Author: Sasa

I missed my train and had to wait 20 minutes. At that point, I was way too late for “Pandora’s Box”, but I have managed to come in right when “Berlin” started, so I decided to go for that one.

Berlin, Sinfonie einer Großstadt
Germany 1927, Walther Ruttmann, 65′

Neil Brand is quite a genius. I got a seat very close to where he was playing, from an angle where I could easily see both hands. Some of his maneuvers were quite dramatic, and from how he was massaging his fingers before the performance and how he was sweating after only an hour-long film, I felt confirmed that he was putting an incredible energy into this.

Sadly (or luckily?) I was fairly tired. Despite that, I saw the whole film, but the movie has such an incredible speed that it’s difficult to see whole richness of the many details. Furthermore, I was moved to tears by the weirdest scenes. There was a train entering the nowadays completely irrelevant Anhalter Bahnhof, old trams going for Marienfelde, a bird view of the Berliner Dom full of houses that do not exist anymore…
In fact, I spent quite a bit of effort to try to recognize places, haha. It’s completely futile. The Berlin of this movie is not my Berlin, yet it is. Maybe this is the most beautiful of all.

Objectively, without any story whatsoever, the movie might not really have so much of a merit. It doesn’t give much of a society portrait (I could barely figure out how much the Weimarer Republik differed from the Kaiserzeit except for people’s clothing style) and there are not so many politics. It also barely shows any touristic attraction. Basically, the film sees Berlin a little bit like a normal person like us would see it, making it especially interesting for me. Considering the immense popularity of the screenings – they were always full although they showed it 6 times over the week – I can definitely see how people in Berlin found the same appeal in the film. Apart from that, if you do not have a special relation to Berlin or Germany, what other merit does the film have, I wonder? Personally I was too busy to notice any of it.

A Page of Madness
Japan 1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 60′

I hate the Babylon. We had an incredibly horrible copy, worse than a 640×320 video where the picture was practically completely blurry. You could barely make out any facial expressions, and I was heavily annoyed by that.

Apart from that, I must admit that I was inexplicably drawn to the movie. I found the very Japanese depiction of madness very artistic, and since nobody could understand what actually happened in the film, I concentrated all my power on telling my eyes to ignore the bad image quality and on the intriguing aesthetics of the film. I must admit that loved it. There is something haunting yet beautiful especially about the dancing woman, and it didn’t surprise me at all that they brought out No masks in the end. In a nutshell, I find this film to be extremely interesting and precious, and hope to one day see a better, decent version of this. If it had a more comprehensive story, I have a feeling that the movie could have become something great.

After getting home yesterday from drinking with Pixelmatsch and 6451, I had to sleep until 11, but even then I wasn’t really able to get over my tiredness. I cooked and saw Loris, who is rather difficult to talk to (at least for me), because I feel like I should be witty and smart and interesting and considerate all at the same time. It takes a significant amount of brain muscles and subsequently physical effort to be funny on a speed level of your average screwball comedy. (Ok, I am not that good even if I tried.)

The Unknown
USA 1927, Tod Browning, 63′

I knew that I wanted to see this film because I find Lon Chanley to be a great actor (which he was in this film no doubt). All in all, the movie itself wasn’t too interesting, at least not interesting enough to keep me awake. I have missed some of the more suspenseful parts of the film. I saw the exposition that introduced the characters (Alonzo who is in love with the woman who is afraid of men’s hands) and then I woke up when Alonzo got his arm operation and came back. What I saw was okay. I liked the character of Alonzo – of course Chanley helped with his believable acting – and found the story rather interesting. But the execution was okay at best, and after just having seen the energetic “His Girl Friday”, it was difficult to get back into the mood of a ‘drama’ like this.

All in all, I have not seen much about this film, but at this point, I am not too sad about this fact.

The General
USA 1926, Buster Keaton, 75′

This is my first re-watch of a film in quite awhile, and definitely the first time where the second watch was so much more impressive than the first. I have previously mentioned how a movie theater can destroy you when it’s a bad film (see “J’accuse”), because you cannot skip over stupid parts or stop watching the film altogether, but the risk of seeing something bad is so incredibly worth it when a film turns out to be great. Especially for comedies, the laughter of other people is the most beautiful music to the film. It was the first time when I found it a little sad that the music played was overwhelming the laughter.

