by ·Comments Off on 3 Bad Men (1926, John Ford)

Pretty Girl loses her dad on the way to the gold rush, gets semi-adopted by Bad Men (her name for the notorious wanted criminals). Bad leader Bull decides what she needs is a husband, so they “hire” an Irish guy after a good scene of checking the bar for eligible men. Sure, they don’t respect land rights, and sometimes do some robbing and killing, but it’s quickly clear that the Bad Men are better than the whitehat sheriff of the town where everyone stays while waiting for the gold rush to begin (there’s an official start date/time, so it’s literally a race).

Soon, Bad Bull is leading a revolt against the corrupt sheriff, who wants to burn down the church full of women and children. Turns out rescuing babies by tossing them out the window of a burning building wasn’t invented by Hard-Boiled. Then our romantic couple needs to be saved from a pursuing gang of evil cops.

High-hatted Spade stays back to hold the pass against the sheriff’s men, delaying them by 15 seconds. Soft-hatted Mike does a better job, holing up in a gunpowder cabin and taking ten men with him. Then Bull kamikazes the sheriff, leaving the romantic couple safe.

Bull’s goodbye:

The romantic leads were in Fig Leaves by Hawks the same year, and the Irish guy would star in Sunrise the following year. Not much on the other guys except for Softhat Mike, who had small parts in most movies, including the Preston Sturges pictures. Ford semi-remade this a couple decades later, not the only time he’d do that. Hits from my silents playlist: Mogwai, Os Mutantes, Cyro Baptista… a Kraftwerk biking song during the church fire, a blast of Squarepusher during the gold rush race, and Coil over the finale. Really the only thing that didn’t work was a track from Tron Ares – I must remove all the movie soundtrack albums from my movie soundtrack mix.

by ·Comments Off on Whirlpool of Fate (1925, Jean Renoir)

Checking out the Renoir silents with my faithful playlist of weird jazz. Cute riverboat girl Catherine “Nana” Hessling loses her dad to a random fall overboard and becomes the ward of her abusive uncle. Things aren’t gonna get any better from here, if the film title is to be believed. She meets a charismatic poacher named Weasel who provokes the locals into burning his house down, the girl left crying while Weasel skips town with her dog. But the girl doesn’t deserve all this torment by 1920’s standards, she hasn’t done anything wicked or evil like have sex with a man, so after she has some cool hallucinations (Melies cauchemars, lizards and anti-gravity) she’s discovered by a nice rich boy who helps fight off the uncle when he tries to return.

by ·Comments Off on Ménilmontant (1926, Dimitri Kirsanoff)

A couple gets axe-murdered in the opening seconds, orphaning their two fully grown frizz-haired daughters who are pretending to be cavorting schoolgirls. Once they’ve grown into their actual ages they get exploited by the patriarchy, as far as I can understand – Kirsanoff is more of an editing nerd than a clear storyteller. The cad who has taken advantage of one (or both) of them gets his head smashed in by some third woman and her mustache-man, in a mirror to the open. I played the music on the disc, nice and sinister.

Orphan road:

Destitute new mother contemplating a watery grave:

Death to the cad:

by ·Comments Off on The Merry Widow (1925, Erich von Stroheim)

Comically evil monocled crown prince Roy D’Arcy (The Last Warning) and his more traditionally evil-rich-guy cousin John Gilbert (star of The Big Parade the same year) are both charmed by traveling performer Mae Murray and compete to get her into bed. Gilbert really falls for her, but the royal family says he can’t marry a commoner, so she thinks he hasn’t been serious.

After plans to marry the least-evil of the royals falls apart, she decides to marry the evilest guy around as revenge: the country’s richest man, foot pervert Tully Marshall (unrecognizably grizzled in The Big Trail). This is too much excitement for the pervert, and he has a heart attack on her wedding night, turning Mae into a merry widow.

Baron Rich Guy and his entourage:

Master seducers stock their bed with blindfolded string musicians:

Now that she’s so very rich, the royal family isn’t as dismissive of her. To further torment Gilbert she pretends(?) to be engaged to the crown prince, then everybody dies except lovebirds(?) Mae and Gilbert, so they end up royal and rich together. I didn’t even check what music was on the DVD, just put on my silents mix, which started strong with Ikue Mori and spent half its time on a very long Oren Ambarchi ambient drum groove.

by ·Comments Off on Manslaughter (1922, Cecil De Mille)

I realized just before hitting play that I meant to grab Manhandled (1924), not Manslaughter (1922), for the series I’m watching. But I haven’t ever named or mentioned this series and I’m accountable to no one, and I’ve got Manslaughter on DVD with an Alloy Orchestra soundtrack, so we’re making a substitution. Ultimately the movie is a boring morality story, but I enjoyed playing the keyboard-and-percussion score nice and loud.

