LES VAMPIRES - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2012.

Long before there were "comic book movies," and indeed, some time before comic books really became what they are today, French filmmaker Louis Feuillade was making silent film serials that predicted the best of true comic book storytelling. His films Fantomas and Judex [the 1916 version, not to be confused with this] told stories of masked figures getting involved in impossible adventures; silver-screen epics broken into episodes, released over a period of time, with each new chapter escalating the peril. These lengthy soap operas were pulp fiction for the cinema set.

In addition to those films, Feuillade also made Les Vampires, a ten-part movie released over the course of 1915 and 1916. Now considered one of the crowning achievements of early moviemaking, Les Vampires is a salacious crime picture, full of twists and turns and a deliciously freeform sense of storytelling. It can be rickety at times--there is definitely a downside to the "anything can happen" ethos--but it's also addictive, each segment ending on a note that makes us want to know what will happen next. Feuillade is anything if not a master of cliffhangers.

The hero of Les Vampires is Philipe Guérande (Édouard Mathé), a reporter for Paris' leading newspaper. Guérande has been working a long-term assignment, trying to expose the inner workings of an underground criminal organization that goes by the name "Les Vampires." These are ordinary hoodlums who use masks and secret identities to pull all manner of crimes. They are not the supernatural bloodsuckers the name implies--sorry, no Draculas here--but they do employ extraordinary techniques and deadly gadgets to get their work done. Feuillade also flirts with Stoker-like imagery. For instance, one segment involves a ballet dancer to whom Guérande is engaged. She is dancing in a production that dramatizes the sordid lives of the Vampires, and thus puts her in their cross-hairs. Her costume, based on one of the actual villains of the piece, looks every bit like a bat-winged succubus, and her murder is carried out in a particularly macabre fashion. Feuillade was giving the horror fans a knowing wink. These evildoers have taken on this name for a reason.

Of all the varied elements of Les Vampires, the facet that has found a permanent place in pop culture is Irma Vep. The name is an anagram for "vampire," and she is both a cabaret performer and the top lady crook in the Vampires organization. Played by one-named actress Musidora, Irma Vep came to embody the image of the vamp, a particular kind of femme fatale--though vamping also means to play up certain seductive traits, to exaggerate one's own sense of desirability, much as Musidora does in the film. Her black body suit, the one mimicked by the ballerina, would inspire many larger-than-life ladies that followed, fictional and otherwise, and the character would be paid homage in other movies, on album covers, and, of course, comic books. (Most notable, Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep with Maggie Cheung [review].)

Despite the revered critical status that Les Vampires has acquired over the last century, it's necessary to note that it is an imperfect effort. The lengthiness of the film, which on one hand makes it such a fascinating cinematic endeavor, can also be its downfall. Individual sequences feel drawn out, with the acting in particular overemphasizing things that the audience is likely to grasp much quicker than Feuillade apparently anticipated. The performance style in Les Vampires often veers very close to the cliché that comes to mind when many think of silent film. Édouard Mathé in particular is exceedingly demonstrative and seems to be mugging for the camera, displaying the kind of exaggerated pantomime that his better contemporaries learned to avoid.

That said, there is still so much to like about Les Vampires, it's easy to ignore its faults and just go with it. The ridiculous scrapes that Guérande finds himself in pile on one after the other. Each new chapter brings more colorful characters, as well as regular visits from the comic relief, the silly but charmed Mazamette (Marvel Lévesque), with his seemingly endless string of children and the equally endless string of jobs to pay for them. He is like the Wimpy to Guérande's Popeye. And, of course, the true appeal of Les Vampires is the cliffhanger stylings, the way Feuillade teases out the suspense, leading the viewer through the pretzel-like plot with both confidence and, despite the aforementioned laboriousness, an invigorating spontaneity. There is always a sense of discovery at work in this tale, and the fun is in sticking around to see how it all pans out. Will the rival gang ever get the upper hand and take out the Vampires? Will Guérande ever expose the full story? And what of Irma Vep...? Hit the next button, go to the next chapter, it's the only way to get your answers!

THE CAMERAMAN - #1033

Buster Keaton was an independent producer and director making his own starring vehicles in the silent era when, in 1928, he decided to sign on with MGM and let them foot the bill. This was despite warnings from his friends and peers, who didn’t see why a successful artist would give up his freedom and control. Keaton probably should have listened, as MGM immediately paired him with a director, Edward Sedgwick, and though their collaborations yielded some excellent funny business, it does feel like something is different in the two features offered on Criterion’s release of The Cameraman. 

