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City Lights Review

January 18, 2017 by JD Hansel

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.

Filed Under: Film Criticism, New Movie Reviews Tagged With: 1930s Movie Reviews, 1931, Approved, Charlie Chaplin, Comedy Classics, Essential Classics, Four Stars, G, NR, Roger Ebert's "Great Movies", Roger Ebert's Favorites, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Silent, Slapstick

Sherlock Jr. Review

October 27, 2016 by JD Hansel

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.

140-sherlock-jr

Filed Under: Film Criticism, New Movie Reviews Tagged With: 1920s Movie Reviews, 1924, Buster Keaton, Comedy Classics, Essential Classics, Four Stars, Mystery, NR, Silent, Slapstick

Modern Times Review

February 11, 2016 by JD Hansel

It’s really quite fitting that Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times gets the review that follows my review of Brazil.  Each one is a crazy comedy that can get rather over the top, but each one is also a social commentary with something to say; namely, these films express frustration with the faulty technology that’s being thrust upon them.  This is somewhat noticeable when the Tramp has to work with a conveyor belt that goes too fast, and he ends up getting carried by the conveyor belt into the giant gears that run the machinery in the factory where he works.  However, when this attitude is most obvious is when the Tramp is strapped into a machine that feeds the factory workers lunch so that they don’t need to take a lunch break – which sounds just like something Gilliam would have loved to put into Brazil had the idea not been taken already – and of course, it goes berserk.  This kind of a film is to be expected from a man who had been very popular in the silent era, but now had virtually no choice but to make sound films (Modern Times being his first go at them).  This movie is fascinating because it shows what happens when the man who had universal appeal in silent cinema tries to make a part-talkie so he can adapt to… well, “modern times.”

Overall, I’d say Chaplin did a good job.  The story isn’t all that coherent, but since this film comes from an early time in the history of feature-length narrative film, and because the movie had to be tailored to fit the Tramp’s style, I’m willing to be quite forgiving about that.  As long as the comedy and the characters work, and as long as sound is used well, I think this movie did what it needed to do; I’d say these goals were all achieved.  I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed Ellen, his leading lady, who brought a lot of energy and excitement to the picture.  I was very fascinated by Chaplin’s depiction of the depression, which made me feel like I was looking at an entirely different world from our own.  While I don’t think the musical number towards the end is particularly enjoyable, and although I get bothered by how the film jumps around from one situation to a completely different one, I recommend this movie to anyone who likes part-talkies and loves big laughs.

92 Modern Times

Filed Under: Film Criticism, New Movie Reviews Tagged With: 1930s Movie Reviews, 1936, Charlie Chaplin, Comedy Classics, Essential Classics, G, Slapstick, Three and a Half Stars

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