“The General” is the perfect film for a situation like this. The movie theater was full, and we had Neil Brand, perhaps the best pianist in the whole festival. With suitable music, the film becomes just amazingly funny. There were so many details I didn’t even notice at the first watch, but became subtly amusing when everybody else started laughing. With his nonchalant face, Buster Keaton is just amazing when it comes to subtly funny scenes, just a single look of his can make the audience roar with laughter. Even if “The General” is his best film, it’s an absolute masterpiece solely for its potential to be that funny on screen.

Intolerance
USA 1916, David W. Griffith, 192′

“Intolerance” has broken my heart a little bit. After spending 3 hours on it, I realized that movies are a little bit like lectures: I am used to 1.5 hour lectures, and that year when I had 3 hour lectures, I had a hard time not falling asleep (in fact I felt asleep no matter what). There is one single movie in this world that I absolutely loved throughout its whole run, the four-hour long “Ai no Mukidashi”. Apart from that, I typically suffer through a long movie, and “Intolerance” was no exception.

The problem with “Intolerance” is that it is very similar to “Metropolis” in that the story is rather silly. A movie of this scope and length, with the title “Intolerance”, is expected not only to be beautiful, but also do justice to its complex and tragic topic. Unfortunately, “Intolerance” can only do the beauty part. The mass scenes are absolutely epic, the historical costumes absolutely beautiful and worth their while to sit through it for 3 hours, finally cinematography and direction are wonderfully crafted.

But we are dealing with D.W. Griffith, a man who managed to do “The Birth of a Nation” after all. Either he pretends to be political or apolitical (he’s a little contradictoyr when it comes to that), and “Intolerance”, ironically, is another example of his political naivety. “Intolerance” has four parts, and has exactly four messages: Puritan society is wrong, treason and genocide out of religious reasons is wrong and, of course, the crucification of Jesus was wrong.

Especially because the film looks so luxurious, a lot of it seems cheap. Griffith uses beautifully sounding words to make up for lack of depth of content; some dramatic ‘running after the governor’ scenes to save the main character’s life compensate the lack of actual suspense; four stories instead of one because each one of them doesn’t carry all that far.

“Intolerance” definitely is a film worth to see, especially from a film historic standpoint. I’m also convinced that I would rather prefer positive political naivety over “The Birth of a Nation’s” racism, but ultimately you cannot get me with a few beautiful words and brilliant pictures alone.

We had a great time drinking after this relatively short day, but there is something extremely tragic about getting home really late, and I wish I had money for a taxi. Somehow I like cabs, and that is definitely not only because of “Night on Earth”.

J’accuse
France 1919, Abel Gance, 144’

Something in me wants to puke. There is some backstory about the film that really makes me feel emotional, one of them is the fact that some of the scenes were shot in actual, real trenches. That is just amazing. On top of that, they ‘return of the dead’ was with actual soldiers of whom most actually died shortly after. It made me feel quite a glomp in your throat when I read that. The music was brilliant and the cinematography of the film is quite wonderful, perhaps even one the most beautiful I have seen (surely it is filled with pathos, but hey that can be beautiful too). I assume that the beauty of the film made it so popular with the critics now. But let’s not forget the content of the film.

Of course I understand an accusation in general. But the film is doing everything completely wrong. A real accusation to war would mention the chemin des dames, a sad period in history when the French military sent in people simply to die. Instead of glorifying the dead, a real anti-war movie would condemn the fact that they had to die. Maybe I should list what I hated about the film:
– First of all, the movie was completely anti-german. A true anti-war movie should not participate in the war-mongering and stir up the hatred against Germans. It doesn’t help that the Germans are portrayed as the evil guys who raped the female protagonist. It’s not surprising that the director released an even more anti-german version of the film to show in the US. It’s so hypocritical that it’s disgusting.
– Obviously there is one old guy who fought in 1870 – and upon hearing about his daughter being raped, of course he goes into war and then dies. I think this type of revenge story is extremely typical for pseudo-anti-war stories, which we are seeing way too many of.
– The little girl who was born out of that rape incident was to be “educated as a French”. We see her learning about French history and the first words she learns to write is “J’accuse”. Ugh.
– Instead of actually showing the cruelty of war, they are happy with showing a few dead bodies and lamenting the dead. It’s really nothing more than patriotic “Look at what the Germans did to us” lamenting.
– “J’accuse” is being displayed in many forms all over the film, and at the worst places. It is especially sad when one thinks about when it was used in the first place: Émile Zola used the title to accusing the French government (!) of anti-semitism in their affair Dreyfus. This movie is the most government-loving film I have seen in a while, and in such an “anti-war” disguise at that.