Before criticizing things, though, it should be noted that there is much to rejoice about in this new 4K restoration. Though still missing three minutes of footage, this is the most complete version of The Camerman that anyone has seen in quite some time. The picture is clear and beautiful, and it allows for a fresh perspective of this pivotal moment in Keaton’s career. The score is also very good, enhancing the picture as necessary without overplaying the comedic actions or trying to hard to mimic what is onscreen (the same cannot be said for the music on the second film). 

The scenario as devised by Clyde Bruckman and Lew Lipton sees Buster playing a street portrait photographer who falls for a beautiful girl (Marceline Day), whose picture he takes before she is whisked away by her boyfriend (Harold Goodwin). The fella, Stagg, is a cameraman for MGM newsreels, and Buster decides to get his own movie camera and join the freelance crew as a way to get close to Sally. What follows are plenty of mishaps as Buster tries to figure out the business, finds a monkey to be his pal, and gets tangled in a Chinatown gang war. The latter sequence is incredible for the chaos and mayhem that erupts on the screen. There is a real sense of peril, and we fear for our stone-faced hero. 

This is probably the closest we get to a vintage Buster Keaton situation. His previous comedies all have a sense of danger, as his elaborate set-ups and stunts would consistently put him in harm’s way, only for him to stumble through unharmed. Most of the gags in The Cameraman are dialed way back from what audiences would have expected from Buster. Weirdly, we get more wordplay in the title cards than ever before, which is not really what we signed up for. We also get more romance. If anything replaces the danger, it’s an increased sweetness. Sure, we’ve seen Keaton work the love angle before in pictures like Battling Butler, but there is a dogged earnestness to The Cameraman that is almost less effective because it replaces his trademark cluelessness with confidence. 

In truth, The Cameraman and the second feature on the disc, 1929’s Spite Marriage, also directed by Sedgwick, remind me more of classic Charlie Chaplin than classic Buster Keaton. The relationship of City Lights comes to mind, where we root for the Little Tramp to win the blind girl’s heart. It’s not that we don’t also root for Buster in his other films, but I think we are more inclined to see him take a licking, his famously rigid face keeping us from being nearly as invested in his well-being. Perhaps this was what MGM was hoping to undo, thinking that maybe making him more like Charlie he could start to outpace the other man’s success. 

It’s hard to say. And it’s also still hard not to like both The Cameraman and Spite Marriage. Both are very funny. Spite Marriage even features one of Keaton’s most lauded bits, when he has to put his drunk wife to bed. It a routine he would perform live for many years to come. It’s just some of the inventiveness is gone. The precarious situations, the elaborate sets, the prop work, the daredevil stunts--these are all dialed back. 

You know what it is, actually? It’s that Buster Keaton was always the little guy standing up to an indifferent world that consistently outsized him. Just as MGM took away his full control, so too did they shrink the threats. It levels the playing field, it’s not nearly the contest it once was. Buster is still the champ, but fighting in his own weight class, and so the victory is not as sweet. While the performer has the charm to be a rom-com lead, it’s not what he really made his name on, and it’s a classic example of the business side of show business not really understanding the show.

 This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

STRIKE - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2011.

Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 debut Strike is an auspicious arrival for the man who is largely credited with establishing the art of the montage. This silent tour-de-force is a political drama, part historical document and part propaganda device. Scripted by four different writers and originally intended as the beginning of a larger series detailing the workers' struggle in early 20th-century Russia, it re-creates a real factory uprising from 1903, but the filmmaker inflates the terrible battle to an epic scale, making history into filmic art.

In terms of plot, though Eisenstein divides the story into six different chapters, it's actually far more simple than that. Strike can pretty much be broken down into three acts: the events leading to the walk-out, the long wait for the people's demands to be considered and the toll it takes on the striking families, and the final clash after the demands are rejected. Within this, Eisenstein details all facets of life, from the homeless criminal to the common working family and all the way up to the fatcats that pull the purse strings. The director even takes time for the smallest creatures among us: pets and stray animals, and also children. The footage of poverty could almost be passed off as documentary; Eisenstein and his trio of cinematographers stage the scenes with an eye toward realism, photographing all the squalor in order to make their case for better conditions for the common populace. On the flipside, Strike's depiction of the upper classes borders on caricature. The bosses embody a cartoon villainy, wasting food while their underlings starve and laughing at their misery.

While the young filmmaker displays an extraordinary facility for visual metaphor, at this stage in his development, Eisenstein is also prone to overdoing it. Whether this was the result of youthful folly or a conciliation to the propaganda machine is hard to say. Strike paints the picture of a vast conspiracy amongst the government and men of means. Undercover agents sneak through the workforce, spying on them and reporting any questionable activities. Eisenstein gives each of the covert infiltrators an animal code name and then proceeds to not only have the actors embody their monikers, but also cross-cuts their activity with images of the actual animals, layering their faces using double exposure and fades. It oversells the point a little, especially when one agent, nicknamed "Bulldog," is shown panting and drooling as if he were an actual dog. In other instances, when the animal imagery is better integrated into the story--the starving kitten scavenging amongst the suffering masses; the slaughter of livestock as tempers flare--the juxtaposition packs way more punch.

