In the Land of Nitrate (1926)

Underpaid, overworked communists with strange religious inclinations, loving rough Wild West films: the workers in German-operated nitrate mines in Chile, 1926.

A nice collection of silent films online

If you like:

• silent films
• not paying
• diversity

then there’s a nice online collection I found this morning:scottlord’s video collection - Videos about Af Satans Bog, True Heart Susie, Pickford, Victor Sjostrom 1918 The Outlaw A…Added to my links !

Pordenone 2007 - days 2 - My first day with the 6-act structure

The thoughts:

1. Plot structure of German films: too close to theater source
2. Entertainment in American films means disregard for situation comedies, and a celebration of modern reality

The day’s program:

• Buddenbrooks (Germany, 1923)
• US Silent sponsored films: safety first !
• Baby Brother (US, 1927), Wiggle Your Ears (US, 1929)
• Il Piccolo Garibaldino (IT, 1909), I Mille (IT, 1912)
• Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin: von der Schönhauser allee nach Hollywood (DE, 2006)
• Paris Qui Dort (FR, 1923-25), Séraphin ou les jambes nues (FR, 1921)
• Lumpen und Seide (DE, 1925)

Kammerspiel…in terms of plot construction, it’s astonishing how close to their theater source those German films were. Not only is the act structure written into the film (titles: “end of Act 1″ - “Act 1″ etc. –some american films did the same with “Part 1″ etc., but one had always suspected it was more to indicate reel changes), it’s written into the plot: Buddenbrooks gives us an early example of that. It’s condensed a 1,100+ Thomas Mann novel into 85 minutes, but it’s kept the dramatic structure of a play intact. Because they don’t fit into the tight dramatic structure some key human elements are missing (the marriage for instance) or simply vanish (the child!). It’s still early but I’ll try a thought here:

American silent films tend to be constructed more around notion of psychological development rather than around ideas about the dramatic structure. German films seem to prefer dramatic structure over psychological content.

And indeed, the day’s other ‘Other Weimar’ film, Lumpen und Seide (1925), confirms this: it opens in a poor club, but once inside the rich apartment, there’s no leaving it, and the dramatic workings take over. “Pleasant entertainment” says the Pordenone catalogue (G. Brown) — not the same idea of “pleasant” as American films.

Entertainment in 1920s American films is at times hard to distinguish from a celebration of modern reality: thrills and individuals locked into formula drama (as opposed to semi-human pawns written into brilliant situation comedies)

Mawson, Shackleton, polar expeditions — and authenticity

The Bioscope

But modern video is too bright, too much of the moment - it anaethetizes the ordeal. The monochrome silent footage, by its very distance, makes those things endured in the past seem all the more astonishing, because they seem so distant. In seeing the films of Scott, Shackleton and Mawson we long for close-ups and the camera techniques of today that will bring them that much closer to us, but maybe it is the lack of intimacy that is their strength. When Hell Freezes’s own faux dramatised scenes were strongest when they showed figures lost in the white distance, not trying to show the agonies etched on their faces.

Or, as I argued in Pordenone 2007 - day 1 - spaces (although about filmed sport events):

it’s more important for the film to tell us that we are indeed spectators, just like the real spectators in the film, rather than to show us what happens. It’s about status — and this still new joy of “being there” thanks to the movie camera. Today the editing is complex, and the spectator is not just a priviledged individual but someone whose participation is required.

Pordenone 2007 - day 1 - spaces

The thoughts:

• 1 filming sport spectacles: the thrills of spectatorships, or the thrills of participation by proxy?
• 2 the rhetorics of space: multiple aesthetics of space collide in films
• 3 do silent films always show old ways of doing silent films ?

The program:

• Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (1924-25 - Germany) [The Way To Strength and Beauty]
• The Cook (1918 -US)
• Pass the Gravy (1928- US)
• Csak Egy Kislány van a Vilagón (1930 - Hungary)- [Only One Girl in the World]
• The Stolen Voice (1915 - US)

(See the diversity here ? And this is only in one afternoon…)

The Way to Strength and Beauty is a kulturfilm that would like to be about how to best keep in shape — only it’s really about how to look nice — and as could be expected it defines nice in non-intellectual, anti-glasses, cliché terms of women in long garbs dancing symbolic dances on unmotivated meadows. The whole aesthetic presentation creates a weird distance for the viewer, as in that football game where they say they’re going to show the Lazio Roma playing: you end up being shown the backs of onlookers (all priests) while the camera is happily oblivious of the action on the field.

