Oops, I forgot which is which.

On to the main plot: a couple of important American diplomats are in town, and the wicked trio plots to befriend them in order to ensure their own status among the suspicious locals. Or that’s what the plot was supposed to be, but soon Stroheim goes full-on Blind Husbands trying to seduce the wife (and later rob her, after she wins a fortune at the casino).

EvS picks up Mrs. Hughes at the palace, getting himself introduced himself by paying somebody to page him, then takes the couple out shooting to show off, and soon enough takes her alone for a walk and gets “accidentally” lost in a storm, having to spend the night in a cabin. Fortunately for Mrs. Hughes, a monk comes along and gives EvS the stinkeye just as he was about to rape her in her sleep.

Meanwhile, EvS is also defrauding his own maid, getting her to hand over her life savings while promising to marry her. And diplomat Andrew Hughes is suspiciously keeping his back turned to camera in most of his scenes, because the actor died in the middle of production. It’s funny that Stroheim was obsessed with accuracy, dressing sets the camera would never see, using real caviar and buying silk underpants for all the actors, but when a main character died he just worked around that.

fake Monte Carlo:

All this deception catches up with the fake royalty. The cops bust the women, but EvS gives himself a more dramatic ending. The maid (Dale Fuller, also played crazy in Greed) sees EvS trying to seduce Mrs. Hughes so locks them both in the house and sets it aflame before throwing herself into the sea. Stroheim thinks he’s escaped a public scandal after jumping from the burning balcony first and leaving poor Mrs. Hughes to defend for herself, but her blind husband finally catches onto EvS’s game and knocks him down in public. Stroheim thinks of one last woman he can try to destroy and runs to the counterfeiter’s house (actually I think this was a different man), where he’s stabbed to death then dropped down a manhole.

The maid goes crazy:

I watched the first two thirds with Kino’s generic music before remembering that I control my own destiny and turning on the ol’ standby for silent movies, John Zorn’s Filmworks Anthology, which worked brilliantly as it always does.

A few seconds after Stroheim’s character is introduced, he fires a gun straight into the camera, making sure he’s immediately recognized as a villain (though he’s smiling a second later).

Mrs. Hughes spends the whole movie reading a novel: Foolish Wives by Erich von Stroheim

My favorite subplot: Mrs. Hughes is offended by a porter (played by silent star Harrison Ford) who never picks up the stuff that she drops, until one night she sees his cloak fallen at his feet and realizes he has no hands.

Also watched a Stroheim doc on the disc. I guess no Stroheim “director’s cut” exists of any of his films. It doesn’t get into the details of cuts made to them, but Blind Husbands title was forcibly changed from The Pinnacle, The Devil’s Passkey is lost (reviewers said it was better than Blind Husbands), Greed was drastically cut, Foolish Wives became “a national scandal,” he was fired from Merry-Go-Round, Merry Widow was a big hit, Wedding March was shut down in middle of filming then cobbled together for release, Queen Kelly also shut down/fired, and Walking Down Broadway was recut into Hello, Sister! after a disastrous premiere. It also says that Stroheim declined both roles offered him for Grand Illusion, then invented the idea that they’d be the same man (before and after getting injured) in order to give himself a larger part.

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Foolish Wives DVD

Owen is an annoyingly self-effacing frustrated novelist (but not so self-effacing that he doesn’t push people he’s just met into reading his manuscript) and a lover of old-fashioned things. At the titular magic hour/location he finds himself in his ideal 1920′s, mingling with Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill: Scott Pilgrim‘s girlfriend), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody, wonderful), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and fifty others. Each time Owen manages to stammer out their name and indicate that it’s an honor to meet them, then the famous character gets a couple lines before we’re whisked away to another famous character. Owen also meets non-famous Marion Cotillard, who dreams of an even earlier time, and then that ol’ Paris magic whisks her and Owen back to a pub in the 1880′s or 90′s where she meets her own art heroes (Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Degas) – who dream of an even earlier golden age. This was my favorite bit, where the movie seems to mock Owen and its own nostalgic premise. Marion opts to stay in her ideal past, but Owen returns to his present, dumps his wife (she was sleeping with Michael Sheen anyway), and picks up tour guide Lea Seydoux (baddie who shoots Paula Patton’s boyfriend in Mission Impossible 4).

