by ·Comments Off on Buster Keaton Shorts (1920-23)

The Boat
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Keaton has built a boat in his garage, and takes his family out for a sail. Destroys the house getting the boat out, destroys the car getting the boat in the water, finally destroys the boat, leaving the four of them floating in a bathtub for a life raft, when his son pulls the drain plug. The boat itself is as complicated as The Electric House, with collapsing masts (for going under bridges) and makeshift repairs. Nice scene where the whole boat is rotating in a storm (actually rotating, not just a camera trick) while Keaton tries to stay right-side-up. Pretty sure I like this one more than Electric House… in fact, most of these are at least as good as that one. Don’t know why I obsessed on it for so long.

The Love Nest
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I recognized Big Joe Roberts from Cops, the giant clear-eyed fat man. Turns out he plays the antagonist in almost every one of Keaton’s silent shorts. He died of a stroke shortly after Our Hospitality in October 1923. Big Joe plays the cruel, murderous captain of a whaling boat Love Nest that picks up Keaton who is stranded at sea. At the end, Keaton can’t launch the lifeboat alone, so he sinks the whole ship to float the small craft. Entire Love Nest sequence turns out to have been a figment of his food-and-water-deprived imagination… thinking himself stranded at sea for weeks, his boat is still tied to the dock.

The Goat
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As in “scape”goat, turns out… there’s no goat here. Dead Shot Dan arranges to have the police photographer get a shot of bread-line refugee Keaton through a window, then makes his escape. Keaton sees the poster, thinks it’s for real and that he killed a guy he pushed down in another town, chased around by sheriff Big Joe Roberts, ending up accidentally in Big Joe’s own apartment. The escape from the apartment has one of my favorite series of gags, a chase through the building’s single elevator.

My Wife’s Relations
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Running from cops, Keaton accidentally (preacher speaks Polish I think) gets married to a woman who’s trying to have him arrested. Comes home to her family of large, rough, intimidating men. Tries to fit in at first, then plots to escape, riding the train to Reno at the end.

The Scarecrow
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Keaton is friends with Big Joe in this one. They live in a one-room house that inventively conceals a bath, bed, stove and kitchen table with ropes and hinges. Both men are competing for a woman (same girl played the wife in The Boat, her farmer father is played by Joe Keaton), leading to a chase scene where Keaton disguises himself as a scarecrow. Best part is Keaton in a dangerously high chase with a dog that can climb ladders (up and down!) which ends up going through the rigged house.

The Paleface
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Keaton wanders into an Indian reservation right after they swear to kill white men in response to their land being stolen by oil barons… finds time mid-chase to make an asbestos suit, so after he fails to burn at the stake, he’s made an honorary member of the tribe. Now he and chief Big Joe team up against the scheming white men. Virginia Fox, hot girl from The Goat, Cops and others, plays the chief’s daughter, Keaton’s prize for saving the reservation at the end. She never gets much to do except to look pretty in a few close-ups.

These are all totally worthwhile shorts… think I’d choose Scarecrow and Goat to show off to others, if I ever had people over for a shorts-fest like I keep threatening to do.

Big Joe Roberts:
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by ·Comments Off on Sherlock Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)

Supposed to be a full feature, but cut down to 45 minutes after initial screenings. Probably they cut most of the plot, since what we’re left with is a slowish intro, an awesome running-on-train-cars gag, then a huge dream sequence where Keaton goes inside a movie screen for the tightest collection of astonishing gags probably ever performed. Jumping right through his assistant, through a window into an old lady costume, riding the handlebars of a motorcycle, and an exploding billiards game.

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The intro to the dream/movie sequence is great, scene-change backdrops changing under Keaton as he tries to adapt. Cute ending too, shy Keaton looking to the movie screen for advice on what to do with his girl. Only possible thing wrong with this movie is the horrid score on the DVD… will have to find something appropriate to play next time I watch it.

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by ·Comments Off on College (1927, Buster Keaton)

Buster is a nonathletic college kid, stressing academic achievement over sport. But when his girl falls for an athlete, Buster’s gotta prove his versatility on the field to win her back!

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Or something along those lines. At the end, the jock is threatening to ruin her just by staying in her dorm room and not leaving. If it’s known that she was alone with him for more than a few minutes, her virginity will be in question, and she’ll have to leave college in shame. Fortunately, Buster pole-vaults through the window and pelts him with college memorabilia. A weird little movie, pretty funny but didn’t kill.