I am sure this is not all, but these are the worst points. Of course I understand where this is coming from. Having had the WWI in school for quite awhile (which is also where I got my knowledge about the chemin des dames), I know that France was absolutely devastated after the war, and such a movie is the best thing to soothe their wounds. But what came out of it? They ripped the Germans of everything they had (see the traité de Versailles), which I see as one of the reasons why the Weimar Republic was so weak, and by extension giving way to WWII.

After Germany and France have put so many efforts into developing something like a friendship, I cannot quite believe how such a film can still be shown nowadays. I doubt it will have a huge impact (and I am glad about it), but as long as there is a museum in Paris glorifying the French army in the two world wars, I think that we still have work to do when it comes to creating a unified Europe and a peaceful world, and this type of movie is one step into the wrong direction.

Blackmail
USA 1929, Alfred Hitchcock, 84’

A Hitchcock with a blonde, what more can you say about it? I preferred “The Lodger” for its more suspenseful story, and because “Blackmail” was ultimately quite predictable. It was somewhat less enjoyable for that reason.

But, and I think this is a very important point, the female main character actually acts (instead of only looking nice). She is a delightful Raskolnikov character who commits a crime instead of just reacting to what everybody does. On top of that, the actress portraying her is surprisingly good for one who works for Hitchcock, she is very multi-faceted and shows her distress and the different degrees of shock in a very believable way. I think that she was the best thing about the film, in my book she was greater than Grace Kelly (who really can only play herself).

To me, “Blackmail” is a more mature film, playing around with psychology much more than “The Lodger” that mainly relies upon suspense and horror. I can understand why it became a popular film, and I am actually somewhat interested in the sound version too.

It was a surprisingly hot day, but slowly I am getting used to seeing so many films on one day. All in all, the quality of films is still surprisingly high, today was another day with films I didn’t expect to be that good.

Die Bergkatze
Germany 1921, Ernst Lubitsch, 79’

Since this is a Lubitsch, and the only one they showed at the whole festival, I could not possibly have seen anything else at this time slot (they only showed some possibly bad film with Marlene Dietrich anyways, ugh).

I am a huge fan of “The Shop Around the Corner” and especially “To Be or Not To Be”, whereas I didn’t like “The Marriage Circle” as much in comparison to Lubitsch’s sound films. Even “Ninotchka”, a film that I personally don’t like as much as the two other aforementioned titles, was on a much higher level for me than “The Marriage Circle”. I thought that I might generally prefer Lubitsch’s sound films because his humor becomes even greater when dialogue is involved.

However, with “Die Bergkatze” I was proven wrong. The film might not have the gripping wit of some of his other films, but both the enjoyment and the funniness are at least comparable. Lubitsch seems to be a great master of situational comedy that is just outright funny, even if it means to exaggerate in a mixture of Hollywood slapstick à la Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton and the dynamic, comical relationships of the main characters, which is so very typical for Lubitsch.

Pola Negri is quite a lovely “wild girl”. It’s my first time seeing her, and she really makes me think of Helena Bonham Carter! Hahahaha. In comparison to Gloria Swanson, I must say that I prefer the latter, but in this role, Pola Negri was absolutely perfect. I absolutely loved her in the scene where she is comforting her rival in love – all the while stealing her jewelry. XD

Perhaps the unique laughter of the audience is what makes Lubitsch films so incredibly precious when shown in a movie theater. I might have become a Stroheim and a Pabst fan, and no matter how much I also like Billy Wilder or Fritz Lang’s “M”, Lubitsch will always hold a special place as my favorite German director.

Battleship Potemkin
USSR 1925, Sergej Eisenstein, 75’

First of all, I must mention that I was stuck with 70 other people in a tiny theater with no airconditioning (they forgot to turn the fans on) and with three musicians among which one was playing the trumpet. Now, while the trumpet is not my favorite music instrument, I was looking forward to it because I thought that it would provide great accents to this very dramatic and somewhat martialistic film. Again, I was absolutely wrong. The trumpet was way too loud for the small theater, making the music absolutely impossible to listen to, and thus being more detrimental to the film than contributing to it.