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Midnight in Paris DVD

Love triangle:

Three time periods – modern, roman and caveman (with stop-motion dinosaurs) – featuring the same cast: Buster wants The Girl (Margaret Leahy, who won the role in a beauty contest), but she’s grabbed away by Wallace Beery (best known as the star of Barton Fink‘s unfilmed wrestling picture). The Girl’s parents (Lillian Lawrence and Keaton’s longtime anatagonist Joe Roberts) prefer Beery, but Keaton’s tenacity and stunt-survival skills win the girl’s hand in the end.

Her parents:

Best bits: Keaton jumping from one building to another and missing (an actual stunt-gone-wrong), his car falls apart while he’s driving it, Buster’s rival plans to pummel him during a football game – come to think of it, all my favorite parts are from the modern segment. The cave era is all downhill after the animated dinosaur. Roman spends too much time with a man in a lion costume, and has a classic bit of racism when all the negro servants come running when they see Buster throwing dice.

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Three Ages DVD

Johnny is born on the 4th of July, 1900, is given every opportunity by his parents, has a big future ahead of him – but his dad dies when he’s twelve. Camera at the top of the stairs with the doctor, fifty neighbors gathered below, Johnny steps out from the crowd and walks upstairs towards the camera, almost in 3D.

John moves to New York City, gets a job as one of Jack Lemmon’s office-mates in The Apartment, a menial accountant but still studying at night because he’s gonna be someone big.

He meets a girl named Mary at Coney Island – they get hitched immediately

The couple heads out towards Niagara Falls aboard a train. You don’t see many 1920′s movies that address the pre-wedding-night virginal jitters. Apparently I’m the only one who noticed, since all the IMDB trivia items focus instead on a toilet visible in the couple’s apartment.

Honeymoon’s over – John and Mary bicker about every little thing. Her condescending family comes to visit on Christmas eve, so John ducks out and goes dancing at his coworker Bert’s place. During one blow-up fight Mary reveals that she’s pregnant, and her husband gets all emotional and promises to be a better man.

Crabby in-laws:

John gets a slight raise, while Bert gets a major promotion. He wins $500 from a slogan contest (after this and Christmas In July, I figure slogan contests used to be a major source of income for Americans) but their second child is killed by a truck.

John having number problems:

“The crowd laughs with you always, but it will cry with you for only a day.” Depressed and anxious, John quits his job, almost kills himself while taking junior for a walk, but is re-determined to support his family, gets a menial new job. They go to the movies and the camera pulls out, losing John in the laughing crowd.

The movie stars James Murray, whose career took off with this picture until he turned drunk/homeless/suicide after a few years, and Eleanor Boardman, Vidor’s wife and star of Souls for Sale and Borzage’s The Circle. John’s friend/boss Bert is Bert Roach, an original Keystone Cop. This was the movie beaten by Sunrise for the first “artistic” best picture oscar, Vidor beaten by Borzage (for Seventh Heaven) for the first best director.

D. Cairns already gave a terrific write-up of this movie last month, so there’s little I can add, except that the story revolves partly around a fake beard that I spotted the moment I saw it (then a close-up revealing the character’s “bald” head to be a cap confirmed that even in the film’s reality, this is a fake beard).

Plot concerns a count named Oetsch who comes uninvited to a hunting party at the Vogeloed castle, sits stewing in the corner while everyone gossips about how he murdered his brother the baron a couple years’ back. The brother’s widow, now remarried, is an invited guest, mostly stays in her room avoiding the count. Meanwhile a priest (the count with the fake beard) wanders about then disappears. Somehow this all makes the baroness’s new husband admit his guilt in the ex-husband-slaying, letting the count off the hook.

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The Haunted Castle DVD

Firstly, the last person of the year to die must serve Death driving the phantom carriage for the next year – and time moves slowly after death so one night driving the carriage can seem like a year. So said Holm’s drinking buddy George just over a year ago (the movie points out that George knows such things because he went to college), and now George drives the carriage, passing the reins to Holm.

