Tommaso wrote:But the pure fact that this film still is so gripping almost 100 years later secures it a place in the upper half of my list, despite its highly problematic nature.
I find the film simply so vile that no amount of technique can compensate, but I experienced a very interesting conformation of just this point a few years back when I saw DJ Spooky perform his 'revisionist' undercutting of the film
Rebirth of a Nation. Spooky went head to head with Griffith with every conceivable dice loaded in his favour, cutting up the film, adding superimpositions and additional material, but the power of Griffith's filmmaking won out. Even with all that distance and conceptual interference, you couldn't help getting caught up in the action of the original film and siding with the wrong side.
Onto more pleasant stuff:
Edison
Well, I had a very pleasurable evening last night making my way through the suggested films, plus a few others that caught my eye along the way. Really, this is an ideal way of approaching such a massive collection for the first time, so thanks to everybody who contributed. This is what I saw:
Boxing Cats - !!! Certainly one of the most striking and bizarre of the very early films, though I think the Dickson Experimental Sound Film still trumps it for oddity. I think this might be a very dangerous film, however, as my cat watched it and less than an hour later was involved in a very brief cat fight (even shorter and more perfunctory than the one in the film) with a neighbour’s cat who had the temerity to slink though the cat door.
The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots – This was indeed eerily effective, partly because the grunginess of the image helped camouflage the cut, thereby making the morbid illusion all the more persuasive, and giving the movie the underground patina of a snuff film.
A Storm at Sea – I’m always a sucker for the easy awe of ‘big sea’ films. There are some simply amazing ‘around the Horn’ newsreels from the twenties and thirties. This one only really realises what great cinematic material it’s playing with in the last ten or fifteen seconds, when it cuts from the original view – of the deck and a couple of sailors with the looming sea behind them – to an unadulterated, powerfully abstract shot of just the sea, rising and falling, filling the frame.
Pan-American Exposition at Night – Another film of two halves, with the second half – the grounds, neon-outlined, at night, the money shot. Nice, but no
Coney Island.
Electrocuting an Elephant – Nothing gets the piquant taste of
Mary, Queen of Scots out of your mouth like a genuine snuff film. I already know this film intimately through its co-option and elaboration by noted Elephant Rights activist Alexander Kluge, but unadorned it’s still strange, sad and ugly.
Life of an American Fireman – A bit late weighing in on this one, I’m afraid, but I’m for it. For such a formative film, it retains an air of freshness through some fascinating suggestions of what might have been: parallel, analytical montage, for example. The film’s power for me resides in the unexpected shots (and choices within shots) that co-exist alongside those shots that would become generic. What would have happened if the possible futures suggested by those shots had eventuated, rather than the one in which Griffithian dramatic montage became the norm?
The opening shot, for example, an ‘unnecessary’ prologue that nevertheless inflects what comes after, and which reinforces the film’s titular suggestion that this is the story of a particular person rather than the generalised account of a rescue. The challenge of creating films with generalised or collective protagonists is one which has engaged various major artists of the medium over the years (Eisenstein and Jancso, for two), and this angle on the film suggests another interesting challenge: how to tell the story of a protagonist who is seen almost exclusively in the context of group actions – a real ‘face in the crowd’. Porter’s solution is very tentative, and sort of fumbling, but nevertheless intriguing.
The insert of the hand calmly, carefully pulling the fire alarm. Nothing panicky about it. Doesn’t this seem somewhat sinister? What narrative significance can we read into a single incongruous shot? Quite a lot, of course, and there are entire films predicated on this effect. It’s probably entirely inadvertent, but that doesn’t negate its presence in the film.
And then there’s the very odd, but perfectly valid – and completely intentional – effect of the repeated rescue at the end, which suggests an entire world of different approaches to montage, most of which would henceforth be relegated to the avant-garde. And I’ll also praise the very handsome and complex panning shot in the centre of the film – the second view of the onrushing fire brigade that pans to a completely different composition of the burning house, thereby tying the first and second halves of the film together in a seamless way. Later on, of course, this transition would be effected by a simple cut, but look at the elegance and beauty of what we lose.
What Happened in the Tunnel – I’d seen this before, not sure where. It’s very slight, but I like the idea of a snippet of film that was almost designed to be used subversively – to insert into or follow one of the many ‘train goes through a tunnel’ films that were in vogue at the time.
