1920s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists project Vol. 3)

[Gregory]

I feel a little lost without swapsies...

I've watched most everything I was planning to at this point, but if anyone has any hidden gems that are definitely going to make your list that you fear some people might not have bothered to watch, please list them here (maybe limited to 3-5) and I at least will try to watch as many of them as I can that I've missed.

Anyone watched My Grandmother for this list? It struck me as a surprisingly effective combination of Soviet montage, almost every imaginable technique widely used in the experimental films of the time, and American slapstick (the bespectacled protagonist has been compared to Lloyd). The only other comedies of this era I can think of that make such effective use of cinematic space are Keaton's, and the only other films to deploy so many entertaining tricks in the service of a story are Charley Bowers's. Not to oversell it or anything . . .
I'm pretty divided about the DVD presentation. I thoroughly enjoyed Beth Custer's score, but I really disliked not having the option of subtitles rather than narration of the intertitles. The narrator doesn't just narrate them, he acts out the parts, including all kinds of gutteral noises and falsetto whining and whimpering for some of the women in the film. I just checked to see if the film had ever been discussed on the forum before, and found some brief discussion of it (and the narration) here.

[reno dakota]

I feel a little lost without swapsies...

I've watched most everything I was planning to at this point, but if anyone has any hidden gems that are definitely going to make your list that you fear some people might not have bothered to watch, please list them here (maybe limited to 3-5) and I at least will try to watch as many of them as I can that I've missed.

Have you seen Joe May's Heimkehr? It's certainly a gem and I don't believe it's been discussed outside of lubitsch's one mention of it in his initial post.

[swo17]

I haven't seen either of the last two films mentioned. Keep 'em coming.

[knives]

I haven't seen either of the last two films mentioned. Keep 'em coming.

You've probably caught it by now, but I can not emphasize enough how great von Stroheim's version of The Merry Widow is. It manages to fit all of his pet themes together in a film that is not cut down for once. The Japanese Orochi is fantastic too, basically setting up every samurai action cliche imaginable. It still comes across as a new experience, possibly only because of how these now familiar tropes are applied to a silent setting.

[Tommaso]

All right, definitely on my list and not yet discussed here (I think):

Brudeferden i Hardanger (Breistein)
Hindle wakes (Elvey)
Vanina (Gerlach)

[YnEoS]

Some of these have been talked about a bit in this topic already, but I still fear some people may have passed them by so I'd further recommend.

Backstairs
My Best Girl
Tell It to the Marines

If anyone else has a few recommendations I will certainly do my best to see them before the deadline.

[Ann Harding]

Sandra Milanowa.

Please, Zazou it's Sandra Milowanoff. I wished more of her pictures were available. Having seen about 8 of her films, she was indeed a treasure of the French 20s.

Also sorry Tommasso and Ann Harding but I got almost as insensed by Duvivier's Tourbillon.

I went through a Duvivier season at the CF earlier this year and frankly, many of his silents proved really turgid. Poil de Carotte and Au Bonheur des Dames are certainly the best. I found Tourbillon de Paris enjoyable thanks to Lil Dagover's performance. But many others suffered from bad casting and hoary scripts. BTW, European Film Treasures has put online another Duvivier: Maman Colibri (1929). It's a reduced version (only 1h15 instead of 1h45+). I saw the full film and it was unyieldy and much too long after a good start.

[zedz]

I'm afraid I haven't been much committed to this leg of the lists, but stuff that will be new to my list since last time, off the top of my head, includes the aforementioned and astounding Maldone and Epstein's Coeur fidele and Finis Terrae. I can't remember whether I'd seen Days of Youth last time around, but it will be ranking very high this time. Further down but secure: Faces of Children and The Chess Players.

High in my top ten and undermentioned is Fischinger's Walking from Munich to Berlin, a scintillating piece of brilliance that has only grown in my estimation since I read about the circumstances surrounding it in his biography. Basically, Fischinger was on the run: this wasn't a neat idea for a film, or an idiosyncratic record of a pleasant trip, this is him documenting the abandonment of his old life.

Also beloved and indescribable is the Charley Bowers whatsit There It Is. The jury is still out on whether or not Gus Visser and his singing duck will take that coveted number 50 slot.

[swo17]

If anyone else has a few recommendations I will certainly do my best to see them before the deadline.

