The DVD of the Week is, without a doubt, Criterion’s magnificent edition of the 2008 restoration of Max Ophul’s final film, Lola Montes, and I review it here. But along with something old, Criterion has something new, or rather a couple of somethings new, foremost among them Steve McQueen’s unforgettable Hunger (Criterion). Before he went out speaking the king’s as a crisply proper British officer in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Michael Fassbender played Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands who, at the age of 27, went on a hunger strike in 1981 to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize IRA inmates as political prisoners. British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen creates a film unlike any traditional biopic or historical drama: an overwhelming visceral experience composed of the sight and sounds and sensations of men in prison, played out as an almost abstract portrait in power and resistance until the film’s sole dialogue, a debate between Sands and a Catholic Priest.

McQueen isn’t taking sides or making political points; in the brutal world of Ireland during the troubles, there’s plenty of reprehensible behavior to go around. Hunger is a study in the deterioration of the human body (we literally watch him waste away on camera) and the will it takes to endure such self-mortification in the name of cause. Available on DVD and Blu-ray, both featuring the tightly focused 13-minute documentary “The Making of Hunger,” bonus video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender and a 1981 British TV documentary on the Maze prison hunger strikes, plus a booklet. As a side note, the menus are particularly haunting and unsettling.

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My DVD treat of the week is the giddy Soviet adventure serial Miss Mend (Flicker Alley). The 1926 epic, directed by Boris Barnet (who also co-stars as the heroic journalist) and Fedor Ozep, runs almost 4 ½ hours over three separate, feature-length chapters following the adventures of Miss Vivian Mend (Natalya Glan), dedicated typist and heroic supporter of the working class labor movement, and her doting admirers turned action heroes. “The whole city seems to be in the grip of some gigantic criminal conspiracy,” observes one of them, a photojournalist tracking the strange doings around the funeral of a millionaire industrialist to The Organization, a capitalist cabal bent on world domination through chemical warfare and political suppression (part of their dastardly plan is, of course, the demonization of the Bolsheviks as international criminals).

Early Soviet cinema wasn’t known for playfulness or escapist adventure (with a few exceptions), but this sprawling serial has both in a rapid-fire thriller that sends our heroes from their unnamed American East Coast city to Leningrad, where The Organization plans to destroy the Soviet Union with a plague. There are chases galore (on foot, in cars, on horseback), a stunning train wreck that leaves a mangled car with a body twisted in the wreckage (the villains coldly swap briefcases with the corpse so the cops will their phony documents on the victim), fistfights, bombs, and plenty of shots of vodka. Though modeled after the Douglas Fairbanks films and cliffhanger serials of Hollywood, the ruthless Dr. Mabuse-like villain and his devious campaign of murder, kidnapping, body-snatching and bribery also recalls Louis Feuillaude’s Fantomas serials and Fritz Lang’s Spies, but with more cheeky humor and quirky characters (what exactly is with all the boxing gear in the shared apartment of our heroic trio?). For the first few chapters, our heroes are consistently constantly outplayed and outsmarted by the devious capitalist conspirators, but you can’t keep a just cause down.

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Frequent readers of my blog (yes, both of you) may have noticed that I’ve dropped the ball on my "DVD for the Week" series at Parallax View. Yes, since I was already doing a weekly DVD column for MSN and a separate highlights list here, I decided it was too much. So I’ve decided to create something new for PV: a recurring feature on silent cinema, on the screen and especially on DVD.

I inaugurate "Silents Please!" with my coverage of the 14th Silent San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the weekend-long celebration that unspools every July at the Castro. In Part One, I cover the opening and closing night films: the Douglas Fairbanks feature The Gaucho (1927) and D.W. Griffith’s final silent feature Lady of the Pavements (1929). In Part Two, I spend time with Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927), the Czech feature Erotikon (1929), Gregory La Cava’s So’s Your Old Man (1926) W.C. Fields and the newly rediscovered and restored Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), starring John Gilbert and directed by King Vidor.

