Media: Film and Wurlitzer Organ
Title: The Immigrant
Director: Charlie Chaplin
These 4 weeks of Chaplin shorts were my second favorite Silent Movie Monday series since I first discovered them in 2001. (Only the Buster Keaton series was more enjoyable.
This week we saw The Cure, The Immigrant and The Adventurer. Though not the funniest of the group, The Immigrant was the most significant and the most pointedly political of all the Mutual shorts. It explores the ambiguities and paradoxes of America’s relationship with its immigrants and immigrants’ experience in their new country.
One simple cut powerfully captures the essence of the ambiguity. First, after an awful sea voyage the immigrants’ boat is finally pulling into New York Harbor and we get a stirring vision of The Statue of Liberty standing before 1917 New York. It is an emotionally powerful image to us in the audience, even 90 years later, and Chaplin reflects the emotion on his characters’ faces. (I would like someone to explore the use of the statue before this Chaplin moment.) Then cut to the immigration officers who immediately wall off the immigrants from their liberty with a taunt rope. In this moment the rope causes the characters to go from the highest state of humanity – pondering hope, liberty and possibility – to cattle marked with tags whose fate is subject to the whim of a bureaucrat. And America goes from a country beckoning to all who believe in their worth to enter and contribute, to an America who grudgingly condescends to open the door, threatening to slam it shut if it so chooses. Every ideal of liberty and tolerance, and every urge toward the ugliness of prejudice and fear in America’s twofold relationship to immigration is captured in this simple juxtaposition of scenes. It may be the most brilliant moment in all of these 16 short films and is one of the most powerful moments Chaplin has left to us.
(Watch the most recent version of Hairspray and see a rope used in similarly powerful way - to physically separate the white and black teenagers.\ - proving Chaplin is alive 90 years on.)
Showing posts with label Silent Movie Mondays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silent Movie Mondays. Show all posts
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Chaplin: Silent Movie Mondays
Media: silent film with live musical accompaniment
Title: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Vagabond (all 1916)
Director: Charlie Chaplin
The first of 4 fantastic weeks of Silent Movie Mondays began at the Paramount this past week. We will see Charlie Chaplin’s silent masterpieces from 1916 and 1917 produced by the Mutual Film Company. The Paramount is presenting these 12 films in chronological order.
The first two films, The Floorwalker and The Fireman, are more Mack Sennett (whom Chaplin worked for at Keystone) than Charlie Chaplin. Basically a situation is set up, Charlie works in a fire station for example, and the film explores every slap-stick situation Charlie can get into in a fire house. It is all hilarious frenzy.
Then by film three, The Vagabond, something happens and you get Chaplin’s full genius, perhaps for the first time. Actually it is even more interesting than that, the true Chaplin genius kicks in half way into the film after an initial Sennett-like chaotic chase through a neighborhood with city toughs in pursuit of Charlie. The genius that will mark Chaplin’s best films arrives with Charlie in the country where he has fled. Added to the surface slap-stick is a deep inner core of real emotion, often manifest in the form of that little tramp Charlie, loving a woman who is his social better. In The Vagabond, as in other Chaplin films, it is made clear the love is mutual and would persists if the two were able to remain alone in the world, but crumbles when exposed to society’s eyes. A superior woman cannot be allowed to love a little tramp.
There is a perfect scene in The Vagabond. Charlie who has rescued a young woman from a violent relationship washes the country grime from the woman’s face. On the surface it is pure hilarity as he sticks the washcloth in the pliant woman’s ears and nose to get the wretch clean. Simultaneously it is beautiful, lovely and filled with genuine care, like a mother washing a child. It is as scene as sweet and moving as it is crude and hilarious, and it is that combination of a hilarious surface mixed with deep genuine feeling which will remain Chaplin’s greatest gift for many years to come.
Title: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Vagabond (all 1916)
Director: Charlie Chaplin
The first of 4 fantastic weeks of Silent Movie Mondays began at the Paramount this past week. We will see Charlie Chaplin’s silent masterpieces from 1916 and 1917 produced by the Mutual Film Company. The Paramount is presenting these 12 films in chronological order.
The first two films, The Floorwalker and The Fireman, are more Mack Sennett (whom Chaplin worked for at Keystone) than Charlie Chaplin. Basically a situation is set up, Charlie works in a fire station for example, and the film explores every slap-stick situation Charlie can get into in a fire house. It is all hilarious frenzy.
Then by film three, The Vagabond, something happens and you get Chaplin’s full genius, perhaps for the first time. Actually it is even more interesting than that, the true Chaplin genius kicks in half way into the film after an initial Sennett-like chaotic chase through a neighborhood with city toughs in pursuit of Charlie. The genius that will mark Chaplin’s best films arrives with Charlie in the country where he has fled. Added to the surface slap-stick is a deep inner core of real emotion, often manifest in the form of that little tramp Charlie, loving a woman who is his social better. In The Vagabond, as in other Chaplin films, it is made clear the love is mutual and would persists if the two were able to remain alone in the world, but crumbles when exposed to society’s eyes. A superior woman cannot be allowed to love a little tramp.