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Also watched The Electric House (1922), a short from back when suicide was funny:
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by ·Comments Off on The Unholy Three (1925, Tod Browning)

Pretty good movie with laughably ludicrous plot.

Ventriloquist Echo (Lon Chaney) teams up with midget Willie (Hans from Freaks) and strongman Hercules (Victor McLaglen, oscar-winning John Ford fave) to form the unholy three, an ill-conceived crime group. In tow are cute pickpocket Mae Busch (Foolish Wives, and some 35 movies between 1931 and ’35) and patsy Hector (Matt Moore).

Hans is maybe better appreciated as an actor in a silent film, since his voice is hard to understand in Freaks… he out-acts everyone but Chaney in this movie. Chaney is fun to watch as Granny O’Grady and Hans as Little Willie. Hercules never has much to do. The giant chimpanzee and out-of-focus cockatoo are cool, too, and the visual speech bubbles when Echo makes the birds talk (funny to have a ventriloquist in a silent film). The dialogue contains “echoes” (repeated lines), appreciated by the English students watching along with me. A few good shots of the shadows of shadowy conspirators conspiring.

The movie’s not scary, more wacky/funny than anything else. Their criminal plot is idiotic and doesn’t work. Hercules kills someone during a heist and gets them all in trouble, everyone’s plotting behind everyone else’s back, Chaney and Hector are in love with Mae, and eventually Herc and Willie kill each other via chimpanzee. Hector is about to be framed for the murder when “Grandma” Chaney comes and saves him. Chaney is then set free by awesome-looking judge Edward Connelly (The Saphead, The Merry Widow) for being such a good guy and goes back to the circus, ho hum. Movie’s got good atmosphere… def. a quality lightweight film with that freakish crime-drama Tod Browning touch.

Not to be confused with the non-Browning sound remake from 1930, the last film Lon Chaney made before his death from cancer.

by ·Comments Off on West of Zanzibar (1928, Tod Browning)

Liked it better than Unholy Three because of the super fast pace and more exciting atmosphere, the wonderfully (if not accurately) rendered African setting.

Ron on IMDB helpfully summarizes: “Magician Phroso’s wife Anna leaves him for another man, named Crane, who fights with Phroso and leaves him paralyzed. Later Anna returns and he finds her dead, leaving behind a daughter. For 18 years Phroso, known as “Dead Legs” by his cronies, plots his revenge, becoming a pseudo-king in East Africa, nearby where Crane has set up an ivory business. When the daughter is grown, having lived in a brothel in Zanzibar thanks to “Dead Legs”, Phroso put his plan into action, resulting in revenge and retribution all around.”

Lon Chaney is great as Dead Legs, but the great Lionel Barrymore looked pretty generic to me, failed to stand out as the arch-rival. Young wife Anna quit acting the following year (right before sound films) and lived until 1986. Drunken Doc, who falls in love with the daughter, was Warner Baxter, who won the best-actor oscar that same year in the second annual academy awards, for In Old Arizona, the first full-talkie.

Not to be confused with the 50’s British Ealing Studios West of Zanzibar about a good-hearted man (Story of O actor Anthony Steel with wife Sheila Sim of A Canterbury Tale) fighting ivory pirates.

by ·Comments Off on Pandora’s Box (1929, G.W. Pabst)

A good movie, watched with Katy and the solo piano score. Very “modern” story of Louise “Lulu” Brooks with her bobbed black hair and grinning sexuality and the trouble she causes all the men in her life.

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Lulu’s gonna marry Dr. Scho(e)n, but his son Alwa is secretly in love with her… as are Lulu’s former pimp (?) Schigolch, the first lesbian character in film history Countess Anna, and even at the end Jack The Ripper. Hilarity doesn’t exactly ensue… Lulu stays semi-oblivious as the situation gets worse. She gets Schon in trouble at the opening of her own big stage show, causing the cancellation of his wedding and the fight that leads to his death at Lulu’s hands. Alwa grieves his father for all of a minute before grabbing Lulu and running off to hide, taking Schigolch (a drunken load) along for the ride. They end up destitute with Lulu cheerfully offering herself to a serial killer by the end.

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Louise Brooks is electrifying, and the film looks terrific and kept our attention easily. Great piano score, more interesting and complex than the little sound sample on the menu would imply. The rare Criterion-issued film that is more interesting from a star perspective than a director/filmmaking one… everyone then and now has been more concerned with Louise Brooks as/is Lulu than anything else.