I suppose since I started this, I should mention my own sort of swapsies, all films that will be ranking highly that don't seem to have been mentioned much yet in this thread:

Zvenigora - the most surreal propaganda film I've seen, this will be kicking nearly every other Russian film off my list as it renders them all irrelevant
Girl Shy - Harold Lloyd's most touching film, just puts a lump in my throat every time
H2O - just simply lovely abstract art of the interplay between light and shadow on a fluid canvas

Also, thank you zedz for mentioning There It Is, as I was trying to keep my list down to three.

[Knappen]

I'm a little puzzled by Ann's lack of enthusiasm for the Duvivier retrospective in Paris last year. Sure, there were duds, but I found La Vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin and La Divine Croisière to be strikingly good. Once Thérèse makes it to an international DVD release, the critics will be competing in pointing out pre-Bressonian features in the austere style etc.

EDIT: Oh, btw - that link to Europa Film Treasures is priceless. People should spread the word all over the net.

[Michael Kerpan]

In addition to Orochi, a couple of other 1920s films from Digital Meme's Talking Silents series are worthy of note -- Sozenji baba (the putative hero's daughterof-yakuza-boss girl friend totally steals the show) and Dokuro (Skull) -- about a doomed Christian warlord (and the girl heleaves behind).

[lubitsch]

Some of us mentioned some favorites in the first pages. I guess those which have no DVD release are the ones I'm most worried about and some from exotic countries, don't know how many plunged at the Belgian Avantgarde set or Machaty's Erotikon. But I have pointed my darlings out on the second page, I'd be only repeating myself, I just hope that films like Der lebende Leichnam, Johan, Jenseits der Straße or Nina Petrowna won't loose too heavily, the silent era should be the one where the language barrier plays a lesser role with all these subs on the internet.

Back to my recent viewing experiences. My first silents from Spain and South America proved to be veritable turkeys. Brasa dormida is an atrociously slow, uninteresting melodrama, photographed in the most mediocre way, padded with superfluous shots and blessed with a Valentino wannabe as lead actor who made me cringe. Sexto sentido was almost worse, a non-story was padded with some pretentious and pointless self-reflexive material, again the cinematography was crappy and the direction ... how many reaction shots of the father were in this film? 500?
I filled my Russian gaps though I don't believe that beyond Bed and Sofa and House on Trubnaya any films will make it, if you've seen one film you've seen pretty much all. The Ghost that never returns also ended up in this trap, the prison setting is not bad, but there are too few pleasures along the ride to the strangely unspectacular end. The Diplomatic Pouch was similarily to the Death Ray a pulpy affair with the story being an excuse for Dovzhenko to throw every trick in his cinematic grab bag at the viewer but again no successful connection to the story via interesting figures was made. A few comedies rolled pleasently along, A Kiss from Mary Pickford and Doll with Millions both are worth a look, The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom starts out equally well but with the double running time it loses steam fast and ends up being rather excruciatingly slow and dull. The Forty-First has a very interesting story which undermines the usual good-bad patterns of Soviet Cinema with a female Red sniper and a white officer falling in love and being stranded on an island, but the film (which didn't seem complete) skipped too many points and tried to make the officer rather unsympathetic working against the intriguing set up though the ending was quite interesting as was the whole film, but there was something missing. A stunner was however Ermler's Oblomok imperii which was helped by the eerie soundtrack but genuinely managed to get across the feeling of disorientation a soldier from the civil war who loses and regains his memory experiences. Sure, the film shows how the subservient soldier still considering himself a servant of the Czarist state learns that he is now a free man, but Ermler manages as few Soviet films do to pull us near to the character and to visualize his fears and loss of direction using all the visual tricks a late silent drector can summon. Like Der steinerne Reiter this might scractch my list though it's pretty crowded at the moment.
I also skipped around at some other countries. The Open Road was a pleasent travelogue pretty much as expected obviously it was tailored in the 20s as a sentiomental reverie to Merry Old England, now that impression is multiplied. Dreyer's Glomdalsbruden also rolled merrily along, searching a bit for a finale after essentially concluding its plot, but it's good and important to see this gentle and warm direction for a full picture of Dreyer's cinema. Feu Mathias Pascal left me puzzled with a plot build on outlandish accidents (your child and your mother dying at the same night and you missing both events is a bit much) and moving three hours nowhere in particular. Fig Leaves was essentially forgettable fluff and Love as expected the lesser Garbo version of Tolstoy's novel. Unfortunately my favorite Gustav Machaty also left me a bit disappointed with Kreutzer Sonata which was surprisingly dryly photographed and generally very impassionate which had some quite interesting effect. Neither the wife emerged very sympatetically as you could expect from Machaty but the husband didn't either being stiff, boring and violent despite him being the narrator of the tale. So the result was quite curious though I'd hesitate to regad this as intended by the director.