The Strenuous Life, or, Anti-Race Suicide – I had to see this on the strength of that bizarre title alone, which I still don’t quite get, or don’t want to. It’s a relatively lame comedy, but it’s interesting at least in that the interior used is the very same set found in
The Ex-Convict.
The Ex-Convict – An ambitious, and largely effective narrative, but, as with a lot of very early melodramas tackling stories which are more than just a single simple idea, the technique and technology are struggling to meet the demands of that narrative. The obvious example in this film is how hard it is to deliver character information in such long shots – differentiating character and conveying emotion is that much harder, and the filmmakers have to simplify and telegraph a lot of stuff. Also, the dramatic tension of the film is undercut by the spoiler intertitles, which explain the scenes to come rather than being integrated into the narrative flow.
The Kleptomaniac – Has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as
The Ex-Convict, though both are notable for their progressive stance on issues of social justice.
The ‘Teddy’ Bears – This film illustrates how much more fluent early storytelling could be when riffing on a very familiar story, and this allows the audience to enjoy the details and diversions along the way. I adore the lovely, gratuitous animated interlude, but the framing story doesn’t do a lot for me. The Furry contingent may beg to differ, of course.
A Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus – The storytelling is getting even more fluid and convincing by this point, and this film is notable for its smooth integration of special effects. It also makes you wonder why more Christmas movies haven’t included scenes of children abducting Santa at gunpoint.
The House of Cards – The action of this film is bizarre and bewildering. As far as I can see, Tom is an irresponsible idiot and deserves all he gets, but why the wacky ‘duel’? And why the title? The best part of the film is a gorgeous, unnecessary tracking shot in the middle, which draws our attention to a character who does not figure in the drama at all. Hooray for random shit! This shot is a clear precursor to everybody’s favourite. . .
The Passerby – Definitely some kind of masterpiece. The money shots and those tracking ones that take us into and out of the flashback, but this is satisfying all round. Apfel tackles a story just complex enough to keep things ticking, but not one that asks more than he can easily deliver, and it’s simple enough to allow him a refreshingly leisurely pace with emotional moments, so we actually get a surprising degree of subtlety in the performances, because we can observe dawning realizations, for example, rather than telegraphed shifts in emotional states. There’s also a profoundly satisfying visual structure to the film, which rests every scene or ‘chapter’ in the story around matched compositions of men at foreground tables. It’s a really intelligent and nuanced use of the limited technical means available to the filmmakers. Magnificent work.
The Totville Eye – A very nice, low-key rural comedy, exhibiting a much greater freedom with multiple settings and location shooting and getting in some very nice character variations without over-emphasising them.
The Public and Private Care of Infants – Wow! This disturbing docu-drama was quite an eye-opener. Gregory is right that the context of production gave the filmmakers a lot more latitude with content, and this still packs a punch. Even without that documentary frisson, the dramatic portions of the film are very good – restrained and tough.
One Touch of Nature – The greatest revelation for me. I’d even go so far to say that this is one of the best-looking films I’ve seen from the pre-1920 period. The story is fine, that acting is very good and natural, but this film is completely compelling purely in terms of its
mise en scene. Ashley Miller doesn’t just have a good eye, he deploys his camera with much greater freedom than his contemporaries. I’m not talking about anything as obvious as tracking shots, but all the little, intimate details of camera placement: height, angle, distance from his actors, relationship to background. All of these elements are modified from shot to shot for maximum expressiveness, with the result that we get a beautiful, flowing stream of surprising, handsome and unexpected shots. It’s one of the most effortlessly flexible visual performances of the era that I’ve seen. Miller has a gift for composition in depth, and he stages a lot of his action on multiple receding planes. In a couple of instances we even get jaw-dropping deep-focus shots.
The pure technical bravado and visual beauty of the film would probably be enough to earn this film a place on my list, but it gets better when you consider the superbly calibrated leisurely pace of the action (sometimes more narrative is not necessarily better narrative) and the unforced, richly detailed performances Miller draws from his actors. There’s a really nice child performance, for starters. On average, Miller’s working much, much closer to his actors than his contemporaries – lots of medium shots – and this pays off in terms of the subtlety and naturalness of the performances he captures.