Strike doesn't follow too many central characters. The spies, the factory owners, and a few of the workers make regular appearances, but Eisenstein treats each group of people within the clash as if they were individuals, underscoring the rallying cry for unity amidst the classes. Some of the large-scale crowd scenes are breathtaking. A brutal raid on an impoverished tenement plays out on a variety of physical levels, as police on horseback drive residents from the top floors down to the bottom. Likewise, the scenes of crowds moving on the factory are astonishing. The orchestration of such a massive cast shows how vital cinema was as an art form right from the get-go. There were no limits.

Eisenstein also tries out many different camera tricks and experimental effects, favoring cross-fades and images within images to tie different aspects of his tale together. This affinity for transitions lends Strike an editorial agility, infusing the realistic storytelling with a sense of peril and melodrama. The director's reliance on exaggeration also gives Strike occasional notes of surrealism. In one sequence, a diplomat has little people dancing on a table as background entertainment; in another, a whole community of squatters reveals themselves by popping out of holes in an underground shantytown Eisenstein pointedly dubs a "graveyard." These touches ensure that not only is Strike visually inspiring, but also that its intended message never overshadows its primary role as entertainment. Strike is as vivacious today as it must have been nearly a century ago.

THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN - CRITERION CHANNEL

Capsule review from The Portland Mercury, May 2011:

Sergei Eisenstein pretty much invented cinematic language in his 1925 silent film about rebellion on a Russian cruiser, but don’t mistake watching The Battleship Potemkin as akin to reading a textbook--it’s as stirring today as it was nearly a century ago. The dizzying battle sequences and iconic riot on the Odessa stairs (you’ve seen it ripped off hundreds of times) turned what would’ve otherwise been a standard propaganda film into tension-filled art.

METROPOLIS - FILMSTRUCK

This review was written for the theatrical release of The Complete Metropolis in 2010 and published at DVDTalk.com.

"There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator."

There are few films from early cinema that could even get close to touching Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece Metropolis in terms of its impact on pop culture. Lang's silent sci-fi parable is an imaginative, visually stunning piece of work. His creation of a future city and the lady robot that would bring it crashing down has influenced just about every future vision to follow, be it in movies, comic books, or even music videos.

All the more impressive, then, that this impact was achieved despite that fact that versions of Metropolis people have been seeing for the last 80 years are vastly different than the one Lang and his crew intended. The movie immediately ran afoul of German censors, who started making trims. Then Metropolis traveled overseas, and American censors and greedy exhibitors made even more cuts. Most of the footage that had been taken out was believed to be lost forever, so it was a gutted Metropolis or no Metropolis at all. If you can't quite grasp what that means, imagine if someone had taken a pair of scissors to da Vinci's Last Supper and cut out five of the apostles. It's a totally different painting, and one that's full of holes.

The story of Lang's film got a surprise happy ending recently when a nearly complete print was discovered in Buenos Aires. A restoration team seized upon this unearthed treasure and immediately got to work restoring more than 20 minutes of footage not seen since the movie's earliest showings. Though the title The Complete Metropolis is somewhat of a misnomer (we're still missing the showdown between Joh Fredersen and Rotwang, for instance), the new prints of the film that are currently touring arthouses is the closest to the full picture as we're likely to get, so I'm willing to go with it.

And my, what a difference this added footage makes! Metropolis is now a far more coherent and rich film, working much better as a narrative but without sacrificing the movie's legendary weirdness. Based on a novel by Thea von Harbou, who also worked on the script, Metropolis is the story of an industrial city in a far-flung future. The creation of businessman Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), this mechanized wonderland is built in correspondence with the social order. Fredersen and his rich pals live up high, their workers toil in the pits below, and all manner of life floats in between.

Fredersen is a widower, and his son Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) is living the life expected of a privileged heir. He frolics in a literal Garden of Delights, chasing potential wives through the foliage and around an opulent fountain. Things change the day Maria (Brigitte Helm) peeks into this paradise, bringing along a field trip of working-class children to see the world she believes they deserve. Intrigued by this luminescent beauty, Freder travels down into the lower factory in search of her. He ends up trading places with one of the workers (Erwin Biswanger) so he can experience what a common life is like, and once he is believed to be just another employee, his co-workers take him to a secret labor rally--led by none other than Maria herself.