There is a perfect scene in The Vagabond. Charlie who has rescued a young woman from a violent relationship washes the country grime from the woman’s face. On the surface it is pure hilarity as he sticks the washcloth in the pliant woman’s ears and nose to get the wretch clean. Simultaneously it is beautiful, lovely and filled with genuine care, like a mother washing a child. It is as scene as sweet and moving as it is crude and hilarious, and it is that combination of a hilarious surface mixed with deep genuine feeling which will remain Chaplin’s greatest gift for many years to come.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Asphalt
Media: Film
Title: Asphalt
The reason lovers of film and film history should see Asphalt (1929) is to discover one of the first film noirs. If you were to throw this film up at SAM during the Film Noir Series this autumn it would be accepted as noir with little argument, though many may be unhappy with its silence. So once again Silent Movie Mondays has not only provided another fantastic film with perfect musical accompaniment via Dennis James, it has shown me yet again that most film innovations occurred in the silent era. The talkies merely added, well, talk.
What about Asphalt is prescient of film noir? First the look, Asphalt is set in a teaming city mostly shot at night. The city is large beyond a single human’s comprehension. It is active, loud and uncontrollable. And no one is to be trusted, especially not the gorgeous woman in furs who flirts and then robs you blind. Bringing us to the femme fatal, looking beautiful and played beautifully by Colleen Moore imitator Betty Amann. She tempts the innocent young man (still living with his parents) to accept sex instead of bringing her to jail. He accepts, after a quite well performed inner battle with his sense of duty, and becomes sexually obsessed with and sexually possessed by Amann. This fall into the urban underworld from a position in honest society is yet another noir theme. As the film begins we see the young man directing traffic (in the daylight), naively believing he is in control of the uncontrollable city. By the end he has murdered for Amann, the ultimate sign of love for the femme in the twisted moral code of the noirs. Finally, you will see echoes of much of the cinematography in later noirs. There are the shadows and darkness (perhaps most notably in the scene where the criminals are tunneling into the bank, and for a good 30 seconds the frame is almost entirely black), and the use of camera angles and shots up crooked stairways to convey inner turmoil.
This is a film that calls for multiples viewings because of all that is packed into it, or, perhaps more importantly, once you realize all that has been unpacked from it in film history.
Title: Asphalt
The reason lovers of film and film history should see Asphalt (1929) is to discover one of the first film noirs. If you were to throw this film up at SAM during the Film Noir Series this autumn it would be accepted as noir with little argument, though many may be unhappy with its silence. So once again Silent Movie Mondays has not only provided another fantastic film with perfect musical accompaniment via Dennis James, it has shown me yet again that most film innovations occurred in the silent era. The talkies merely added, well, talk.
What about Asphalt is prescient of film noir? First the look, Asphalt is set in a teaming city mostly shot at night. The city is large beyond a single human’s comprehension. It is active, loud and uncontrollable. And no one is to be trusted, especially not the gorgeous woman in furs who flirts and then robs you blind. Bringing us to the femme fatal, looking beautiful and played beautifully by Colleen Moore imitator Betty Amann. She tempts the innocent young man (still living with his parents) to accept sex instead of bringing her to jail. He accepts, after a quite well performed inner battle with his sense of duty, and becomes sexually obsessed with and sexually possessed by Amann. This fall into the urban underworld from a position in honest society is yet another noir theme. As the film begins we see the young man directing traffic (in the daylight), naively believing he is in control of the uncontrollable city. By the end he has murdered for Amann, the ultimate sign of love for the femme in the twisted moral code of the noirs. Finally, you will see echoes of much of the cinematography in later noirs. There are the shadows and darkness (perhaps most notably in the scene where the criminals are tunneling into the bank, and for a good 30 seconds the frame is almost entirely black), and the use of camera angles and shots up crooked stairways to convey inner turmoil.
This is a film that calls for multiples viewings because of all that is packed into it, or, perhaps more importantly, once you realize all that has been unpacked from it in film history.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Silent Movie Mondays
Media: Film
Title: Diary of a Lost Girl
Yesterday was a Silent Movie Monday at the Paramount theater, perhaps my favorite on-going Seattle film event. Now, Diary of a Lost Girl was one of my least favorite of the many silent films I have seen. The story was tedious melodrama, and it seemed to end three different times and each time you wished it would. Nevertheless the experience is wonderful. Silent Movie Mondays are time travel. You enter a fully restored silent movie palace (The Paramount’s original function); you listen to archival music played on the theater's original organ; and you watch film prints restored to look as good as they would have 80 years ago. Give all the men hats, put all the women in skirts and you have the 1920s. I urge everyone who will listen, when given the opportunity to experience the magic of time travel it is always worth taking it, even when the film is as lackluster as Diary of a Lost Girl. (By the way, Lousie Brooks is adorable.)
Title: Diary of a Lost Girl
Yesterday was a Silent Movie Monday at the Paramount theater, perhaps my favorite on-going Seattle film event. Now, Diary of a Lost Girl was one of my least favorite of the many silent films I have seen. The story was tedious melodrama, and it seemed to end three different times and each time you wished it would. Nevertheless the experience is wonderful. Silent Movie Mondays are time travel. You enter a fully restored silent movie palace (The Paramount’s original function); you listen to archival music played on the theater's original organ; and you watch film prints restored to look as good as they would have 80 years ago. Give all the men hats, put all the women in skirts and you have the 1920s. I urge everyone who will listen, when given the opportunity to experience the magic of time travel it is always worth taking it, even when the film is as lackluster as Diary of a Lost Girl. (By the way, Lousie Brooks is adorable.)
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