Early on the movie lets us know that the cute girl is gonna be punished by society for driving her car too fast (55mph!), with ominous capitalization in the intertitles. When Joy races a traffic cop she’d previously bribed I immediately recognized the music – this is the part I used in my trailer for Variete. She does a fun little stunt that kills the pursuing motorcycle cop.

Second-billed is the upright district attorney (who does some manhandling after all), and while Joy is in jail learning how to be a good generous person (?) the DA quits his job to become a drunk, until her jail-earned Goodness puts the DA back on the righteous track.

I’m always saying this:

I like that the lawyer’s name is Dan O’Bannon. DeMille must not have been impressed with Joy – she is 13th-billed in the following year’s Ten Commandments. Dead cop Jack Mower would play a cop in House of Wax decades later. Manhandled maid Lois Wilson starred in The Covered Wagon, and the maid’s sick kid Mickey Moore went on to assistant-direct Elvis movies.

I’m always saying this:

by ·Comments Off on A Woman of Paris (1923, Charles Chaplin)

Parents in these movies are all stern, stiff and disapproving, eagerly disowning their kids for dating somebody. Jean’s dad drops dead rather than say goodbye. When Jean doesn’t show at the station due to his dead father, Edna gets on the train and goes to Paris without him. A year later she’s a rich society chick, kept in jewelry and hats by Adolphe Menjou, when Jean shows up to act all righteous then lose her yet again. After a defeated Jean shoots himself, Edna does what all penitent rich women do: open an orphanage.

Adolphe and Edna:

After meeting up again Jean is hired to paint Edna:

I know Chaplin wrote original music for this but I ran my silent movie playlist instead, and heard Cluster, Takako Minekawa, Sly/Family Stone, Shigeru Umebayashi, London Sinfonietta, Sir Richard Bishop, Seefeel, Jacob Mann, Sun Ra, Hania Rani, Squarepusher, Neu, Cyro Baptista, Bar Kokhba, Matmos, bunch of Zorn Book of Angels tracks. Good acting, good cast, good final scene – it seems like Chaplin was determined to prove himself in an area outside his wheelhouse, and unlike Polanski he succeeded.

by ·Comments Off on The Saphead (1920, Smith & Blaché)

Not a Buster Keaton movie, just a drama he starred in because Douglas Fairbanks was too busy, playing a pretty useless rich guy who gets mixed up in the affairs of a useless less-rich guy whilst trying to marry his adopted sister. Keaton adds minor gags where he can, but was heading down a different path, his own One Week released a few days earlier.

Shitty Mark is married to Buster’s sister, their moneybags businessman dad leaves town for a day and Mark trashes the business to distract from the discovery of his secret second family in Nebraska, who he’s pinned on Buster on the guy’s would-be wedding day. Boring business stuff ensues, while Buster blows off steam knocking off people’s hats on the stock exchange and unwittingly saving the day, and Mark literally dies of shame. Writer June Mathis also wrote Ben-Hur and Greed, was considered a major force in Hollywood when she died suddenly in 1927.

by ·Comments Off on Orphans of the Storm (1922, D.W. Griffith)

I was kinda dreading this, but after putting it off for a couple months I hit on a music plan, put a bunch of not-terribly fast/aggressive instrumental albums in a folder, hit shuffle, and it was perfect. Righteous story of poor girl and her blind sister who come to the cruel city and get kicked around until the French Revolution arrives and solves everything. A couple mistaken identities and a pile of blustery men later, all is well.

L-R: Gishes Dorothy and Lillian

by ·Comments Off on Leaves From Satan’s Book (1921, Carl Dreyer)

Satan and Judas:

The Spanish Inquisition:

French Revolution:

Russian-occupied Finland:

A Finn girl named Siri kills herself rather than fall into Russian hands, and this sacrifice releases Satan from his thousand-year punishment. Movie was pretty good, but I had an incredible time watching it while blasting the latest albums by:

    Ikue Mori
    Ches Smith
    Kris Davis Trio