Meanwhile, the scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is working on a mechanical man that will revolutionize the labor force. He shows Fredersen his invention and promises he will make the robot resemble a real person within 24 hours. He has dubbed her Hel, and he is building her in honor of Fredersen's lost wife. There is a history between these three, and Rotwang holds a grudge over the woman's death. So, when Freder demands that the machine maker make his creation look like Maria so she can topple the worker rebellion, he doesn't realize he is giving his rival the means for revenge.

Metropolis is a movie that is many things all at once. It's a political allegory commenting on worker's rights and the dangers of industry. It's a science fiction adventure that, despite its high-tech trappings, uses traditional storytelling tropes--a chosen hero, a damsel in distress, a misguided king--to create a cautionary future. Metropolis is also a religious parable, riddled through with Christian iconography and echoes of Biblical tales. There is a whole segment retelling the story of the Tower of Babel for the machine age, and the above and below of Fredersen's city represents Heaven and Hell, with the humans caught in between. The great machine that powers the whole thing is even given a mystical personification. He is Moloch, and workers shall be sacrificed in his bloody maw!

Amazingly enough, Lang's narrative is still relevant, and his vision is still dazzling to behold. He builds his Metropolis using elaborate sets, models, and matte paintings, creating a city that is massive in size and scope. The actual design of the architecture used contemporary art deco but advanced it to incorporate more industrial elements. At the same time, Lang recreated Biblical images, such as creating a whole stage show for the whore of a Babylon to strut her stuff. We're talking about a movie that has both a pageant featuring Death and the Seven Deadly Sins as well as an android woman brought to life via diodes and Tesla coils four years before James Whale would jolt Boris Karloff into action in Frankenstein. We may be in the 21st century, but we still haven't made our world look this damn cool.

In previous cuts of Metropolis, the story jumped around at random points, and whole subplots were dropped in favor of a shorter running time. For instance, when Freder takes over the work station, the man he replaces takes Freder's clothes and goes off to spend the rich boy's money. None of those scenes were on Kino's 2003 restored DVD, they were only explained in expository title cards. Now we can at last see what Georgy gets up to, alongside other side plots and fill-in scenes that add greater nuance to the overall story. Other versions of Metropolis were like skies full of flying cars racing every which way with nothing to guide the traffic; The Complete Metropolis is like those same fantastical skies, but now the cars have road markers telling them where to go.

If you've never seen a silent film before, don't fear. The Complete Metropolis is as fresh and exciting as any talkie. This isn't some worn-out relic more interesting for its historical importance than it is the actual entertainment. I have a feeling that if they give it a chance, this film will surprise a great many people. It's like a cinematic time capsule that most other movies are still running to catch up to, an imagined future that could still turn out to be our tomorrow. It's the motion picture experience eight decades in the making! If you are lucky enough to have it come to your town, don't hesitate. Get in line right now.

THE GOLD RUSH - #615

If you’re looking for a movie to watch this New Year’s Eve, there is no better place to look than Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 masterpiece The Gold Rush.

The final act of Chaplin’s silent comedy kicks off on New Year’s Eve, with the auteur’s Little Tramp character hoping to meet up with the dancehall beauty Georgia (Georgia Hale). It’s a union that is not to be, at least initially, as Chaplin of course prefers a little melancholy in his romance. Not to mention his belief that new beginnings need to be earned, which is all the more reason for him to set this pivotal moment of his film during the holiday.

New Year’s represents many of the same values that Chaplin put into his all of his films. It is a holiday that encapsulates his view of America, and so perfectly fits here in The Gold Rush, a philosophical piece of slapstick that embraces one of the great American myths. Just this past holiday my dad drove me past a mountain stream in Northern California that used to be a major source for gold. He wistfully told me how there is believed to be an untapped reserve still buried in the mountain, just waiting to be uncovered. Such was the dream of many men heading west in the 1800s. There were riches to be found in the California hills.

And for Chaplin, riches to be found in the California valleys, as well. For what is the promise of early Hollywood but another gold rush, another chance for Americans to make a bid for success and riches? As in all of the Tramp films, the character in The Gold Rush represents the little man in search of something better, standing up to adversity--be it the weather, beast of the forest, or his fellow man, prone as they were to prejudice and bullying. Here the Tramp goes to a remote outpost on the hunt for his fortune, finds romance, and thanks to his own positive demeanor, also forms bonds that bring him both the kind of financial windfall and emotional payout he could only dream of. The fact that it all goes wrong on New Year’s Eve is just all the more incentive for him to turn things around. One opportunity missed only spurs him on to find another.

This, of course, is all subtext, but when we consider other films with the Tramp character, such as The Kid or The Immigrant, it’s not hard to extrapolate a deeper meaning from the inventive pratfalls. Of which there are many. Some of Chaplin’s finest and most enduring routines are present in The Gold Rush, including the dancing dinner rolls and the visually stunning climax where he and his partner (Mack Swain) struggle to escape a house teetering on a cliffside. My favorite bit is probably the dance floor scene with the dog where, typically, the Tramp’s attempts to cover his own weakness nearly blows up in his face. In that and all the rest, the charm of the Tramp is his good-natured tenacity. He’s the right kind of good guy and awfully easy to root for.

Like so many of us, the Tramp is often misunderstood and misjudged. Right up to the end, as it turns out, when even after he’s found his gold, he’s mistaken for a stowaway on the boat taking him back to civilization. This may be the most heartwarming message of all, reminding us that no matter where we go or what we achieve, we still are who we are, and should maybe not forget that--because being who we are is perfectly okay, it’s what got us where we are. For the Tramp, it not only reminds him that it was his friendship that carried him through while giving him another opportunity to fall on his keister, but also gives Georgia her chance to show she has a charitable heart, as well.

If you’ve never seen a Charlie Chaplin film before, this is a pretty good place to start. And if you’re a fan, it’s a good one to revisit--though, avoid the 1942 version where Chaplin added voiceover. He may consider it his “definitive” cut, but the narration adds nothing to the material; rather, it only detracts from the viewer’s emotional connection to the comedy by interpreting everything for them--which is the most important part. The Gold Rush will ring out this or any year in a way that will remind us why we all do what we do, showing us the good in our fellow man and reinforcing the optimism inherent in an American Dream we all should still want to believe in even if sometimes we can’t.

NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2009's as part of a piece on Kino's Murnau boxed set.

1922's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is a wholly original cinematic beast. The prototype for virtually all vampire movies to follow, this unauthorized borrowing of the Bram Stoker Dracula novel is a frightful classic. With Max Schreck in the title role--the legend surrounding the performance later recreated by Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the Vampire--Nosferatu achieved a lower temperature of chills than the early movie industry was used to.

The story is likely familiar to anyone who has seen any of the many Stoker adaptations: young real estate agent Hutter (Gustav v. Wangenheim) is sent to a distant land to aid the bizarre Count Orlock (Schreck) in acquiring British property. Failing to heed local folk tales about the scary Nosferatu, Hutter goes to Orlock's castle and is soon trapped in the Count's nocturnal world. Seeing a picture of Hutter's wife, the strikingly beautiful Ellen (Greta Schröder), Orlock heads back to England to take possession of the woman, leaving dead bodies in his wake.

Schreck's amazingly perverse turn as the vampire, which was so believable that many have believed him to be a real creature of the night, is a wonder to behold. Wearing all kinds of prosthetics to elongate his features, giving him jagged teeth and demonic nails, he looks utterly inhuman without any of the cracks showing in the illusion. To see him rise up out of a coffin without aid or the use of his own limbs is a scary movie moment even now. Beyond Schreck's total role immersion, the thing that is most striking about Murnau's Nosferatu is it's all-pervasive atmosphere of terror. The director has created a rarefied world where nothing is as it seems and the scent of fear inches across every frame. He also employed clever and surprisingly convincing special effects to make Count Orlock a creature who is not bound by spatial relationships or time restrictions. Playing with film speeds, double exposure, and other early effects tricks, Murnau practically splits the screen in half, showing us the realm of the undead on one side and the more grounded reality on the other.

In addition to Schreck, Alexander Granach is fantastically mad as Knock, Hutter's boss and Murnau's version of Renfield. I was also quite taken with Greta Schröder, whose Helen comes off as more than a virginal beauty. Her dark hair and eyes give way to hints of a darker interior life, that there is something in this troubled woman that makes her compatible with the bloodsucker. She is not just drawing him in because of her beauty, but because maybe they are more simpatico than anyone realizes.

THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG - #885

Originally written for DVDTalk.com as part of a review of the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection.

Considered by Hitchcock to have been his first real movie, this silent chiller is based on a novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. The book of The Lodger is an early entry in the extensive Jack the Ripper lore, and one of the very first pieces of fiction to try to offer a solution in the case. This movie version never mentions Jack, instead showing us a similarly styled killer calling himself "The Avenger." Every Tuesday night for several months, the Avenger has murdered a fair-haired woman and left behind a mysterious calling card featuring his moniker inside a triangle.

Thus, suspicions are high and nerves are on edge when an odd new tenant moves into a rooming house near where the latest killings have taken place. Jonathan Drew, played by early British film star Ivor Novello, keeps to himself and has several "queer" habits, such as demanding all the portraits of women be taken out of his room. (There seems to be some implication that he isn't just "queer" as in "weird," but the landlady also suspects he is gay.) If Drew is the Avenger, though, he's picked a rather bad place to set up shop. While the landlords' daughter, Daisy (Marie Ault), would make a perfect candidate for the next victim, her suitor (Arthur Chesney), is a police detective on the Avenger's trail. Naturally, Drew's odd behavior endears him to Marie while alienating everyone else, and the next Tuesday, the cop will make his move.

