Our guy Samet is a village schoolteacher who has been reported to the school board for getting too friendly with the girls. He’s defensive and petulant – I knew things would go badly for him when he hooked up his roomie Kenan with a girl (Nuray) then rolled his eyes at everything the friend said at their first meeting. Samet practically tells his students that he’s too good for this place, and he immediately, publicly punishes the girl who ratted on him when he illicitly discovers her identity. He laughs weird and talks too much when he’s lying or scheming. He finds it easy to believe the allegations against Kenan while insisting his own allegations are lies. He sleeps with Nuray – she says don’t tell Kenan, and he tells him immediately. In the end he’s getting what he wanted, a job in the city, where I’m sure he’ll be just as miserable – I hate him so much.

I had this quote in my head the whole time (see also: Preston and Lawrence):

I got a new dumb idea: to watch a bunch of movies called The Big ____ and call it The Big Movie Series. Not planning to rewatch The Big Heat (Lang) or The Big Boss or The Big Sky or The Big City or The Big Short or The Big Shave or The Big Snit or The Big Sick or The Big Picture… maybe The Big Lebowski or The Big Sleep… and I wonder if there’s an HD version of the extended The Big Red One yet.

our boys:

Idle rich pretty boy Jim (John Gilbert, star of The Merry Widow the same year) surprises everyone by enlisting in the army during WWI, teaming up with slack-jawed steelworker Slim (Karl Dane of fellow big movie The Big House) and officer/bartender Bull. At this point I got tired of hearing “You’re In the Army Now” on the blu-ray soundtrack so I put on Jason Moran’s album of WWI music, and loved how the slide-whistle song synched up with the Three Stooges-ass scene when Jim is walking with a barrel on his head. This is while they’re in France before the fighting starts, and Jim is falling for a pretty local (Renée Adorée, also Gilbert’s costar in Tod Browning’s The Show).

french girl:

Once they’re in the trenches, each gets his chance for heroism and revenge and death. WWI battle tactics are depicted as: walking in a straight line towards machine gun and cannon fire like robots until some yokel has the idea of throwing a grenade at the enemy. Only the rich guy gets to live, and back home his girlfriend and his brother try to pretend they haven’t fallen in love with each other while he was away, but he could care less, he hobbles back to France as if his beloved farmgirl really needs a yank with a wooden leg. But I kid, it’s a beautiful scene, made that much better by the Dirty Three album I put on after running out of Jason Moran songs.

my new motto: