29Gitcher art on~
L’Etoile de mer (1928), dir. by Man Ray
Starring Kiki de Montparnasse
One of my favorite scenes in Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), score brilliantly composed by Richard Einhorn in 1994, performed by the Anonymous 4 and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic
The set and lighting design in this film is phenomenal. The part where the priest steps into the window’s light and the cross immediately fades gives me chills all over. Definitely one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen.
The Show, 1927. Directed by Tod Browning.
This is only the first 15 minutes! If anyone knows where to get the full film, do share!
So beautiful!!
The Passion of Joan of Arc/La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc (1928), directed by Karl Th. Dreyer
will always be one of my favorite films of all time. The history of how this film came to be lost (multiple times) and discovered again is miraculous, and unlike every single soundtrack I’ve ever heard added to once-silent films, Richard Einhorn’s score is what sold me. I think this was my sophomore year of high school? My Film Aesthetics class took a quick break halfway through and while everyone else was stretching and getting snacks, I booked it to the first-floor computer lab where I got on Amazon and ordered Voices of Light.
I remember also being struck dizzy by the fluidity of the cinematography (the swinging of the camera in the court room scene blew me away), the gorgeous artistic direction (the shadow of the cross from the window that disappears as the clergyman steps into it), and the sublimity of Maria Falconetti’s performance as Joan. Her expressions are heart-wrenching in their stillness, and the complete lack of exaggeration in the actors’ movements overall adds to the realism of their reactions. Also of note, in extreme contrast to most silent-era films, none of the actors are wearing any makeup (my favorite aesthetic choice).
This film isn’t a passion play or a big-budget fable; rather, I’ve always found Dreyer’s Passion to be a soulful love letter to Joan of Arc’s suffering. The reverence of the camerawork, focusing on Falconetti’s huge, feverish eyes; the lighting, always careful to halo her, showing the imperfections and textures in the skin; the storyline, from courtroom to execution, taken directly from the court transcripts of Joan’s trial…
This film never fails to make me cry, it is SO BEAUTIFUL. And the care in which Dreyer obviously took in its creation really lights my fire. I am inspired, enraptured, and my soul is hungry, and it makes me incredibly sad that so few films do that for me.
Double-click on the video to go to the YouTube page and continue watching. I mean it.
In love and suffering,
J
Women who kicked the system’s ass by working within it insta-reblog.
Frances Marion (1915), the first woman to twice win an Academy Award for screenwriting & Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter from 1917 to the mid-1930s
“In her autobiography (Off With Their Heads), Frances Marion recounts how, amused by her letter requesting a screenwriting job at the then outrageous salary of $200 a week, producer William Fox granted her an interview, but when he sees her, he is mystified by her desire to write screenplays since she is good-looking enough to be an actress.
‘Why does a pretty girl like you want to be a writer?’ he asks incredulously, and goes on to tell her how she would look in ‘the most expensive outfits they got at Saks Fifth Avenue, earrings, bracelets, no phonies, all real stuff.’ ‘Actresses -yes! They got glamour-‘ he says later, ‘but writers, the poor schliemiels! Now if you’re smart you’ll gamble on yourself. Easy, just like tossing a coin.’
‘A coin, Mr. Fox, can only fall heads or tails,’ Frances Marion says she said, and even if it’s staircase wit, it should go down in history as the true shooting script. ‘I’ll gamble on heads, they last longer.’
-Molly Haskell, Films of the 1920s
Gorgeous frame!!
I’ll make movies this beautiful someday.
Flesh and the Devil, Clarence Brown, 1926.
Clips from the documentary
Why Be Good? Sexuality and Censorship in Early Cinema (2007), directed by Elaina Archer
Dedicated to all my femme fatales.
Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (1927), directed by F.W. Murnau
It’s a silly thought when faced with such an important part of cinematic history, but every time I watch this movie I can’t help but think how fun it must’ve been to be a part of it. I want to shoot a film like this someday; very visual-based with in-camera special effects (Méliès was only the beginning - German Expressionism took it to a whole new level of art). Something with location shooting, something romantic and dark, something silent.
I’m a firm believer that dialog is grossly overused by talentless writers as a crutch, becoming verbose past the point of exposition. At least with the silents, the dialog functioned as either poetic description or informatory explanation. I suppose this is the summer to get in on all that, though. I ain’t gettin’ any younger.
But yes - Murnau. If you’re a film kid, you’d know him as the guy that did Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (“A Symphony of Horror”). Like many successful German filmmakers in the ’20s (Fritz Lang, Robert Weine), his dark, haunting films caught the eye of Hollywood and he was imported to America, which explains why Nosferatu is a German film and Sunrise is an American film.
Even though he died at the young age of 42, he was very prolific between 1919 and 1931, having made over 20 films and often making multiple films a year. His work (and possibly work ethic) has greatly influenced the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Otto Preminger.
Check out part 2 and beyond of Sunrise here.
And of course the “Woman From The City” is a sassy vamp out to off another man’s wife (or get him to do it - she isn’t about to get her pretty hands dirty) so she can drag him back to the city with her. She’s just the finest, chain smoking with abandon and her flapper-style bob. Get it get it, you evil girl.
I can totally accept if this film doesn’t make you suffer, by the way. Movies can sometimes feel good, too.
The Farmer’s Wife (1928), directed by Alfred Hitchcock
How on earth this film came to be 98 minutes is beyond me.
It’s like “NO, ALFRED, WHY,” y’know?
If this isn’t one of the longest movies you’ve ever seen, I don’t know what. I felt like I’d been watching it for years before I stopped paying attention 3/4 of the way through.
The Farmer’s Wife is, however, a very interesting glimpse into what Hitchcock was doing before his reign of suspense. Also, did you see that British Board of Censors certification at the start of the film? Crazy, right? This time in America, the enforcement of censorship in the film industry was still shoddy, only just coming into power around 1934.
Oh man - gotta interrupt this post for a second to bring you:
SUMMERTIME.
An ice cream truck just drove by my house, obnoxious jingle blaring over its loudspeaker like a hundred children screaming for more. Oh, what a sweet, sweet sound.
So yes, back to this film.
If you can handle the longest 98 minutes of your life slapped through with some of the most ridiculous character interactions I’ve ever seen in a film, I’d highly suggest The Farmer’s Wife. Lilian Hall-Davis, who plays the maid Araminta, is a total babe, and Gordon Harker as town drunkard Churdles Ash (I don’t understand the names, either) is definitely the funniest part of the film. He is what I imagine all my male friends to be like in 30-40 years.
Oh, but I did lie to you a little bit. I didn’t watch this film (or however much of it) alone. I watched it with a boy, oh my!
But this is pertinent information, as The Farmer’s Wife was driving him nuts too, so to bear with it as long as we did, we added our own soundtrack.
It was loopy, and resulted in jokes like this:
That said, if you intend on watching this picture in its entirety (IT’S ALL UP ON YOUTUBE), then I suggest adding your own soundtrack to keep yourself from losing your mind.
Suffer for cinema.