The Lodger has several telltale Hitchcock moves, from the innocent ingénue being drawn to dark forces and the resulting romance to the theme of a man being wrongfully accused. There are snooping neighbors, ostentatious settings (Marie is a clothes model), and several red herrings and deceptively tense sequences where all is not as it initially appears. The movie is an effective character piece, well constructed by the young director. He manages to draw convincing, demonstrative performances from his actors, and Hitchcock is also already experimenting with mis-en-scene and other conventions of film language. Of particular note are his creative title cards that mimic theatre marquees and announce characters in a visual equivalent to signature motifs we often hear in film scores.

THREE SILENT FILMS BY JEAN RENOIR ON FILMSTRUCK

The below reviews were originally written for the Jean Renoir's Collector's Edition released in 2007. Read the full review of that collection here.

Whirlpool of Fate (La Fille de L'Eau) (silent; 72 minutes - 1925):

This overwrought melodrama is Renoir's second film, and his first as a solo director. Working from a script by Pierre Lestringuez, a frequent collaborator in this silent period, Renoir tells the story of Virginia (Catherine Hessling, Renoir's wife from 1920 to 1930), a hard-luck case who can't catch a break. First her father dies and her uncle (Lestringuez) tries to rape her, then she hooks up with poachers and gypsies, only to be persecuted by the local bully and driven mad in the woods. Through it all, the local rich boy (Harold Levingston) keeps his eye on Virginia, and it's quite clear to Renoir's camera that he is developing a thing for the urchin. Naturally, he waits in the wings to pull her out of the whirlpool that threatens to drag her down.

There are far more complex plots than this one. In some ways, The Whirlpool of Fate comes off as if it were written for a cliffhanger serial. Every couple of scenes, Virginia's life takes another turn, and her very existence is put in peril over and over. As a mild diversion, there is a kind of goofy charm to the movie, but it shows the great director only taking tentative steps into the cinematic arena. He doesn't yet know how to draw great performances out of his actors, and pacing is a definite issue for the young filmmaker. There are several scenes that go on too long, which we particularly notice when we see it takes an inordinate amount of time for people just out of frame to react. Even so, early hints of what was to come are here. Renoir's often slapstick sense of humor pops up from time to time, and he's already showing a flair for it. There are also some fairly ambitious dream sequences that prefigure the surrealist movement's experiments in cinema years later (including some sideways imagery that reminded me of Cocteau's Blood of a Poet), as well as an incredibly ambitious use of quick cutting in the scene where Virginia is attacked by her uncle. Jumping swiftly from the brutal fight to a barking dog and then to a ringing alarm clock not only amps up the frenzied feeling, but it even evokes sense memories of sound.

Nana (silent; 130 min. - 1926):

Once again working with Lestringuez, Renoir adapts the Emile Zola novel, casting his Whirlpool starlet, Catherine Hessling, in the title role--and oh, what a difference a year makes! Renoir took to this grand costume epic much easier than he did any of the pre-sound shorts in this collection. Nana is a terrible stage actress whose sexual allure draws in several society men. Wrapping them around her finger, she convinces one to bribe her into a starring role in the theatre and another to ruin his good name betting against his own racehorse in favor of one named after the starlet. Eventually, though, the acting thing is going to meet its inevitable doom, and Nana ends up becoming a courtesan, seeing gentlemen callers in her opulent mansion. With so many men obsessed with her and competing for her affections, it's only going to lead to trouble, and eventually, Nana's wicked ways catch up with her.

Hessling is way over the top in her performance, even by silent-era standards. Yet, there is such a consistency to her demonstrative acting that she actually pulls it off. Nana is a larger-than-life character, and so Hessling's exaggerated gestures and wide-eyed expressions seem like the right notes to hit (even if Hessling is ironically being a bad actress in her portrayal of a bad actress). In comparison to the overly staid performances from the actors filling the roles of the upper classes, these choices make sense. Nana's sexual appeal is her wildness. It's what makes her different than the uptight bourgeoisie.

For Renoir's part, the future director of The Rules of the Game is already interested in the hypocrisy and hidden secrets of the rich. He uses massive set pieces to show the ridiculous opulence enjoyed by the well-to-do in French society. They have more space than they can ever possibly fill, and their tiny lives look even smaller within it. He also takes a certain impish glee in exposing their bedroom activities, paying particular attention to a Count (Werner Kraus) who goes in for a little domination. Decked out in his full military regalia, he gets down on all fours and barks like a dog, all for Nana's pleasure. For all the public shame these characters will experience in the final act, it compares little to their private shame.