He was called “The Great Profile,” elevated as the great lover of the silent screen and held up as the greatest actor of his generation. In retrospect he left behind his share of hammy performances and lazy mugging, but when he was at his best, John Barrymore was a shining star of the silent screen. Kino has collected four Barrymore silents in The John Barrymore Collection, three of them new to Kino (but not necessarily new to DVD). The highlights come via the Killiam Collection, complete with the original seventies-era piano scores by William P. Perry recorded for repertory showings. The Beloved Rogue features Barrymore in swashbuckling form as François Villon, “poet, pickpocket, patriot” (as his introductory title card identifies him), a hard-drinking gadabout who satirized the King (Conrad Veidt, making his Hollywood debut in a comically gnarled performance) in his poetry but loved “France earnestly, Frenchwomen excessively, French wine exclusively.” The famed Shakespearean stage dramatist has a tendency to twist face into a clownish curl to play 15th century poet as a fun-loving fool and drunkard, parading about with his drinking buddies and playing the king of the beggars of Paris. But he also throws himself into the swashbuckling scenes, leaping across roofs less like an action hero than a child of the streets who hasn’t quite grown up, and tones himself down for romance with Marceline Day, the king’s ward. Alan Crosland previously directed Barrymore in Don Juan, one of another of his best silent films, and William Cameron Davies creates the lavish sets.

I’m even more partial to Tempest (1928), not a version of the Shakespeare play but a tale of a peasant soldier (Barrymore) in love with a princess (Camilla Horn of Faust, whose eyes burn with a mixture of haughty arrogance and guilty desire) in World War I Russia. Barrymore gives one of his most restrained performances as the tormented soldier whose hatred of the aristocracy is systematically stoked when he’s put through a living hell for his temerity at falling in love with a high-born beauty. The aristocracy systematically keeps the lowly peasant class its place until the revolution turns the tables, at which point the film tries to cast the Red Menace as the villain. It’s a hard sell given the brutality and contempt of the ruling class, but in a manner that suggests director Sam Taylor studied the works of D.W. Grifffith, he portrays the aristocrats as beautiful people tormented by the ugly peasants who take their revenge with a vengeance. In this new paradigm, Barrymore rejects class politics to save his fair aristocratic love from the grimy hands of the dark, unwashed proletariat brutes. Director Sam Taylor directed some terrific Harold Lloyd comedies before making this historical romantic drama, but he guide this gorgeous costume drama like he was a master of the epic form, and William Cameron Menzies once again contributes great sets. The box set also features the 1922 Sherlock Holmes and the previously released 1920 Dr Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, and the discs are also available separately. The films are preserved rather than restored but look fine and The Beloved Rogue is tinted.

Hollywood adventures don’t come more rousing than the 1939 Beau Geste. Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston are the boisterous Geste brothers, orphans raised by a society lady as gentlemen with a sense of playful camaraderie and undaunted chivalry. Read more »

The full story has still not been told but, simply put, Dennis James has been ejected from his seat at the Mighty Wurlitzer, where he has accompanied the silent movie series at the Paramount Theatre for the past 11 years. James has spent his career as a professional organ player and composer largely accompanying silent films in the traditional style, both in solo performances and in collaboration with orchestras or guest musicians, and promoting the lost art of accompanying silent films as part of the silent film experience. He helped the Seattle Theatre Group launch the Silent Movie Mondays film series in 1998 and has been active in the continued restoration of the theatre’s Wurlitzer organ. (The Paramount is one of the few preserved movie houses in the country that still has its original silent film organ.) And he has used his contacts with the studios and film preservation houses to secure the best silent film prints around. He has been essential to nurturing the series and one of the primary reasons for the success of the series.

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Kate Winslet finally won her Oscar and her performance in The Reader is the best thing about the film. Adapted from Bernhard Schlink’s novel by playwright David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry, the film has all the hallmarks for Oscar-bait: literary source, “serious” theme, a credentialed cast (Ralph Fiennes co-stars) and a director who values words over cinematic expression.

Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a German woman, Hanna, who takes teenage boy Michael (David Kross) as a lover in late-fifties West Berlin. After a brief affair, she’s gone, only to reappear in a war crimes trial that law student Michael is attending, where she’s held accountable for her actions as a concentration camp guard directly responsible for the deaths of dozens of Jewish prisoners. Winslet plays the part as a hard, closed-in woman careful to shield her emotions even during the affair, but is so guileless as to recount her inhuman actions as a concentration camp guard with a blank, almost childlike matter-of-factness, as if unable to fathom any moral responsibility to “just following orders.” But while the performance is brave in its nakedness (both literally and emotionally), the film is less ambiguous in its attempt to explore cultural and personal guilt and complicity in the Holocaust. Director Stephen Daldry’s compassion for Hannah isn’t so much misplaced as unbalanced, so concerned with her personal shame that it too easily overlooks her human responsibility.