[Tommaso]

I just hope that films like Der lebende Leichnam, Johan, Jenseits der Straße or Nina Petrowna won't loose too heavily, the silent era should be the one where the language barrier plays a lesser role with all these subs on the internet.

My feeling exactly. I jotted down a provisional list today and was almost ashamed at the number of unknown, but great films I had to leave out simply because they are just a tiny little bit below the well established classics which simply HAVE to be on the list if the listmaking attempts to be 'objective'. So I'd almost like to have an alternative list to the main one, and for that list any voting for the likes of Lang, Murnau, Pabst, Keaton, Eisenstein and so on should be strictly forbidden. Would really give me a chance to feature some darlings that simply won't make it because, well, they are not quite as great as "Mabuse" or "Nosferatu", but nevertheless fabulous films. But I took your advice and put Dreyer only on #4, giving #3 to "Nina Petrowna". And there it will stay.

As to Abram Room: Bed and Sofa will indeed make my list I guess, but I share your thoughts about The Ghost that never returns, which I just watched today. Very strong visuals in places, especially when the main character leaves the prison and goes through this strange walled lane; almost surreal. But then it indeed peters out somehow, and the idea that this is supposedly set in some South American country is pretty ridiculous, and it isn't helped by Room trying to create credibility in that bar scene by having two billard playing characters wear enormously fake-looking cowboy hats. Really a flawed film with some very interesting moments.

Zvenigora - the most surreal propaganda film I've seen, this will be kicking nearly every other Russian film off my list as it renders them all irrelevant

Currently my #12. "Potemkin" is only #13.

[myrnaloyisdope]

My Best Girl is one of the finest films of the late silent period. I think it owes a lot to a "fresh off of Sunrise" Charles Rosher's cinematography and some of the set design which is very evocative of Sunrise. The outdoor night scenes, especially capture that sense of artificial realism that Sunrise manages so well. I think the romance between Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers is one of the more sweeter love stories of the era and the movie happens to be very funny as well.

I should throw a word in for Raymond Griffith and in particular his Civil War comedy Hands Up!, which is quite hilarious. Griffith's reputation is pretty much non-existant given Paramount's seeming desire to ignore the silent film era and the relative unavailability of his work. Hands Up! is best of his films that I've seen with a lot of great gags. It's hard not to compare it to The General, given the similar settings and time frames when they came out, and although I think The General is probably the better film, I find Hands Up! to be funnier. Griffith's style is sort of a take on Max Linder, with his silk hat and aloof debauchery. The film also one of the greatest payoffs I've ever seen.

I'm not sure if Tol'Able David has been mentioned, but it's a real entertaining film in the pastoral Griffith mode, with a gripping and brutal fight between an impossibly young Richard Barthelmess and an impossibly malevolent Ernest Torrance. Plus it's easily available.

[lubitsch]

I just hope that films like Der lebende Leichnam, Johan, Jenseits der Straße or Nina Petrowna won't loose too heavily, the silent era should be the one where the language barrier plays a lesser role with all these subs on the internet.

My feeling exactly. I jotted down a provisional list today and was almost ashamed at the number of unknown, but great films I had to leave out simply because they are just a tiny little bit below the well established classics which simply HAVE to be on the list if the listmaking attempts to be 'objective'.

Uh-oh. Nothing HAS TO BE on your list and the list should be objective insofar as you rate the films according to their value as you perceive it but not according to film history textbook reputation. Gentlemen (are there any ladies?) let me repeat:
Vote for the films you like and don't give a sh** about established classics if you don't like them!
The idea behind these lists is to have more than a dozen very knowledgeable individuals living in 2010 who say what they perceive to be the finest films for a modern viewer of this long ago era. An "objective" list I can cull together from the Sight & Sound Poll, Silentera TOP 100 and so on, no need for us to waste our time then. This doesn't mean that you have to be as radical as me and nuke Metropolis, Sunrise, The General, Jeanne d'Arc, Potemkin and Napoleon, but you shouldn't hand out a bonus for films you find not quite to your liking.