Oh well. Apart from these inconveniences, I am happy to know that I liked the film. I was so looking forward to the children’s cart scene and now I can say that I finally saw it after encountering so many of its parodies. Of course it’s a bunch of propaganda, but it’s such obvious propaganda that we wouldn’t take it for serious anymore anyways. On top of that, it’s more like “Hey let’s kick these aristocrats’ asses” rather than “Hey let’s all happily cultivate our fields together”, and I much prefer that for obvious reasons. (There is something beautiful in revolutions, even though I personally don’t believe in them.)

Now that we got the dreadful propaganda part out of the way, I find “Battleship Potemkin” to be an amazingly well-made film. The flow of the story, the actors, the monumental cinematography! Even for myself who hates propaganda more than anything in the world and always believed that political messages destroys art, I think that “Battleship Potemkin” is valuable on a level that goes beyond aesthetics. For me, there is no doubt that a well-told story with great visuals can be a piece of art, so this film definitely must be one.

The Lodger
USA 1927, Alfred Hitchcock, 74’

What a typical Hitchcock! What a typical thriller! Indeed, what a typical thriller by Hitchcock: There are all the elements you would expect, and I am just completely in awe at how Hitchcock’s films had the same characteristics throughout his whole film career: Silent films, black and white sound films and color films. (Speaking of film types, why doesn’t anybody have come to the idea to make color silent films? I suppose it’s because that would be music videos.)

“The Lodger” is some sort of Jack the Ripper story where it’s all about unveiling the murderer of blonde haired girls. We are following the lodger, a guy who rents a room with a family whose daughter is blonde (how Hitchcockian too!). Of course the lodger is a rather creepy person, thus everybody suspects him to be the murderer. Of course the whole thing has many plot twists and suspenseful scenes (Will the young girl die? Aaahhh~), before finally coming to a dramatic show-down. The whole film was decorated with stylish (and very dynamic looking) intertitles and geometrical elements etc. etc. The whole film looks incredibly modern, of course partially because Hitchcock conversed his style when directing his thrillers.

I think I have a certain weakness for first films when it comes to great directors. I have loved Jim Jarmusch’s first movie and I was a fan of “Blind Husbands”. For Hitchcock, in this film his blondes are not as blond yet, his main characters less crazy and obsessed. The thriller itself is just as suspenseful as his newer ones, proving how incredible he was.

Since I was mentally so well-prepared for “Die freudlose Gasse”, I ended up feeling much less tired today. I managed to see all the movies without sleeping a wink, but on the other hand, I feel like I wasn’t entirely capable to keep concentrating on them. Nevertheless, it was a good day.

The Butcher Boy, Coney Island, Oh! Doctor
USA, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle

What can I say, I fell into their marketing trap. They called this screening “Buster Keaton Shorts”, but even though all three films feature Buster Keaton, he was merely a minor character in most of these stories. It seemed even the dog had a bigger role. Nevertheless, I had fun seeing these sketches, as I most often do with these Charlie Chaplin-like shorts. It is sad that Charlie Chaplin is the only one who remained really famous, and after seeing these shorts, I have become an even greater fan of Buster Keaton now.

The Crowd
USA 1928, King Vidor, 104’

Without ever having seen anything by King Vidor (I only knew his name) I was able to go into “The Crowd” without any expectations at all. Since I have already seen “Dr. Caligari”, I have opted to see the other film I might not see anymore. In the end, I am not too sad that I have forsaken my beloved “Dr. Caligari” for this film. Of course I would have wished to see “Dr. Caligari” in a movie theater, but “The Crowd” was also extremely interesting to see.

I was surprised at how modern and timeless “The Crowd” felt, with a story somewhat similar to “Huo Zhe”. As long as our world doesn’t undergo significant changes, the life story of a simple couple struggling through job loss, child raising and finally getting back together will never feel old. In fact, among all the marriage films I have seen, this is perhaps my favorite. Even though it carries a lot of Hollywood clichés especially towards the end, I still thought this was better than in “Viaggio in Italia” or “Two for the Road” or even “Domicile Conjugal” – this film was actually able to move my maidenly heart (cough) and make it believable for me as to why the main characters got together again (like they do in literally every non-French marriage film).