I reviewed the film for Parallax View here and review the DVD for MSN here.

Frank Miller’s big screen incarnation of Will Eisner’s landmark comic superhero series The Spirit was not a hit in theaters and the visually dynamic but narratively sketchy comic book movie isn’t any better on DVD. The character is an icon among comic book aficionados but not well known to the general public, which may have hurt the film, but the problem lays more squarely with comic book artist/writer-turned-director Miller, whom makes his solo directing debut with this film.
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After reviewing the great Flicker Alley DVD set Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer from MSN and spotlighting the set as my “DVD of the Week” with a longer review, I was asked to take another, much more in-depth look for the Turner Classic Movies website.

The image of Douglas Fairbanks that springs to mind to even the most dedicated silent movie fan is that of the grinning swashbuckling hero. From The Mark of Zorro in 1920 to The Iron Mask in 1929, Fairbanks was the dashing leading man of dynamic costume epics defined by his verve and acrobatic energy. But before he leapt into the public’s imagination in those flamboyant action epics, Douglas Fairbanks was a charismatic and decidedly contemporary leading man of light romantic comedies, a rambunctious urbanite facing the adventures of modern life and modern love with comic grace and athletic flair. Flicker Alley’s magnificent box set Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer is not just a survey of Fairbanks’ career leading up to The Mark of Zorro. In the words of Fairbanks biographers Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta, who write the essay in the accompanying booklet, “this set charts his evolution from screen satirist to swashbuckler.”

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Fairbanks made twelve features in eighteen months at Triangle, including Flirting With Fate, a dark comedy directed by William Christy Cabanne, and The Matrimaniac, scripted by Anita Loos and directed by Paul Powell (with cinematography by future director Victor Fleming), both included in this set. These are more comedies than adventures and Fairbanks is a romantic comic lead whose athletic talents are an extension of his gags, much like Chaplin’s slapstick grace, Keaton’s daring play with massive mechanical props (like a moving steam engine) or Harold Lloyd’s thrill stunts. They defined the Fairbanks screen persona as the all-American urban man with a chivalrous streak and an enthusiasm that bursts out of him in feats of gymnastic joy. Whether he was the working stiff with big dreams or the foppish scion of a business magnate who transforms into the man of action, he was always “Doug,” onscreen and off.

Read the entire feature on TCM here.

The eleven films on Flicker Alley’s five-disc set Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer are more than just a terrific collection of the films from one of the preeminent stars of silent cinema. Spanning the year 1916-1921, the films show Douglas Fairbanks developing from mere mortal film star, an actor with both comic grace and athletic flair, into the first action hero of the movies. All of the early films of this collection show Fairbanks in modern dress and contemporary mode, the urban guy with a chivalrous streak and an enthusiasm that bursts out of him in feats of gymnastic joy. Films like His Picture in the Papers (1917), Flirting With Fate (1917) and Wild and Woolly (1917) are more comedies than adventures and Fairbanks is a romantic comic lead whose athletic talents are an extension of his gags, much like Chaplin’s slapstick grace, Keaton’s daring play with massive mechanical props (like a moving steam engine) or Harold Lloyd’s thrill stunts. He’s dapper, charismatic and plays everything with a smile so wide you can’t help but be charmed by his joie de vivre, but he’s decidedly a modern urban hero, or at least a variation on it, the fop who transforms into the man of action of The Mollycoddle (1920). In When the Clouds Roll By (1920), one of the more unusual comedies of the set, Fairbanks is a superstitious young swell who is the unwitting victim of a decidedly sadistic psychological experiment by a doctor of dubious moral character trying to drive him to suicide, with the all-too-willing help of the man’s butler and building super (they both get far too much pleasure out of the misery they inflict on this sunny young man). Based on a scenario written by Fairbanks himself, it’s a strange and surreal comedy with an entire scene that place within his stomach (his dinner, looking very much like a primeval version of the Fruit of the Loom guys, acts up as he tries to digest a late meal) and a dream sequence that turns Fairbanks’ acrobatic feats into a slow-motion ballet that looks like something out of a Jean Vigo film.

