat back to the days of economic despair and abusive factory conditions.

Spring 2015 #13: Intolerance (1916) - D.W. Griffith

Do not attempt this movie without proper mental preparation!

Just so you know ahead of time, this shot exists in the film.

Okay. Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages is a silent film epic by famous motion picture director D.W. Griffith. The film comes just one year after his divisive Birth of a Nation, which grossed $48 million, or $678 million in 2015. That film, which revolutionized motion picture storytelling as a true art form, turns 100 this year.

This is his flop of a follow-up. The film cost $2.5 million ($47 million today), used 3,000 extras, and bankrupted the studio, Triangle Film Corporation.

Intolerance seams together four epic stories of… intolerance. There’s a modern (1916) story of a mill workers’ strike, the French story of the events that led up to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, the Biblical story of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the Babylonian story of the war between Prince Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC.

Did I mention the movie is 3 hours and 17 minutes? That’s actually tied with Schindler’s List for the fourth longest film I’ve reviewed so far, after Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Godfather Part 2. 

Oh right. So the production value of this is literally unbelievable for its time period. The Babylon scenes are massive in scale, as well as the final massacre scene in the French story.

And while the film is boring as hell for a majority of the time, it did manage to have four separate storylines with simultaneous climaxes for the last thirty minutes or so, which is fun. Between an ancient war, a crucifixion, a massacre of French Protestants, and a high speed train chase, you really can’t be all that disappointed for sitting through the film that’s three minutes longer than Titanic but without a single line of dialogue.

The film transitions between its stories with this shot of “The Eternal Mother” rocking a cradle. It supposedly symbolizes the timelessness of human nature, mothers raising babies.

But the intolerance theme feels forced sometimes. I didn’t know what was intolerant about the Babylonian plotline. In fact, it seemed like Griffith was more making this film as a response to the backlash he received for Birth of a Nation, which was criticized for glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. This is like a “Hey, being hateful is bad, look at what it’s done over the past 2,500 years.” And although I haven’t seen Birth of a Nation, I have a feeling this one is much less problematic.

But Intolerance, despite being a flop financially, has powerful and bizarre cultural influence. For starters, the giant elephant statues at the Hollywood and Highland shopping center in Los Angeles are models of the ones used in the Babylon scenes.

EVEN BETTER, the film INVENTED eyelash extensions. That’s right. D.W. Griffith wanted Seena Owen, who played the Princess of Babylon, to have eyelashes “that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life.” They wove human hair into gauze and attached it to her eyelids. Crazy right?

Anyway the film is #49 on the AFI 100 Films list, and is impressive despite being released 99 years ago.

Spring 2015 #3: Nosferatu (1922) - F.W. Murnau

So apparently Nosferatu’s inclusion on my Watchlist is kind of a fluke because when I made the list on December 26th, 2012, Nosferatu was in the IMDb Top 250. Today it is not. But because I quickly learned the the IMDb Top 250 is pretty malleable and often changing, I made a rule that the Watchlist would stay the same regardless of the IMDb Top 250. Maybe when I finish the 163 movies I have left, I’ll go back and make a new Watchlist out of films that made it onto the IMDb Top 250 since 2012.

Oh, yes, anyway! So Nosferatu is the 1922 German silent-film about a vampire living in Transylvania. Yes, it is an illegal adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Because the production company could not obtain the rights to the book for this, their first film, they made it anyway and just changed the names. Dracula is called Count Orlok, and the word “vampire” is substituted for “Nosferatu.”

And Bram Stoker’s heirs SUED the production company for this flagrant ripping off, causing a judge to declare that every copy of the film must be burned. And the production company went bankrupt from the legal fees. BUT. A copy survived, thanks to a cult following for the film.

And thank God, right? Today, the film is in the public domain in the US (although it is not in every European country). Even Netflix has it!

Like most millennials, my first introduction to Nosferatu was in a 2002 episode of Spongebob Squarepants…? Count Orlok (referred to as Nosferatu in the episode) makes a two-second cameo as the culprit in the hash-slinging-slasher plot. 

Here’s the original shot from the film.

I have no idea why this happened and never will. Nosferatu is one of the most classic horror films of all time (rated as the second-best horror film on Rotten Tomatoes after The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). It tells the story of a man named Hutter traveling to Transylvania to visit a mysterious count who is interested in buying some real-estate in his town. He also has a boring and yet overly dramatic wife named Ellen.

Hutter is very perturbed by Count Orlok’s strangeness, and eventually escapes when he learns the truth about him.