[Ann Harding]

I'm a little puzzled by Ann's lack of enthusiasm for the Duvivier retrospective in Paris last year. Sure, there were duds, but I found La Vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin and La Divine Croisière to be strikingly good.

All right, I missed the screening of La Vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin. But I wasn't impressed by La Divine Croisière. It started off rather well until the 'miracle' which turned the film into religious propaganda. A real shame because the beginning was full of promises with the conflict between seamen and shipowners. The character development got lost in the process.

[Ann Harding]

My Best Girl is one of the finest films of the late silent period. I think it owes a lot to a "fresh off of Sunrise" Charles Rosher's cinematography.

FYI Charles Rosher had been Mary Pickford's cinematographer for years. They made a staggering 19 pictures together from 1917 to 1927.

[Tommaso]

My feeling exactly. I jotted down a provisional list today and was almost ashamed at the number of unknown, but great films I had to leave out simply because they are just a tiny little bit below the well established classics which simply HAVE to be on the list if the listmaking attempts to be 'objective'.

Uh-oh. Nothing HAS TO BE on your list and the list should be objective insofar as you rate the films according to their value as you perceive it but not according to film history textbook reputation. Gentlemen (are there any ladies?) let me repeat:
Vote for the films you like and don't give a sh** about established classics if you don't like them!

Sorry for the misunderstanding. What I meant by 'objective' is being true to my own long-established likings, which means I must include films like "Nosferatu" and "Mabuse" simply because they are great in my own perception. The problem is only that this leaves not enough room for all the lesser known films I also love and wish everyone else to see, too. So, don't worry: I'm not going to write a list according to 'received wisdom', but at least for my Top 10 I have to admit that it will be pretty much according to the 'canon'. Which only indicates that the 'canon' isn't always wrong.

[Zazou dans le Metro]

Sandra Milanowa.

Please, Zazou it's Sandra Milowanoff.

Sorry, Excess New Year's vodka to blame for lack of clear-headed vision. Thanks too eternally for the EFT link.

[myrnaloyisdope]

My Best Girl is one of the finest films of the late silent period. I think it owes a lot to a "fresh off of Sunrise" Charles Rosher's cinematography.

FYI Charles Rosher had been Mary Pickford's cinematographer for years. They made a staggering 19 pictures together from 1917 to 1927.

I am aware of Rosher and Pickford's numerous collaborations. I just feel like the look of My Best Girl owes a lot to Sunrise (and Rosher's collaboration with Murnau).

[swo17]

Anyone watched My Grandmother for this list?

I found this very enjoyable (even the DVD presentation). I had previously assumed that There It Is and Zvenigora were each utterly one of a kind, but My Grandmother is basically exactly what would happen if those two films had a baby, so there goes that theory. It may very well end up making my list (the quota police would be oh so pleased to check off the Georgia box), though I need to let it marinate a few days first, and the bottom half of my 50 is already so crammed it's set to burst any day now. And no, none of those metaphors have anything to do with one another.

[knives]

Is romance of the western Chamber any good and which of these two DVDs is better? 1 2

[Tommaso]

Although my viewing has been severely hampered by the vicissitudes of life I still find my top three - Sunrise/ Menilmontant/ Jeanne d'Arc unassailable.
I just have not come across anything likely to scale similar heights. Perhaps the highest, but only to the nursery slopes, has been Charles Vanel's 'Dans la Nuit' - starring the helmer himself alongside his leading lady of choice from the silent era, Sandra Milanowa. Shades of Gremillon with the use of lyrical documentary style footage and impassioned close ups and spurred on by the (in the viewed Arte version) soundtrack by Louis Sclavis -another personal fave. Spoiled only somewhat by a clunky deus ex machina wrapping up it would have made a great bonus supplement on something like MoC's Grand Jeu if it's not going to get a release in its own right.