With A Modern Musketeer (1917, directed by Allan Dwan), you see Fairbanks try on a different kind of persona in the prologue. Fairbanks winks to the audience as he strides into frame in long, curly hair and the flouncy, flamboyant costume of D’Artagnon, but when he leaps into an acrobatic swordfight his smile is no longer one of knowing parody, but of athletic joy. It’s a brief scene that soon gives way to the modern musketeer incarnation, but it looks ahead to the action movie spectacles of the twenties that will make him a screen legend, represented on this set by The Mark of Zorro (1921), a dashing adventure tale of Old California’s Robin Hood. In his secret identity as the foppish Don Diego, Fairbanks slouches, shuffles, and gives the dim, dull air of a bored dilettante who can hardly be bothered to wake up – but clues us in on the charade with smiling asides and playful parlor tricks and games. Behind the mask of Zorro, however, he comes alive with a zesty smile and an acrobatic performance, vaulting through windows and over walls and declaiming his pantomime speeches with every muscle in his body – you can almost hear him through the silence.

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I previously featured Abel Gance’s 1919 masterpiece J’Accuse in my DVD column, but was given the opportunity to really explore the film in a feature piece for Turner Classic Movies.

Abel Gance’s J’Accuse (1919), a politically and stylistically daring anti-war drama produced while the trench warfare of World War I was still grinding up soldiers on both sides of the battle, opens with the title spelled out by the bodies of soldiers striding into formation, like a marching band at a half-time show. Then they collapse, as if dead, to startling effect. Appropriating the cry leveled by Emile Zola during the Dreyfus affair, Gance levels his accusations at war itself. … Gance had served in World War I as cameraman and later worked in a gas plant, where he started to develop tuberculosis and was sent home by a generous officer. “He saved my life,” Gance confessed. J’Accuse may have been his way of thanking him. It was surely his way of honoring the soldiers and civilians who did not survive the war while trying to offer (in his own words) “proof of the horror and stupidity of war.” The epic drama is angry and tender and horrifying and touching, all of it conveyed by his powerful and delicate imagery and sophisticated techniques. As the villagers prance and cheer in the wake of the declaration of war, Gance offers his perspective on the human merriment by cutting to a scene of dancing skeletons: imagery of doom that eludes a citizenry caught up in their fantasy of glorious battle. As the reality sets in, Gance captures the tenderness of the men saying their goodbyes to wives and loved ones before heading to the front in a simple but evocative montage of hands tenderly reaching out to hands, putting out a candle and cleaning up after a last meal at home. So much sadness and fear is conveyed in the simple movements and the understated body language.

Read the complete review here.

The dynamic silent film A Throw of Dice, an early classic of Indian cinema, was released earlier this year on DVD by Kino. My DVD review was published in the Turner Classic Movies website while I was at Toronto.

A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash, a lavish romantic adventure from the late silent era of Indian cinema, had been virtually unseen since it was released in 1929. Its restoration by the BFI in 2006 is a revelation, a rediscovery of a visually lush and dramatically energetic drama with a multinational pedigree: produced by Indian actor and entrepreneur Himansu Rai, directed by German veteran Franz Osten, shot on location in India with a European and Indian crew and a mix of German, English and Indian financing.

Adapted from a story from the Hindu epic The Mahabarata, the drama of rival kings and the beautiful woman they both pursue stars Eurasian actress Seeta Devi as the sheltered daughter of the Hermit (Sarada Gupta), a former teacher at the royal court who has fled the corrupt social world to live isolated in the jungle. The world of royal intrigue and corruption, however, comes to the Hermit when the hunting party of two kings marches into his village, complete with a parade of elephants and armies of servants and soldiers. Hospitable but wary, he tries to protect Sunita from these “Men from the world,” but they bring their corruption with them. King Sohan (producer Himansu Rai) tries to murder his cousin, the kindly and trusting King Ranjit (Charu Roy), and the Hermit falls victim to the plots and schemes when he nurses Ranjit back to health after the failed assassination attempt. Ranjit is a romantic and a naif, oblivious to Sohan’s ambitions and schemes (Sunita and her father both suspect Sohan, but oddly never confess their suspicions to Ranjit), and he falls in love with Sunita. But he is also gambler, addicted to games of chance, and Ranjit preys upon Sohan’s weakness for the dice to get both his kingdom and his woman.