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by ·Comments Off on Faust (1926, FW Murnau)

Watched the German version with orchestral score. Movie made me feel ten feet tall, with wings. Score is nothing to worry about, I turned the volume down… will have to try the harp score next time. Brilliant, full of harsh angles and crazed effects and loopy overacting. Presence! The movie booms with exclamation points! Guy Maddin must love it.

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An angel stupidly bets the devil (err, Emil Jannings as Mephisto) that he can’t corrupt humanitarian scientist Faust (a swedish actor who died of pneumonia in the late 30’s), with the world at stake. Emil first brings a badass plague, then allows Faust the power to cure a few people to make him feel like he’s all good. Then, the devil offers Faust youth so he can lust after some very white young woman (Camilla Horn, who acted through the late 80’s). Faust never really gets the girl, though he sleeps with her once… then is blamed for killing her brother and flees on his magic carpet. The girl’s mother dies, she’s put in the stocks, has a baby, loses it homeless in the snow because nobody will help her, then is burned at the stake accused of killing her own child. Faust hears her cry for help at the last minute, holds her and they die in the fire together. Faust goes straight to hell but for some reason the world is saved?

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Emil is awesomely sinister. Movie is a visual delight, a story well told, everything a movie should be. Will have to check out the commentary, the harp score, the export version, etc etc.

by ·Comments Off on Blood of a Poet (1930, Jean Cocteau)

Under an hour long and just packed full of goodies. No reason not to watch this all the time.

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Poet grows a mouth on his hand, transfers it to an armless statue, awakening her. She traps him in the room but he escapes through the mirror into a Cocteau Crooked Hallwayâ„¢ where he peeps through some keyholes seeing drugs and death and poetry. Later a boy is knocked down by a snowball and left bleeding while the poet and the statue woman play cards. Then some Cocteau Mysterious Poetic Stuffâ„¢ floats the film to a close.

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Dargelos and the Killer Snowball:

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The scene below was originally shot with the Viscount who financed the film and his wife, for whom the film was some kind of birthday present. Cocteau: “But when their families saw that they were applauding a suicide, they forbade it. We had to reshoot the scene of the loges with extras.” The real Viscount fled Paris for a while and delayed the release of Blood of a Poet for over a year while the furor from the Viscount’s other production, Bunuel’s L’Age d’Or cooled down.

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Cocteau calls the movie “a disturbing series of voyeuristic tableaux, a descent into oneself, a way of using the mechanism of the dream without sleeping, a crooked candle, often mysteriously blown out, carried about in the night of the human body.”

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Ebert calls Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus minor, and Les Parents Terribles a masterpiece. Of course I’ll have to watch both of them again.

by ·Comments Off on L’Age d’Or (1930, Luis Bunuel)

Financed by the same guy who produced Blood of a Poet, it turns out. This one’s harder to remember than Un Chien Andalou for some reason. So…

Scorpion documentary intro (commentary guy leads us to believe that like a scorpion’s tail, the film is composed of five segments, ending in a sixth that is filled with poison), then bunch of decrepit guys in a shack hike away to fight the bishops, then group of people stumble upon the dead bishops. Group gets upset at our couple and takes the man away (who angrily kicks a dog). Possibly the first poop joke in the movies. Group lays cornerstone for what will be Rome.

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Man kicks a violin down the sidewalk and guy with bread on his head walks through a field, while our man is being led down the street and our woman (speaking with sync sound) kicks a cow out of her bedroom. After she sees visions in her mirror, he kicks a blind man and escapes.

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During a grand party at which the groundskeeper kills his son (to the approval of everyone present) and a fire kills a maid, our couple reconnects. During a concert after the party, the two sneak off to the garden to suck each other’s fingers and develop foot fetishes with statues. The minister of the interior shoots himself after a phone call and ends up on the ceiling, then it’s another touching scene in the garden. But our woman leaves our man for the conductor of the concert. The man hits the bedroom in a rage, spraying pillow feathers everywhere and tossing priests and burning trees out the window.

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Finally, a Jesus-like man and three guys with fancy hats emerge from a 120-day orgy at a chateau. Jesus returns briefly to the chateau to kill a woman, losing his beard in the process. A bunch of scalps hang on a cross. The end.

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Pretty interesting movie, and really fun in parts. The commentary actually helped on this one, too.