L-R: David Holm, David Holm, George:

Also a year ago, Edith opened her salvation army branch. Holm was her first guest, and she prayed he’d have a good year, asked him to return next new year’s eve. She stayed up all night patching his disease-ridden coat, catching the tuberculosis that would kill her. He stands up the next morning and tears out all the patches in front of her. So it’s the story of the most selfless angelic woman and the worst, drunkest, cruelest motherfucker (Holm also chases his wife with an axe Shining-style – commentary says probably inspired by a domestic violence scene in Broken Blossoms). Edith’s life (and death) and the phantom carriage both exist primarily to reform Holm, get him to drop the bottle and come back to his family – sort of a grimier It’s a Wonderful Life, a prohibition morality tale.

The whooshy ambient music seemed nice at first, but was perhaps too ambient. From the commentary: “Few, if any, previous films had been enveloped in the darkness of the night the way this film is” – and – “Sjostrom tends to avoid compositions that look too balanced, often shooting into the corners of rooms rather than straight at a back wall.” I appreciated this, as well as the great editing and unusual storytelling, making the movie seem decades more modern than the 1910′s tableau style. Also good acting and fun superimposition effects, overall a hundred times better than the contemporary Murnau film I watched this week. Also came out the same year as Lang’s similarly effect-heavy death-poem Destiny, the year before Haxan, and thirty-six before The Seventh Seal. Remade by Julien Duvivier after twenty years, and again back in Sweden after another twenty.

Holm’s wife vs. Sister Edith:

P. Mayersberg:

The film is surprisingly disconnected from Swedish Lutheranism. It is closer to Bergman’s demonic Hour of the Wolf than to the religious crisis of Winter Light. David’s sudden conversion at the end is not altogether convincing. He is given a last chance by coming back from the dead to save his wife from poisoning herself and their children out of hopeless desperation. But it isn’t God the Father who intervenes. It is his dead predecessor, coachman Georges, who is touched by David’s loving wife and the devoted Edit, who have fought so hard and long to save the man.

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The Phantom Carriage (Criterion Blu-ray)

Lon with his wife and benefactor, just before tragedy struck:

Lon Chaney (same year he did Phantom of the Opera and The Unholy Three) is a brilliant scientist married to sweet Ruth King (in possibly her only surviving film) and sponsored by a wealthy baron (Marc McDermott). Life is good, until McDermott steals Chaney’s ideas and his wife. Chaney is humiliated in front of his peers at a big presentation, slapped by the baron, slapped by his wife, and told to fuck off. Treated like a clown, he joins the circus, becomes an actual clown and creates a hugely successful routine wherein he reenacts his humiliation, getting slapped again and again as he tries to be taken seriously, the other clowns and the crowd roaring laughter at him.

A few years later, attractive young Norma Shearer (The Divorcee) joins the circus, drawing the attention of attractive young John Gilbert (The Merry Widow, The Big Parade) as well as Lon (now, hilariously, only known as “HE”). But slimy old Baron McDermott visits the circus and sees his chance to dump Lon’s wife for a younger girl. He makes a deal with her father to marry Norma, causing HE to take his belated revenge via lion.

Attractive young couple, somewhat overdoing it:

Cairns:

The biggest contortion of credibility is when Chaney confesses his love to Norma Shearer and she thinks he’s joking which, given his performance and the lines we get via intertitle, is impossible to accept as believable in any literal way. Nobody could be that dumb. A modern actor might say the scene is unplayable. But it works, because we get what it’s about (this film is deep but it ain’t exactly subtle, so Chaney even TELLS us what it’s about: “I say serious things and people laugh!”).

The first film MGM released, and the first American picture by Sjöström, lured to Hollywood after the international success of The Phantom Carriage. IMDB suggests a pile of related films – a 1917 Russian version, later Chinese and Argentinian versions, and three 1925 shorts with parody titles.

Transformation:

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He Who Gets Slapped DVD

Grudgingly back home, despondent, lonesome. He cranks a song called “Always” on his 1920′s jambox until she pounds on the wall – they find each other, next door neighbors all along.

A very simple story, but it’s only an hour-long movie. Fejos keeps the energy high enough, and offers up inventive montages and superimpositions.