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Osten is a dynamic director with an eye for spectacular imagery and romantic visions and a gift for visual storytelling and energetic pacing. The story never feels rushed even as the film seems to drive forward at a breathless pace. The dramatic scenes are marvelously mounted against striking backdrops and lavish palace settings. According to film historian Bruce Bennett, Ria’s family name and connections helped them secure those magnificent locations (those palaces!) and the resources it took to mount the film’s spectacular set pieces. The film reportedly used a thousand horses, fifty elephants and 10,000 extras. Along with these theatrically lavish scenes is dramatic footage of jungle wildlife. In the opening scenes, a veritable zoo of exotic jungle denizens flee the thundering procession of the hunting party (except for the tigers, who lazily amble off as if they could barely be bothered by the intruding humans), all with a documentary camera that is startlingly closes to the creatures.

Read the entire piece here.

My review of Kino’s DVD of Victor Sjöström’s The Outlaw and his Wife is now up on Turner Classic Movies online. Sjöström is one of the godfathers of Swedish cinema – in my opinion, the greatest of them – and this is the film that put him on the international map. Sjöström is on both sides of the camera here, playing an escaped convict (imprisoned for stealing to save his starving family) who falls in love with a young widow and then retreats to the mountains when his identity is revealed.

Set in 19th century Iceland and shot against the dramatic landscape of Mount Nuolja in Northern Sweden by Julius Jaenzen (with some exteriors shot in Iceland itself), Sjöström creates images both beautiful and elemental. Kari’s flashback shows his life on a plateau surrounded by steaming hot springs and geysers, and their mountain home is built near a cliff with a breathtaking view. But for all its beauty, the elemental power and spiritual purity of the natural world is also unforgiving. As Kari grimly observes, “No man can escape is fate,” and their idyll is invaded by the jealousy and lust of a fellow outlaw, by the vengeful bailiff’s posse, by the elements themselves as they retreat farther into the inhospitable peaks of the icy mountains. The snows that ultimately claim the lovers have an elemental force that Sjöström recalls years later in the sands of The Wind. “No filmmaker before Sjöström integrated landscape so fundamentally into his work or conceived of nature as a mystical as well as a physical force in terms of film language,” wrote Swedish cinema authority Peter Cowie in 1970.

In the film’s most startling and devastating scene, a shocking act of desperation from Halla becomes is both a terrible act of mercy and a pagan sacrifice to the Gods of the mountain. It’s as if these free spirits must be punished for their defiance of social convention, or at least pay for their fleeting happiness. Yet even at their most miserable they are bonded in love and they die as they lived.

Read the complete review here.

One of the great frustrations of being a silent movie fan is the deplorable loss of so much of the silent film legacy. One of the great joys is the constant discovery of lost or unknown (or at least unknown to me) classics.

A Throw of Dice, a lavish 1929 melodrama about a royal struggle between rival kingdoms in India, based on a story from the epic Hindu poem “The Mahabarata,” is one of those discoveries that appears to come from nowhere. Shot in location in colonial India with an Indian cast and spectacular sets and locations, directed by a German veteran of UFA studios and produced with a consortium of German, British and Indian money, it’s a lively mix of cultures and sensibilities that merge rather than collide.

A handsome king falls for the beautiful daughter of a hermit on a hunting trip while his cousin and rival plots to kill him. The hermit, once a respected teacher in the royal court, fled the corruption of the social world to protect his daughter from the influence of these “Men from the world,” but he too falls victim to the plots and schemes and his daughter (Seeta Devi) is caught in the middle of these two kings: the kindly and trusting Sohan (Himansu Rai), whose naiveté is matched only by his gambling addiction, and the sinister Ranjit (Charu Roy) who lusts for his cousin’s kingdom and his cousin’s bride and preys upon Sohan’s weakness for the dice to get both. But the real joy of this film is the magnificent production, which opens on spectacular jungle imagery of animals fleeing the oncoming hunting party (except for the tigers, which take their time as if they could barely be bothered by the intruding humans) and movies on to spectacular palace sets. Director Franz Osten, a veteran of Germany’s UFA studios, is a dynamic director with an eye for spectacular imagery and romantic visions and a gift for visual storytelling and energetic pacing. The story never feels rushed even as the film seems to drive forward at a breathless pace.

Kino’s DVD features a beautiful transfer (taken from a British restoration, apparently direct from the PAL video master, resulting in some minor visual warbling) and a gorgeous new score that only enhances the experience.

Read the DVD review on my MSN DVD column here. Read more »