J.D. Hansel

Silent

Metropolis Review: Upon Further Consideration…

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NOTE: This is an amendment to an earlier review of the same film.

When I first watched this movie, it was the Giorgio Moroder version (a soundtrack comprised of ’80s pop that only sometimes fit the scene well).  This is because I had little tolerance for silent cinema at the time, and while I still don’t think I’m very good at watching silent movies, I’m improving.  The main reason why it made sense for me to return to this story is that the version I saw from back in the ’80s was missing so much of the movie – a lot of the film was lost and had yet to be restored.  I didn’t realize that at the time, so I stupidly criticized Lang for the unintelligible plot that the incomplete version had (and felt quite ashamed when I learned within the month or so that followed that I had been so ignorant of such important information).  The current (2010) version is missing only about five minutes, which is why it’s called “The Complete Metropolis” in some editions, and its plot is perfectly understandable and enjoyable.  For this and other reasons, although I’m not changing the four-star rating I gave the film before, I think I appreciate the movie even more than I did years ago.

It is very clear that this is a unique work of art from the very beginning.  The film’s opening – specifically the title card – is in and of itself worthy of praise, and it sets the exciting tone for the epic movie that follows.  The film is structured in three acts, more or less, and the cards that tell us how far we are through the movie help to create the theatrical experience.  The theatrical feeling – that is, the feeling of being at a stage show – makes me wish I could see this in the form of a musical, but I know that it is designed to serve a very different purpose.  Lang is borrowing from theater to appeal to the people who would be too embarrassed to go to a film that didn’t resemble high culture in some way: the upper class.  This project of making cinema something for intelligent and sophisticated audiences was very important to many German filmmakers at the time, and it is apparent in the relentless use of biblical references all throughout the film, even including the obscure Canaanite god “Moloch.”  The protagonist is very much a Christ-like figure, but is also at least as much a Moses (since he is, more or less, the son of Pharaoh).  Nods to the Tower of Babel are also mixed in, with Maria entirely reworking the story to support her thesis – an unsettling use of religion that sort of makes Maria, a very moral character, seem almost like a lying demagogue.

The film has such a strange mix of elements that I love and elements that I find frustratingly disappointing.  The binary between the moral Maria who hasn’t a bad bone in her body (and who seems like she might as well be oblivious to the existence of sex) and the robot Maria who embraces all things sexual and wild is a great setup, but it would have been great for the two of them to have had an encounter.  The protagonist is a fascinating character: he has a number of visions that make him either a madman or a supernatural prophet, and the has his most important vision – a nightmare sequence – after he wakes up, whereas any other film would show him having a nightmare and then waking up.  It is actually this nightmare scene that makes the film work for me; it’s my favorite part of the movie because it builds up to such a satisfying climax of the second act, ending just as perfectly as the second Hunger Games film does.  I can’t help but compare it to the film adaptations of Carrie, which send us into the third act with great anticipation to see how everything’s about to fall to chaos, “B-movie style,” although Lang gives us more hype before act three that makes it all that much better.  The problem is that the third act doesn’t offer quite enough excitement to live up to this hype, instead feeling rather long.  The ending, too, is not as satisfying as it could be, mostly because the message that the film keeps preaching about the heart being a “mediator” isn’t very meaningful (and I think I read somewhere that Lang himself didn’t sincerely believe it).

This issue of the vague thesis brings me to the question of what the heck this movie is supposed to be.  Is it a utopia or a dystopia?  I hear that Hitler loved this movie, but I can’t tell if it promotes fascism, socialism, democracy, or some other form of government entirely.  Somehow this movie is very European and very American.  It may be in black and white, but it is very colorful (although perhaps my memories of the lovely tints in the Moroder version have shaped the way I want to see this version).  I can’t even tell what I’m supposed to think about technology after watching this film.  It almost tries to undercut its every move, and yet it still manages to be a very satisfying experience.  There’s a kind of energy in this film that’s infectious, and it’s the kind of movie that I just want to have on in the background all the time because I enjoy its essence more than anything else about it.  After thinking about all of this, one thing has become more and more clear: this must, indeed, be made into a musical.  Get to it.