The Little Match Girl (La Petite Marchande D'Allumettes) (silent; 33 min. - 1928):

This slight adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story stars Hessling as the titular heroine and is really only interesting for the early special effects efforts. Renoir uses models, rear projection, double-exposure, and fake backdrops to portray the fantasy journey of the Little Match Girl during her night out in the cold. Though some of the effects may look quaint to our modern eye, it's still impressive when you put it in its historical context and has a cool, expressionistic quality. The movie overall is a bit of a snooze, however, with the performances and the editing being a bit too laconic.

GOOD MORNING - #84

Please note: the images here are taken from the 2000 standard definition DVD and not the newly released 2017 Blu-ray under review.

Yasujiro Ozu’s light 1959 comedy GoodMorning was one of my first Criterion blind buys. Spotted in a now-closed used record store in Portland, I snatched it up on sight, knowing if I didn’t, it would be gone before I could ever go back to grab it. Such was the rarity of seeing Criterion discs in second-hand bins back in the day--all too unusual, you had to act.

Luckily I had rolled the dice on a pretty safe bet. Good Morning is brimming with joy, even as it maintains Ozu’s usual unassuming attitude. Set in a Tokyo suburb, this genial film tells the stories of several neighboring families. Linked mostly by their young sons, these individual units are subject to gossip, misunderstanding, and judgment--negative foibles hidden just below a very positive surface. You know, the way clans and communities do. When you boil it down, Good Morning is about family, just like most of Ozu’s oeuvre. In this case, not just family by blood, but the community you build.

Oh, and it has fart jokes. To be more exact, one running fart joke that carries through the whole movie. And I don’t care what you think, I love fart jokes. And poop jokes. Especially when a fart joke becomes a poop joke. Which it does here, to hilarious effect.

Though the four boys connect all the houses--including the misunderstood hipster couple with the television and the single English tutor who provide the kids refuge--the central duo of older brother Minoru (Koji Shidara) and younger brother Isamu (Masahiko Shimazu, Late Autumn [review]) end up driving most of the movie. They get the most screen time with their private protest against their supposedly stingy mother (Kuniko Miyake, star of many Ozu films, including Early Summer and Tokyo Story [review]) and her refusal to buy them a TV of their own. Mother Hiyashi is more frugal than stingy, it’s up to her to keep the house on budget, but this is also not the only time in Good Morning that she is accused of financial malfeasance. Another driving storyline is the issue of the missing dues from the local women’s organization. The ladies have varying theories of who made off with the cash, and even though it gets an amicable resolution, the way the situation is concluded splinters off into its own conspiracy theories and gossipy tributaries. There’s not much to do throughout the day, it seems, but get in each other’s business. It’s all innocent and meaningless until it isn’t. Such little things, they make a big difference.

In addition to these kinds of family dynamics, Ozu regularly explored the differences between generations in his movies, and Good Morning is no exception. Here, the aforementioned television is the most prominent example of how times are changing, and the director is certainly seizing upon the cultural shifts occurring at the end of the decade. The kids learning English, the progressive neighbors with posters for French films on their walls (and not just any French film, but Louis Malle’s The Lovers [review]), the nervous patriarchs set adrift in a changing economic landscape--these are all signs of the time. Prescient ones, too. Dad is worried about maintaining employment long enough to have a solid retirement, kids are worried about watching sumo wrestling in the living room. A more judgmental director (like, say, Douglas Sirk in All That HeavenAllows) would be concerned for how this younger generation was going to rot its brain--indeed, one of the older men in Good Morning expresses such a fear--but Ozu seems to take no stance. He is amused by the rebellious youngsters staging their own revolution, but also empathetic to the parents who need to keep things together. If Ozu is siding with anyone, it’s probably the middle generation, like the tutor or the boys’ aunt, both of whom bridge the divide. Is it any surprise, then, that they end up having a little romance?

What may be more interesting here, though, is how Ozu is adopting modern techniques to tell this modern story, particularly since Good Morning is an update of his 1932 silent film I Was Born, But...--which was previously available in the Eclipse set Silent Ozu: Three Family Comedies [review], but is also included in full as an extra on this Good Morning upgrade. Shot in vibrant Technicolor by Yushun Atsuta, Good Morning has a look not dissimilar to television’s nascent genre, the sitcom, a comparison further backed by the episodic nature of Good Morning’s narrative and the jazzy lounge score that keeps the action moving. (Toshiro Mayuzumi was a prolific composer for Japanese movies, working also with Naruse, Imamura, and Kurahara.) Not to mention how all the complicated imbroglios have really simple explanations, the discoveries of which only lead to more complications. It’s almost a shame there wasn’t a spin-off so we could have watched all the kids grow up on a weekly basis.