The best “character” in the film was probably the crowd itself. Laughing, running towards the next job offer, congratulating the protagonists to their wedding… I found that part very well made, even if it was merely a simple, perhaps obvious way to do it. The line “The crowd always laughs with you, but cries with you only for a day” summarizes nicely what this small, unpretentious movie is about.

I have a feeling that Bothmer who loves intellectual German films would never have played this film, but personally I would absolutely recommend it.

Die freudlose Gasse
Germany 1925, Georg W. Pabst, 148’

If I thought that “The Crowd” was heart-wrenching, then it is definitely because at that point I have not seen “Joyless Street” yet. Whereas “The Crowd” has many enjoyable, amusing scenes, “Die freudlose Gasse” feels like a Horváth play, except even worse.

The first mentionable thing about the film is that it was indeed very long. I find it annoying that they always show these long films after 10pm and I’m wondering how I will be able to sustain “Intolerance”, which runs a total of 180 minutes. “Die freudlose Gasse” is quite an epic movie with many characters and intertwining storylines all coming together at the end, and so the length doesn’t surprise too much.

Most of the film was extremely painful. To me, Greta Garbo suffered more in this film than Maria Falconetti did in “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc”. Every character is just incredibly level-headed yet proud and stubborn (much unlike Horváth’s plays, in fact) and I was astonished how realistic and depressing the movie was. For the longest time, I honestly thought that the Italian realism marked the beginning of realistic films, but the “new objectivity” came first. Despite the slightly happy, morally convenient ending and a certain tendency of pathos, I found this movie to be excruciatingly realistic, depicting such extreme poverty.

I still find it difficult to pinpoint what kind of filmmaker Pabst really is, especially since he seems to be changing quite a lot. I definitely will have to see “Die Büchse der Pandora” and “Die weiße Hölle von Piz Palü” to be able to say anything.

After only two days, I am beginning to show the first signs of fatigue. Obviously it’s not because of the movies themselves, none of them have been bad at all. It’s more like my body cannot sustain seeing so many movies on the same day anymore. During the first movie that I have rather disliked, I ended up falling asleep for perhaps 1/4 of the film.

Schastye (Happiness)
USSR 1934, Aleksandr Medvedkin, 95’

Why this movie is among the 1000 greatest films of all time is absolutely beyond me. Some critics must be freaks or something, but really this is nothing but a nice film at most. It has a few funny scenes (without being really, really funny) and the actor portraying the protagonist is fairly decent. Apart from that, we are dealing with quite a propagandistic piece of cinema, in which about we, uh, learn about the lives of farmers in Soviet Russia. Topic-wise, I am not a big fan of films that are all about harvesting, at hard-working women, making horses move and keep them up from eating too much etc. At least there was no war propaganda, thank God.

Film-wise, I also disliked it. I might be plain ignorant, or it could be the horribly preserved copy of the film, but there wasn’t much direction-wise about this film that I have found memorable so far. All in all, it was interesting to see a film like this, but maybe I could also have done without.

Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam
Germany 1920, Paul Wegener, 85’

I am sad that I couldn’t have seen “Greed”, but oh well, such is life. “Der Golem” was accompanied by this amazingly great duo with violin and piano. At first, it felt weird to have a violin there and I realized how much I was used to hearing the piano to silent films. But as soon as I quickly got used to it, I am so glad that they had the violin for it, adding so much more drama and complexity to the film score.

Perhaps I would have liked the “Golem” even more if I had seen more monster movies, but it was very great already. The only sad thing about the film was that the story didn’t offer all that much (the jews are in danger, the rabbi creates the golem to save them, then has problems to control his creature). But in terms of directing, production values and design, the film was a refreshing contrast to the bland “Happiness”. Paul Wegener’s facial expressions as golem were pure gold, and I am a huge fan of the German expressionist style, which I immediately recognized to be quite similar to “Dr. Caligari”.

“Der Golem” is definitely a must see, and a film that is much better when seen in a large movie theater with live music, making me feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to.

Blind Husbands
USA 1919, Erich v. Stroheim, 90’

One can easily see that this is Stroheim’s first film. I missed the prostitutes, the voluptuous female bodies and the decadent décor, ha ha. To be honest, I even missed a real scandal in this whole thing. Sure, even this film is very sexy, psychological and subtly criticizing the bourgeoisie in a beautiful way, but at the end of the day, this film was merely about one blind husband who doesn’t realize that this evil German officer is courting his wife. I was actually a little surprised at how simple and morally convenient the story ended up being.