Fejos also made an Evelyn Brent movie called Broadway and an early sound remake of Fantomas. Shot by Gilbert Warrenton, cinematographer of Paul Leni’s Cat and the Canary and The Man Who Laughs. I watched the silent version (there are studio-tacked-on dialogue scenes in some editions) which lacked any score at all, so I played inappropriately dramatic Shigeru Umebayashi music. I’d sure like to hear the score Alloy Orchestra has been performing.

Rosenbaum:

A man with a taste for fairy tales who later became an anthropologist, Paul Fejos had an innate grasp of how to articulate the complexity of everyday social experience in a big city. His approach to this is analytical, and his attitude at once progressive and accessible, comic and critical, distanced and affectionate. … The talented Hungarian director turned his first big Hollywood feature into a kind of visual fugue in which the separate trajectories of hero and heroine over a single morning compose a poignant harmony of variations and interactions. … Ultimately dovetailing his ‘diptych’ principle into first a love story, then the revelation that Mary and Jim live next door to each other, Fejos offers an exemplary case of structure dictating style as well as content. Here (as in Jacques Tati’s 1968 Playtime), the visual patterning of isolated units that collectively comprise city life makes the viewer wiser than any of the characters, yet in no sense superior. And in the overall sweep of this very affecting love story, Fejos is able to involve the viewer closely in the growing personal rapport between Jim and Mary at the same time that he ingeniously integrates them into a more universal context.

The first of at least thirty Zorro movies. Fairbanks was transitioning from comic hero to action star, would somewhat reprise his role in Son of Zorro five years later. Niblo was probably best-known for directing the original Ben-Hur. Very good live organ score at the Fox.

preceded by…
Three For Breakfast (1948, Jack Hannah)
An uncensored vintage Disney cartoon complete with culturally-insensitive Asian caricatures. Donald sees his pancakes stolen by Chip ‘n Dale (chattery, but with no actual dialogue), cooks up a rubber-cement pancake to thwart them, but fails, gets brutally beaten for refusing to share his meal with home intruders.

Features the most depressing opening 10 minutes of any movie ever. “There was a mother who had three sons. There was a war. The mother had three sons no more.” Actors stop, freeze in mannequin poses. A man beats his horse, as a woman beats her children. Laughing gas is released on the battlefield. A man with small round glasses has fits of hilarity. In silhouette, a soldier won’t shoot, drops his gun frozen, gets killed by his commanding officer. A Russian troop train is ambushed by Ukrainians, and after revealing its defenses is permitted to roll along, out of control since the driver has left, crashing, some men having leapt to safety, others not – a dying man’s arm cross-cut with an accordion thrown from the wreck. A woman reads a letter straight into the camera. Horses respond verbally (via intertitles) to shouted commands.

Real dissonant music, and editing to fit the scenes – lingering at the start, then all quick and exciting leading up to the train crash.

Ukrainian workers return to The Arsenal after fighting for years, first in WWI then to free their country from Russia, then as far as I can figure out the storyline, there’s internal conflict to decide whether they will join the Soviet Union. Quoth Wikipedia “The civil war that eventually brought the Soviet government to power devastated Ukraine. It left over 1.5 million people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.”

But wait, Wikipedia can explain the movie’s plot as well.

The film concerns an episode in the Russian Civil War in 1918 in which the Kiev Arsenal January Uprising of workers aided the besieging Bolshevik army against the Ukrainian national Parliament Central Rada who held legal power in Ukraine at the time. Regarded by film scholar Vance Kepley, Jr. as “one of the few Soviet political films which seems even to cast doubt on the morality of violent retribution”, Dovzhenko’s eye for wartime absurdities (for example, an attack on an empty trench) anticipates later pacifist sentiments in films by Jean Renoir and Stanley Kubrick.

Whatever specific historical events it may be illustrating, and wherever exactly it may be taking place, I loved every scene. It’s got all the brilliant camerawork and crazy heightened atmosphere of the great Dura Lex, and more. Closes with a firing squad discovering a Ukrainian worker who cannot be killed, baring his chest to reveal no hidden armor or wounds.

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Arsenal DVD