Fans of Good Morning should be pleased with this new 4K restoration. The colors are gorgeous, and the image quality pristine. Given the gap between this release and the original DVD, Criterion had a lot of new technology to put to use in making Good Morning look good, and the results are stupendous. In addition to  I Was Born, But..., fans of silent film will also appreciate the inclusion of the short A Straightforward Boy, a 1929 effort from Yasujiro Ozu, presented here incomplete, in its only existing form. One of the first efforts of the director to create comedy using children, it’s an amusing trifle about kidnappers being stymied by a child who never quite realizes he’s being kidnapped, and proving too much to handle in the process.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

SILENT OZU - THREE CRIME DRAMAS: DRAGNET GIRL - ECLIPSE SERIES 42

The most straightforward, and yet most complex, entry in the Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas set from Criterion’s Eclipse imprint is 1933’s Dragnet Girl, a dual drama about families and relationships and the effect the criminal lifestyle has on the ties that bind.

Joji Oka (No Blood Relation [review]) heads the cast as the charismatic gangster Joji. Formerly a boxer, Joji stepped out of the ring when he fell in love with Tokiko (Mizoguchi and Kinoshita mainstay Kinuya Tanaka, who also appeared in Ozu’s Equinox Flower [review]). Tokiko is a tough cookie in her own right, but she prefers a more domestic crime partnership that doesn’t involve her man getting pummeled on a regular basis. Though Joji has many would-be suitors, Tokiko chasea them all off, thus making it all the more surprising when a nice, quiet girl sneaks in and legit steals Joji’s heart.

Misako (Sumiko Mizukubo, Apart from You [review]) summons the thug to a corner rendezvous to ask him to encourage her little brother, Lefty (Hideo Mitsui), to return to school and give up trying to be a boxer and a crook. He looks up to Joji and would listen. Joji is taken with Misako’s purity and selflessness, and he starts spending his days in the music store where she works, listening to classical records. It’s a far more refined musical excursion than the rowdy nightclubs he usually attends with his gang. To many, Joji is becoming soft. Never mind he’s the guy we saw beat up three bruisers all on his own just a few days before. All it takes is one dame wanting you to settle down...

As the drama ramps up, Dragnet Girl crosses similar territory as Walk Cheerfully [review]. Misako’s positive presence inspires Joji to consider getting clean, and though she initially goes to the record shop with a gun to confront Misako, Tokiko is quickly smitten with her, as well. She thinks about ditching the bad-girl lifestyle modeling herself after her rival. The only one who can’t seem to get Misako’s message of peace is the one she wants to go straight, her little brother, who resists even after his hero threatens him.

Moreso than Walk Cheerfully Ozu toys with the notion of fate in Dragnet Girl. In the psychology of the script, which was written by Tadao Ikeda, the scribe behind Walk Cheerfully and The Only Son [review], working from a story by Ozu himself (hiding behind the pseudonym James Maki), we move closer to the inescapable doom of film noir. Neither Joji nor Tokiko find it easy to make a clean break, and in part because they don’t think they deserve it. Tokiko is offered an ideal marriage by her boss, but can’t see herself stepping into a housewife’s shoes; likewise, Joji must reject Misako in order to “get over her.” When it comes down to it, the only thing that this Japanese Bonnie and Clyde can count on is each other. Whatever their path to get to true love, at least they found it together, and they can get out of it together, too. Embracing a crime trope, Ozu positions them to pull one last heist with the intention of snatching some seed money and getting out of town. It’s a pretty ballsy robbery, with Tokiko leading the charge, and an even more hairy escape when the cops come knocking. Yet, Ozu avoids the expected final shootout, seeking a different solution for his lovers. Punishment offers redemption.

Dragnet Girl actually makes a pretty convincing case for sucking it up and taking your lumps. It doesn’t hurt that the impassioned argument for toughing it out is made by Tokiko. Kinuyo Tanaka has a solid screen presence, and her confident delivery, and the complex emotional swings that get her there, makes for the most convincing acting in the movie. As perfect and angelic as Sumiko Mizukubo is as Kazuko, Tanaka brings her character down to earth, so that she is both sympathetic and relatable. She’s really the only choice for the confused Joji, who frankly comes off as kind of weak-willed and not nearly as tough as he’s intended to be.

But then, Ozu’s women generally have been the ones who have had to carry the heaviest burdens, and who do so with a quiet strength unique to them. In that, Dragnet Girl is part of a long tradition of the filmmaker, even as he would soon leave its genre trappings behind.

Other selections from the Eclipse boxed set Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas are reviewed here: That Night's Wife.