City Lights Review

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It’s often said that “film is a visual medium,” and I’m starting to think that, if cinema were a religion, this would be its most holy of dogmas.  One of the marks of someone who’s trying to create the sense that he/she is an expert on film is an insistence that the most impressive and most pure filmmaking is that which focuses on visual storytelling.  The trailer for STAR WARS: The Old Republic was immediately hailed as an excellent short film upon its release both on the web and at my college because it told a story using hardly any dialogue.  Surely the success of films from companies like PIXAR that like to show off their ability to tell stories this way (think of the first twenty minutes of UP) tells us that film is indeed a visual medium and that its storytelling must be primarily visual, right?

No.  This idea is a load of elitist bull-crap that should have died with Epstein.  My evidence for this is obvious: no one today wants to watch silent films.  No one.  I know because I spent my autumn semester at the University of Maryland sitting in a classroom filled with film students taking a course on silent cinema, and they skipped whichever films they could, trying to watch as few as possible.  These are the film majors – the next generation of movie critics, movie-makers, and movie-lovers – and they did not have the patience for any silent films longer than fifteen minutes.  On the other hand, the film that does get a positive reaction – and is even shown to non-film students in classes in other departments from what I hear – is Modern Times.

Modern Times works well because, in spite of the fact that it has hardly any spoken dialogue, Chaplin had complete control over the soundtrack, and the same is true for City Lights.  While storytelling without dialogue is often very impressive, it’s not the same as visual storytelling so long as it incorporates a soundtrack that’s controlled by the filmmakers.  Ever since Eisenstein first wrote about vertical montage, filmmakers and film critics should have accepted that sight and sound work together in film to create the cinematic experience, playing off of each other even in the presence of dialogue, constantly changing each other’s meaning, value, and power.  I think Chaplin understood this, and this understanding makes City Lights far better than any silent film I’ve ever seen.  Actually, I think some of the film’s strongest jokes are the ones built around audio, such as the part when the Tramp swallows the whistle or the opening scene that casts kazoos as the voices of the churlish officials and aristocrats – each of which I have seen imitated in one form or another in later comedy productions (The Three Stooges and the Charlie Brown specials, respectively).

I think this film is just barely better than Modern Times, although I think I should have given that film I higher rating than I did now that I’ve seen it twice and appreciate it more, if only because City Lights has a stronger plot.  Modern Times has a very loose narrative structure, as if Chaplin wrote the screenplay saying, “And now we’re going over here to do this gag, and now we’re going over there to do that routine.”  With City Lights, there’s a bit more focus on two main storylines, and the film’s primary weakness is the separation of these two plotlines, almost making me wonder why this is one feature-length film instead of two different short films.  Still, they’re tied together just enough that the story is engaging and entertaining, even if it is a little bit too dramatic and depressing at times given how much suffering our beloved Tramp endures.  It’s worth noting that each of these two storylines is based on a brilliant idea, the first being a man who’s the Tramp’s best friend when drunk but a stranger to him when sober, and the second – the one that’s so intelligently stupid it seems like it must have come from the Monty Python troupe – a blind girl falls in love with a silent comic.  In the end, with its heartwarming charm, captivating romance, clever comedy, unique potpourri of cities, smart use of sound effects, and enthralling musical score, City Lights is one of the greatest displays of Chaplin’s genius as a cinematic craftsman.

The Passion of Joan of Arc Review

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This is a very strange movie in very strange ways.  It tells an interesting story of an interesting character in a way that makes sense, has good drama, displays directorial prowess, employs creativity, and is overall reasonably enjoyable, but it is still very odd.  It’s a silent film that’s based entirely on a record of dialogue, making it a very strange choice for the subject of a silent film (especially since sound cinema was pre-heating and could have easily been foreseen in 1928) as the text seems to get about as much screen-time as the people.  It’s also bizarre because of the acting, which was hailed at its time, but today seems somewhat over-the-top.  I’m not sure that I like either of these things, but I do like the movie overall.  It’s not my favorite, but I am rather fond of movies that explore what terrible things can happen when religious authorities are given too much power, and it’s an interesting courtroom drama.  When its contributions to cinema on a technical level are brought into account, it is easy to see why the film is considered a classic.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Review