All the other elements of a typical Stroheim film seem to be there, be it good or bad ones: On the good side, we have wonderful details such as “Auf der Alm gibt’s ka Sünd”, on the bad side, the film is awfully long (and straining me quite a bit after so many days full of movies). “Queen Kelly” was greater when it comes to its female characters and the depiction of royal decadence, but “Blind Husbands” featured Stroheim himself! He is absolutely wonderful as the bad guy, although I must admit that I admire his achievements as director much more than as an actor. Whereas he typecasted himself quite a lot, as a director I find him to be absolutely unique. I don’t think anybody in this world could mirror the fervent and craziness he worked with, and we should consider ourselves lucky that he has made some films, even if it’s just these few. He’s… the Kafka of film-making or something.

Finally, I have this perhaps naive hope that “Foolish Wives” (since Gorp likes it so much) and “Greed” (the supposedly most acclaimed Stroheim) will be even better than this.

Today was less stressful than yesterday, and it was also easier to figure out what to watch. I still can’t get over the fact that I couldn’t watch “Foolish Wives” because of “3 Bad Men”, and this line of sadness will continue with “Dr. Caligari” vs. “The Crowd”, “Intolerance” vs. “Häxan” and “Greed” vs. “Der Golem”. Oh well, such is the movie theater I love to hate.

La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc
France 1928, Carl T. Dreyer, 110?

As one of the critics’ favorites, I have always meant to see this film, especially after I have fallen in love with “Vivre sa Vie”. But every picture I have seen of this movie was Maria Falconetti’s sad face, and felt like the movie must be dreadful to watch.

For some reason, this was totally not the case, yet I don’t know why. Perhaps it was precisely because I didn’t feel too emotional when I saw the film; in fact, it felt extremely artificial to me, in a similar way as Goethe’s “Iphigenie auf Tauris” did. For precisely that reason, I find both “Iphigenie auf Tauris” as well as “Jeanne d’Arc” very beautiful. I found Maria Falconetti’s performance extremely impressive, especially for a woman who was not trained to be an actress. I was also surprised by the depiction of the other characters, the evil clericals. Everybody else commented how funny and poignant they looked, and I must admit that I agree. They gave quite a nice picture of religious terror.

As always there were aspects of the film I disliked, namely that the events in the film weren’t even close to the historical truth: In reality, there was no revolt at the end of Jeanne’s death (ugh “You have burned a saint!”), there was no good man trying to help her and of course her trial was nothing like it was depicted in the movie. I also don’t believe that Jeanne’s true character was so jesus-like. Of course this was all intended and contributes to the film’s beauty, but ugh.

All in all, I was positively surprised by this film that I expected to be rather boring to watch. The atmosphere of the film was absolutely gripping (perhaps helped by the beautiful and large theater as well as the professional musical accompaniment), and I “enjoyed” it very much. I found myself glued to the screen, although I didn’t cry like Nana. As a woman, I guess I don’t suffer much in life.

By the way, the whole movie was shown in French without any translation whatsoever. I was very amused.

Queen Kelly
USA 1929, Erich v. Stroheim, 101′

The only unfortunate thing about the film itself was this absolutely dreadful Africa scene, where Kelly was to be married to some old ugly guy. It shows how much longer the film would have been when just a scene like that was this long. The most unfortunate thing about the whole event were the obnoxious girls sitting behind us. They managed to laugh at the most stupid moments (and not laugh at good moments), and commented on the film loudly the whole time… Amazing, really. It made me think of the day when I watched “To be or no to be”. It was in the main theater in the Babylon and whenever something funny happened, the whole audience was roaring with laughter. Back then, I loved laughing with that audience as much as I hated having to see “Queen Kelly” with this audience today.

