Silent Summer: The last laugh (1924) FW Murnau

 Can a Murnau film with Emil Jennings go wrong? Nope, but it can sure go right. This is the height of silent cinema. The acting is outstanding, the sets are breathtaking, the cinematography is draws you in and keeps you in.

The story is very simple, hard to believe such a good film is based around something that should be mundane. A doorman loses his job at a famous hotel. That is basically it. He is deemed too old by his cold hearted boss and demoted to washroom attendant. When his neighbours find out they mock him and doubt he was ever the doorman and was just trying to make himself seem important. Jennings gives his typical top drawer performance and brings humour and pathos to the character. 

This is spoiler (the film is 100 years old this year but I doubt too many know it now). 

At the end, the humiliated doorman reads in the newspaper that he inherited a fortune from  a patron who died in his arms in the hotel washroom and shares his wealth by going back t the hotel and treating the staff to generous tips. Especially the night watchman who was the only one there who teated him kindly. 

This is one of those films that will amaze anyone not familiar with the silent era and think they are all overacted, sped up comedies. Its hard to imagine that the street shots are actually sets, they have a realism you don't expect and the editing, effects and compositions are far beyond what anyone would think of as "early cinema". 

Silent Summer: Dans la nuit (1929) direccted by Charles Vanel

 

One of, if the last of the French silent film era. this film is a tour de force in acting and image composition. The editing and transitions are amazing and the recent restoration really lays to rest any ideas that silent films were primitive filmmaking in any way. 

After a disfiguring mining accident, a man hides his face from his wife who he discovered is charting on him. He catches her and her lover who is also wearing a mask and in the struggle, the husband is killed and the body dumped in the river. I won't spoil things but suffice it to say that murder leads to to a number of twists and turns that use creative montage to show the [present, what really happened and to move between the past and present in a truly masterful way. The only problem I have is with the ending, which was forced on the director by the studio. It still works but could have been a much more powerful ending if the studio had kept their hands off it. 

I saw this on French TV and I have no idea where else it can be seen. I did not find it on Amazon or on YouTube but if you get a chance see it! 

Silent Summer: Salomé (1923) directed by Charles Bryant

Based on the play by Oscar Wilde and starring Alla Naive, this is a very stylized (which is putting it mildly) adaptation that has more in common with a play than a film at times. It does offer some very strong shots, like the suicide of the man jumping from the palace wall into the void that a play could not really accomplish. The sets are sparse and costumes a re base don Beardsley drawings and work very well to give the movie a look that is both beautiful and bizarre. The acting is exaggerated and I suspect the Ken Russell version of this story was heavily influenced by the silent version as it too was more than a little over the top. The editing is excellent and many of the shot compositions are fantastic and unique looking. 

The actual dance is a little underwhelming and I was surprised that while she asked for the head of John the Baptist we don't see it on it's silver plate and we certainly don't see her kiss it's lips. That was done under the cover of her robe and might make that act seem even more shocking in the end. 

Silent Summer: The Haunted Castle (1921) directed by F.W. Murnau

 There really isn't much haunted anything in this film as the story centres around a group of aristocratic hunters stuck indoors because of a storm and receiving an unwanted visitor - a man accused of murder three years before. The plot revolves around his efforts ot vindicated himself and is more like a Agatha Christie mystery than anything else. Being a Murnau film is it exceptionally well made, great editing and interesting shots as the twists and turns and new guests arrive to shine light on the murder and who might really be the killer. 

The Kino restored version is on youtube:

City Lights (1931) written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin

 

Made several years after sun was taking films by storm, Charlie Chaplin defied the odds and produced not only a work of art but a huge hit in this silent film. He would avoid sound another few years but this is considered one of his best projects. 

The little tramp character befriends a millionaire after stopping him for committing suicide who helps Chaplin by giving him money so that a blind girl, the tramp's love interest can have an operation restore her vision. When the rich an is robbed and the tramp is found with  a ton of his cash, things get complicated. The tramp evades the police long enough to pass the cash to the girl but is soon arrested and put in jail. 

After being released he sees the girl in a flower shop window, the girl comes out and replace a crushed flower he is holding and when she touches his hand she realizes who he is and they smile at each other. 

Well acted, filmed and maybe a little sentimental the film still has impact and can touch your heart like few other movies can. Chaplin is a master of his medium and this is considered by sum to be his masterpiece. 

The Crowd (1928) Directed by King Vidor (updated repost from April 2009)

 

This film is one of the all time classics of cinema. Made in 1928, it follows the life of a «nobody» born on July 4 who has asperations of grand things in his life. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he does not really distinguish himself from the crowd or society, which in this film becomes a character in of itself, always present and taking away his space, always surrounding him and restricting his movements in some way. The lead character is (played by James Murry) and, in fact, the whole story is morally ambiguous. He seems a total egotistical jerk, concerned only with his own delusion that he is better than everyone else - somehow... he has no clear idea why. His life is a mess and so tragic you can’t help but feel not only sorry for him but for yourself. Who amoung us hasn’t has big dreams only to find they were in fact, impossible to reach no matter what efforts made? He and us all have to learn to live in the world we get, not the one the one we wish we could live in. As a result, the film is thoughtfully indifferent to him all the way to the happy/bitter end. The last shot is haunting. It is at the same time hopeful and defeating as the main character start to put his life together and find happiness again we realize he will never differentiate himself from the crowd around him.

Visually, the direction by King Vidor is outstanding and the effects top-of-the-line. Some fo the images so powerful they stick on your head long after the film is done. For me the shot of the parents in the window watching helplessly as their daughter is accidently hit by traffic, the mother moments ago waving a doll he bought her now slumped against the window with the doll clutched in her hands show just how powerful silent films were and still are to those of us open enough to watch them. Director Jean Luc Godard was asked once why films about ordinary people were not being made. He responded with "Why remake «The Crowd?» It has already been done". The one terrible thing about this film is that, somehow, it is not on DVD.The lack of certain films updated and restored to the current format is, in my opinion, an abuse of the film going public.