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It’s rare for me to see a film with a plot as difficult to follow as this one.  Even though I searched online for plot descriptions to help me out, I got lost during many parts of the film, which might be a sign of bad filmmaking, but might just mean part of the film is missing.  Fortunately, this movie isn’t so much about plot as it is about visuals, moods, moments, characters, realizations, and experiences.  It has a visual style that many films have emulated, but not nearly enough, and depending on the score that accompanies it, it can be a totally wild experience (right down to the inter-titles).  I certainly have my issues with the film – it’s really rather boring at times, and I’m not wild about much of the confusing storyline – but when critics all over the world praise and hail this film as a gem of cinema, I have to agree.  The reason why I have to agree is that I am forever in this film’s debt for offering cinema the kind of theatrical style that I adore, and that alone makes it one of the greatest contributions to the history of film.

In the future, though, let’s try to make German Expressionist visuals that don’t use that annoying yellow tint for half the film, okay?

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Sherlock Jr. Review

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Well, I suppose I couldn’t avoid it forever.  I always knew that I would eventually have to start reviewing silent films.  Sure, I did review Metropolis, but that was the Giorgio Moroder version, so I was largely reviewing an audio storyteller’s work with re-interpreting older visual material, making it more similar to an ordinary sound film.  The reason why that is the only silent film I have reviewed thus far is because it was a way of cheating – I just don’t know how to review a pure silent film.  At the end of the day, sound cinema isn’t just a different kind of storytelling or a different stage of the history of the same medium – it’s a fundamentally different medium.  Ever since Sergei Eisenstein penned his essay on “vertical montage,” cinema as we know it has been an art of both sight and sound, and I would even go so far as to say that the sound film is more like the television show than it is to the silent film.  Because of the radical difference, I have been far too scared of reviewing a true silent film in my writings thus far, largely due to the fact that my attention is always, always, always drawn first to the contemporary soundtracks that have been added to the silent films I’ve seen, and the sound determines a huge percentage of my experience.  Nevertheless, I shall attempt to focus this review on what it is I see that I find fascinating.

For his day, I think what Buster Keaton created here was a very good mix of spectacle (or “attraction”) and story.  The story is interesting and clever, although it is structured strangely, and it does leave much of the most interesting actions in the story up to secondary characters, all while Buster is asleep.  Keaton’s character in the film is exceptionally likable – the kind of daydreamer that the ideal “Walter Mitty” ought to be – and the way this character concludes the film is one of the greatest combinations of clever comedy and romantic charm I have ever seen.  His playfulness with the medium is equally clever, resulting in some exceptional special effects that have truly stumped be.  The silent slapstick may not be my cup of tea, but I think that the film works fairly well with audiences today on the whole, at least as far as its comedy goes, and I do consider it a very impressive achievement of the silent age.

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Silent Movie Review

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Mel Brooks is known for writing clever stuff, and a lot of that cleverness is in the dialogue.  So, the question is, can Mel do a silent movie well?  I strongly believe that he did.  Silent Movie is delightful in every scene, with a fun cast of characters who are performed very well (with perfect timing of course) by Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, and Brooks himself.  The cameos are used well, and also add to the delight.

From a technical standpoint, the film is impressive, and ironically, I really liked this movie’s use of sound.  The music always fit the scene, as did the sound effects, and the score actually varied in style, but still felt coherent despite its different genres.  I liked the way the movie was shot and edited as well, and Mel generally does a good job with that kind of thing I’ve found.

While I thought the writing was very clever (since I laughed a lot throughout) and I thought the story had about the right amount of simplicity that it would need as a silent movie, there were a couple of things about the writing that bothered me.  Firstly, the characters were all sort of caricatures, and while the protagonist is somewhat relatable and down-to-earth, even he is too over-the-top to be relatable sometimes.  When this happens in a story that essentially is a series of attempts to get celebrities to do the movie, it is easy to stop caring about the story since one eventually grows tired of such a basic and simple plot.

I still think that this is one of Mel’s funniest films, which is why I am surprised that I didn’t hear about it much over the years.  I do not have much of a special connection to the film, or at least not like I did with High Anxiety, which is in my top 20 favorite movies.  However, I think I probably laughed more while watching this than I did while watching Men in Tightsor High Anxiety.  So, because I can guaranty that this movie will get a laugh out of anyone, and because this is probably the most family-friendly film Mel’s done, I highly recommend Silent Movie.

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