Poor Stroheim, of course he was an evil maniac, but the resulting film didn’t deserve to be seen by such simple-minded women. It’s not even like “Queen Kelly” was intellectual or anything, but it did have quite a lot of great jokes. (Horizontal profession! Hahaha.) The majority of the film was a feast for the eye and the comical mind. Before I saw this film (my first Stroheim that is), I was a little doubtful of all the frivolity and generous spendings, but now that I see it, I must admit that I find it very enjoyable to look at, and Stroheim’s love for details is exactly what I love about his films.
I’m not so sure what I think about the length though. The Africa part was incredibly long-winded and from the stills we can only guess that it was intended to be something like 3 times longer. In comparison to that, the movie (Kelly’s affair with the prince) is perhaps just an introduction to the story. How amazing and scary at the same time. It is a piece of irony that the combination of Stroheim’s mad direction and other people’s mad cutting have ‘created’ these masterpieces.

As always, a silent also lives by the fact and acting skills of its main character, and Gloria Swanson had plenty of both. I don’t find her to be an outstanding beauty (and actually think that she looks a little bit like Adele Sandrock, hahaha), but oh wow she was good. I felt like I recognized some of her facial expressions from “Sunset Boulevard” and in retrospect, it was very fascinating to see one of the silents where her skills were exposed in such different way. She was absolutely perfect in this role of innocent yet smart and slightly precocious girl, and made the movie so much better for me. The queen herself was a delightful contrast to it – I loved how she threw her poor cat to the floor! Just lovely.

Since I enjoyed “3 Bad Men” very much, I am not too sad that I wasn’t able to see “Foolish Wives”, but I definitely want to see every other Stroheim now. I think I love my crazy film directors too much…

The Stummfilmfestival in Berlin has started. I got a ticket for all the movies, so I will be seeing practically everything I can. Also, 6451 is in Berlin and so we will happily see quite a lot of each other.

Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl)
Germany 1929, Georg W. Pabst, 109′

Before the film started, an announcer told us that this Pabst film was based on book aimed at maids. I knew that maids in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century loved reading these cheap thin books, but I also knew that most of these books contain disgustingly clichéd and badly written love stories. I could barely believe that Pabst (nor Louise Brooks) would make such a movie, which also was aimed at that audience.

Indeed, the film’s story was amazingly… girlish. A girl was driven out of the house by her stepmother for being impregnated by some evil guy, then fled from some dreadful reformatory for girls and subsequently got herself into a brothel, oh well. What make this film so interesting are firstly Louise Brook’s face and secondly Pabst’s directing.

I expected quite a lot from Pabst, and was not disappointed. The film was pretty much exactly like I hoped for, there were no Murnauesque special effects, just solid acting, a lot of subtle humor and a pleasant, fluid pace. Pabst knew very well how to make his characters interact, making this the probably the most lively silent I have seen so far. Besides Louise Brooks herself, we see a lot of close-ups of other characters who transport their feelings and intentions through facial expression alone. Nevertheless, there is something melodramatic about this direction style, and I have a feeling that Tarantino likes Pabst for the same reason for which certain critics like Sirk. XD

Straight Shooting
USA 1917, John Ford, 71′

Admittedly, we saw this film because it fit into the schedule. I have never, ever seen a John Ford movie, and ever since I got into movies, I have never ever seen a single western yet. The fact that this super old movie was supposedly well preserved was quite intriguing. I decided to give it a chance, even though the story didn’t sound all that exciting: Farmers and ranchers were engaged in some sort of war, in which the superhero-like protagonist decided to help the poor farmer’s family when he saw an old man and a cute girl cry over the murder of the son. What then ensues can easily be qualified as gun porn, but it was a very nice-looking one.

Ultimately I had my little irks with how useless the girl was in the end (ugh, this is so American really), but in many ways, the film was a nice introduction into western as well as a great contrast to “Tagebuch einer Verlorenen”, oozing so much manliness.

3 Bad Men
USA 1926, John Ford, 92′

I cried manly tears! No, seriously, this was one of the most amusing and fun films I have seen in quite awhile. Just like “Straight Shooting”, it fulfills all the Western clichés, where outlaws are actually lovely and funny people helping a damsel in distress and where everybody finally realizes that the true gold is the gold of a fruitful harvest.