In terms of how the film holds up, I think the biggest obstacle I had in being genuinely scared by the events was the strange music choices. The music was originally performed by an orchestra at the screenings when it was released in 1922, so the current versions just have sort of improvised scores. The one Netflix had wasn’t scary at all. You could’ve swapped in the soundtrack fromPsycho and I’d have nightmares for weeks, but watching this version it felt like everything was sort of tame. There were only a few times when I was like this:

Regardless, the film is a true classic of the horror genre, and I guess go Germany for making it without even asking permission?

Fall 2014 #11: City Lights (1931) - Charlie Chaplin

Two silent films on the same Moviecation list!? I know, crazy, and this isn’t even the last black and white film.

So, the plot is simple. A Tramp (Chaplin) falls in love with a poor blind woman, while simultaneously developing a friendship with an eccentric billionaire. Shenanigans abound.

This is my third Chaplin film, after seeing Gold Rush when I first started my Film Bucketlist (it’s the second film I ever reviewed on this blog!), and then The Kidfor a class. I think Gold Rush kind of set me up for an idea that all of his films are high concept and massive in scope, when really the other two have been just kind of simplistic. Not that that makes them bad, I’m just a millenial with a bad attention span.

From the neck down Chaplin looks like a 13 year old boy here. ANYWAY, this one also includes a long bit where Chaplin needs money to help his love interest, so he thinks he’s going to be boxing in a rigged match, but ends up boxing with someone who has no problem pummeling him.

Also, doing some research (cough Wikipedia), I found that Chaplin started the film at the dawn of the talkies, when films finally started having sound. He is quoted as saying “give the talkies three years, that’s all,” but boy was he wrong! It’s been 88 years since The Jazz Singer, the first film to have synchronized dialogue, was released in 1927.

Another interesting fact about the film was that Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill, who played “The Blind Girl,” did not get along at all. Chaplin spent weeks filming and re-filming the first scene where they meet, but later attributed the tension to stress. He even fired her once, before having to hire her back when he couldn’t find a replacement. Whether Chaplin’s stress came from pressure from his studio or otherwise, the animosity does not come across in the film.

The film performed very well, making $5 million on a $1.5 million budget (during the Depression! And during the decline of silent films!). When in premiered at the Los Angeles Theater in 1931, Albert Einstein and his wife were the guests of honor.  It’s #35 on the IMDb Top 250 and #11 on the AFI Top 100 (moving my highest unseen film from #11 to #20, It’s A Wonderful Life). 

Fall 2014 #7: The General (1926) - Buster Keaton

Also directed by Clyde Bruckman but that would be too long of a title I think.

As one of the two silent films on my list, this is my FIRST Buster Keaton film ever. Charlie Chaplin is the kind of silent film star you grow up hearing about, and then suddenly someone makes you watch (in this case, “someone” is myself) a film by this random guy who occasionally had some gifs on Tumblr you thought were cool. Also people namedrop him in your film classes to sound like they wish they were born in the 1910s.

Yes, like that.

So The General made its way onto my list by basically being generally recognized as iconic, and by being on the Criterion Collection on Hulu.

In it, Buster Keaton plays a train engineer in Georgia at the start of the Civil War. His fiancée can’t wait to be the bride-to-be to a Confederate soldier, but Buster’s character, Johnnie Gray, is rejected from the army because they need him as an engineer. His superficial fiancée promptly leaves him.

A year later, Johnnie’s train, named The General, is hijacked by Union soldiers with his (ex?)fiancée Annabelle on board.

Johnnie is fast enough to fly but not fast enough to catch his stolen train, and so begins an elaborate and insane chase film with a Civil War context.

The film is actually based on a true story, the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862, where Union soldiers stole a train and took it from Georgie to Tennessee, destroying the Confederate railroads along the way. I’m not sure why Buster would situate an audience on the Confederate side of a war movie (then again so does Gone With The Wind), but the fact that he doesn’t directly fight in the war helps.

ALSO, the stunts are MIND-BLOWING.

Like, someone let Buster Keaton film that. Although watching it now it could be a green screen of some sort (or the 1920s equivalent of a green screen). Either way SOMEONE had to film themselves passing in front of a moving train.

This shot is insane and would’ve gotten someone killed today. Basically the Union solders litter the railway with boards to try to stop Johnnie, but he is batshit crazy and nothing can stop him.

Anyway the film has a happy ending that is both exciting and satisfying in a way that even Michael Bay and Roger Ebert could agree on.

The film did not do well on its first release, financially or critically, making just $1 million on a $750,000 budget. No one bothered to renew its copyright so the film entered the public domain in 1954.

Today, however, the film is #18 on the AFI Top 100 and #136 on the IMDb Top 250. It predates the Oscars so nothing there unfortunately.