First of all thanks for making me aware of Dans la nuit. Vanel is well known as an actor, of course, but I didn't know that he directed this single film, and I would have completely overlooked it if it you hadn't written about it. This is a strong directorial debut, and I agree with everything you say, and only want to add that I strangely found the first half hour or so, in which nothing really happens, actually more interesting than the main part. Wonderful sequences of the happy pair enjoying their wedding day, indeed perhaps reminsicent of Grémillon, but I had to think of Renoir even more. The main story was well-made, and one shot of Vanel with the 'bag' on his head seemed to come straight out of "The Elephant Man" (and the rest of course must have been an inspiration for Franju's "Yeux sans visage"), but I simply can't forgive that cop-out ending, which really marred the whole film for me when watching it, and somehow still does so in retrospect. But surely, very well worth seeing.

Talking about unknown films that seem to have been inspirations for later films, here are two more. First, The Magician (Rex Ingram, 1926). Now finally available from WB Archive (argh!), this is the only Ingram film I've yet seen. An adaptation of a Somerset Maugham novella, I basically got it because of Paul Wegener in the main role, playing the self-styled magician Oliver Haddo who is based on Aleister Crowley apparently. Well, the story of course doesn't do any justice to the man, but seems to reflect nicely the general perception of Crowley then and probably now. An entertaining film in any case, very well made. But the real attraction are the final sequences set in Haddo's laboratory in some mock-Gothic castle: these are very clearly the inspiration for Whale's "Frankenstein" films, the interiors look extremely similar (look at that staircase, or that table on which we find a beautiful damsel prepared for some frightening 'experiments'), and the same goes for the mood of these passages. Didn't make me lose my respect for Whale, but somehow the "Frankenstein" films look somewhat less original after that...

And second, my favourite discovery of the last weeks for sure: Ein Walzertraum (Ludwig Berger, 1925). I championed the early German/Austrian film operetta genre often enough here and especially elsewhere (and just wait for the 30s list in this respect ), so I was very happy to finally being able to see the film that most likely started it all. The plot, based on the operetta by Oscar Straus, needs no explanation as the film was re-made by noone else than Ernst Lubitsch as a sound film: "The Smiling Lieutenant". But I was surprised how perfect the Berger film already is: far from being sentimental in its 'revival' of the 'old Vienna', we get great performances by Mady Christians and the young Willy Fritsch (before his 'Lilian Harvey time'!), almost as dashing as in "Ungarische Rhapsodie", a perfect script with very witty intertitles, great camerawork and atmosphere, and all coated with the sheen that you can espect from an Erich Pommer - UFA production. Too bad that the version floating around doesn't have any score, but even a randomly picked cd with some of the more 'allegro' works by Satie worked very well for me as an accompaniment.
Okay, this is not as good as Stroheim, it's simply not 'biting' enough, but if you like "The Merry Widow" or indeed the Lubitsch musicals, this film should please you very much, too. And it is a good example for my opinion that the praise for the Lubitsch musicals (which is entirely deserved, I LOVE them) should not obscure the fact that Lubitsch was simply only adapting a genre that had been already brought to perfection in the Weimar cinema at the same time or earlier. And in this respect, what would I give if I could fill in some of my historical gaps by being able to watch a film like, say, "Die keusche Susanne"...

[YnEoS]

I was catching up on some Japanese silents today and was really blown away by Hiroshi Shimizu's Undying Pearl. The cinematography really stood way above anything else I've seen from 1920s Japanese films, incredibly mobile camera and some really dazzling compositions throughout. Although not a lot happens in this film after the beginning in terms of physical actions that move the plot forward, there's a lot of really great drama boiling beneath the surface with each situation well designed for maximum emotional discomfort while the characters struggle to communicate their true feelings as they tip toe around social conventions. I really loved it and will definitely find a spot for it on my top 50.

[Michael Kerpan]

I was catching up on some Japanese silents today and was really blown away by Hiroshi Shimizu's Undying Pearl. The cinematography really stood way above anything else I've seen from 1920s Japanese films, incredibly mobile camera and some really dazzling compositions throughout. Although not a lot happens in this film after the beginning in terms of physical actions that move the plot forward, there's a lot of really great drama boiling beneath the surface with each situation well designed for maximum emotional discomfort while the characters struggle to communicate their true feelings as they tip toe around social conventions. I really loved it and will definitely find a spot for it on my top 50.

"Undying Pearl" is (BTW) yet another of those dumb bad translations of Japanese film titles. Sort of archaic and poetic language but it menas something more like "indestructible gem".

I once had a copy of this Shimizu film, but seem to have mislaid it. But I still have some screen shots.