It might have been interesting to see what John Ford’s original intent for this movie was, but as it is presented now, it was very enjoyable and amusing to watch. This is the kind of movie that one has to see, because there is not much to tell about it. All in all, it has a funnier and more complex story than “Straight Shooting”, and seems to be much more mature both for storytelling and characterization.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (USA, 1920)
USA 1920, John S. Robertson, 80′

I have never seen any of the over 100 film versions of “Dr. Jekyll” before, and have only seen parts with Ingrid Bergman (which I liked very much, she has such a lovely shocked face). As my first film of this kind, I haven’t had very high expectations for the film. Indeed, there wasn’t much in this film that impressed me too much. In terms of direction, it was far less sophisticated than even “Straight Shooting”, and besides John Barrymore who plays both Jekyll and Hyde quite well, everything in the movie was pretty bad: Lighting, other people’s acting, the flow of the story… We rarely see any bad silent films, because we haven’t even seen the highly acclaimed good ones. “Fräulein Else” is perhaps the only film I have seen which doesn’t even had a Wikipedia article, and that one wasn’t even too bad – just not exactly good or memorable either. This version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was little more than underwhelming. John Barrymore saved it a little bit, but that wasn’t enough for me who was tired after this marathon, heh.

The Turandot Project

The first documentary in ever that I have seen. Since this film is relevant to my interests (China, Zhang Yimou and perhaps my favorite opera) and I secretly always have wanted to see this opera in China, I console myself with seeing this documentary.

It’s a lot like I expected it, and I think I am rather forgiving that this movie just oozes of propaganda, perhaps because I expected it. But really, are they sure they want to show so much shameful footage, like the soldier who’s all like “our army is cultured” or Zhang Yimou’s “It doesn’t matter how they move, they just have to sing”? On top of that, the singers are rather bad, and the misunderstandings and bad translations are rather embarrassing, especially from the Chinese side. Uff.

Apart from that, as controversial as the production looks like to me, I actually like the looks of the production. I am a child of bombastic Chinese performances, and I think that colorful, megalomaniac beauty like from some fairytale is exactly what this opera needs. However, I am not entirely convinced that “Turandot” should be authentically Chinese looking, au contraire. “Turandot” is a Chinese princess, sure, but it clearly is no Chinese name. In fact, it’s more Persian/Middle Eastern and since names don’t matter all that much: Maybe my biggest irk with “Turandot” is that it is not a very typical Chinese story, but really does feel like a “1001 Nights” story. Also, many of its elements are allegoric and purely symbolic, as it is clearly a fictional story, a parable even. There is something disgusting about people talking about truth and authenticity, when the authenticity they talk about is the so-called Chineseness. “Turandot” is as Chinese as falafel is Israeli, and I can’t believe they get some ignorant or shady Chinese people talking about how “Turandot is originally Chinese, and now it’s performed at its original place”, ewwww. Also, there was not a single world about the real reason why “Turandot” was never performed in China before. (For those who are interested, it’s the same reason as to why “Paths of Glory” was never shown in France until 1975: “Turandot” supposedly shed a bad image on China like “Paths of Glory” did on the French army.)

In the end, I am still looking for my own perfect “Turandot”.

PS. Heavy metal is opera.

Conversations with Other Women

I was browsing the internet to see what other films she did besides “Brick”, and when I saw that this is going to be some sort of dialogue-based love story between 40-somethings played by Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter, I could not resist. I knew that the story wouldn’t be anything special, and I wasn’t really sure if I would like the split-screen, but ultimately the film showed to be exactly what I expected.

Only I didn’t like the dialogue all that much. Perhaps I just have wanted more than the two characters talking about their own love lifes, screwing each other and subsequently childishly trying to ruin the other person’s life during a short moment of rage. All in all, I wasn’t too impressed by the writing itself, it was more like exactly what you would expect from a movie like this, and to me, it only speaks for how immensely boring people must be in their fourties. As a depiction of such, it was fairly brilliant though; I love the contempt in their voice when they say “23 August the 12th” (his new girlfriend) and “Jeff the cardiologist” (her new husband) XD

Apart from that, I liked how the story unfolded, and I actually must admit that I even liked the split screen approach. Sure, it’s a little bit annoying, but the smart way the film was cut contributed to the depiction of the character: Either both of them were shown, or their past was shown. That was rather nice, in my opinion.

Despite the wonderfully acted yet absolutely dislikable characters, I have ended up finding both of them fairly interesting. He’s clearly still wooing her and she has already adopted a very sad, nonchalant view of the world, in which she has to hide the fact that she smokes from her current husband. For these kinds of somewhat sophisticated details, I liked the movie, and it was thoroughly enjoyable to watch, but ultimately the film doesn’t leave all that deep of an impression.