Is there something here ? Could one look at how soccer games have been shot over the years ? To compare those distant shots of onfield action with the close-ups of bloodied rugby players one has been treated to recently, there is a distinct contrast: the Lazio game is a distant affair, and what seems important is less what happens than the fact that it does happen — in other words, it’s more important for the film to tell us that we are indeed spectators, just like the real spectators in the film, rather than to show us what happens. It’s about status — and this still new joy of “being there” thanks to the movie camera. Today the editing is complex, and the spectator is not just a priviledged individual but someone whose participation is required. The close-ups help us become referees all of us (video refereeing being only the logical conclusion — it turns everyone in the stadium itself into referees), but they also push us into being supporters. It asks us to be in a rather uneasy position.

But before the Lazio can get anything going you’re on to madcap humor with The Cook and its subtle reminders that in silent movies jokes can also be audio jokes: Buster Keaton as the waiter screams the order to the kitchen and into the ear of the young melancholic woman next to him, who remains perfectly melancholic. Pass the Gravy takes space staging one step further: it creates spaces that function like realistic ones, with none of the asides that mar space construction in early silent films. Here all characters can hear and if one doesn’t want to attract attention, then one should…make signs. I always like it when silent movies turn their announced infirmity on its head and use pantomime realistically. Here the chicken that shouldn’t be eaten but shouldn’t either be noticed is the source of endless pantomimes, the best being probably the egg-laying scene that becomes a football moment. But wait ! The last gag turns this plausible space on its head again: Shultz hurls a small stone on Max’s rapidly dwindling figure in the distance, and implausibly enough, it lands. Funny because implausible, implausible because until then staging had been very careful to construct plausible spaces…

I hope that’s clear. I think there’s something bigger here — indeed that’s part of my research work right now. There’s a whole underlaying aesthetics behind this construction of space, realistic or not, in silent films. And they play with that code self-consciously. The difficulty is for us to reconstruct those codes. In Pass the Gravy, as in many other cases, staging and space construction creates expectations that can be tragicallly met or comically disregarded.

Case in point: Only One Girl in the World. I’m going to make a fool of myself since this was my first Hungarian film ever, but talk about melodrama and realistic staging ! Only the climatic moments in terms of drama are shown, leaving all psychological developments to be deduced rather than experienced: Gyorgy and Kalinka fall in love (when have they met before?), Gyorgy brings a mistress back to the village (when did he get married to Kalinka?), and so on…until the final conversion: Gyorgy becomes all right again for Kalinka thanks to…the title song. And each time, to go with melodramatic story-telling, you have melodramatic spatial staging: one space per scene, unconnected spaces throughout (even when they’re outdoors: where’s that train station?)

Compare this with what followed on the program though it did not quite follow chronologically: The Stolen Voice, 1915, US. So the plot is about a hypnotist who steals a tenor’s voice out of jealousy over the singer’s success with women, notably his. Singer goes to Europe for cure, comes back still mute, finds a job acting…in silent films. Happy end. Now that melodrama travels freely in the modern world: cabaret sccenes, dance halls, boats, cars, phone conversations, film studio, New York and the El…the whole of the modern world is there on screen, and multiple spaces are used in the staging.

Melodrama and modernity (pace Ben Singer). Interestingly, that film shows how films used to be made: archaic. A limited set that moves to the wind and shakes with every door that closes, exaggerated acting — this tells us how cinema considered itself by 1915: a much more naturalistic medium than 3 years before…But here’s another question: when films show film-making in the ’10s and ’20s, do they mostly show archaic film-making ? And is that to make the point that cinema is modern — fast-changing, constantly evolving ?

Silent movies in the classroom - teaching History

Another link that comes through The Bioscope: Motion pictures in history teaching; a study of the Chronicles of America photoplays, as an aid in seventh grade instruction (1929)

Thank you Bioscope !

Pordenone 2007 - a reconstructed diary of hypotheses

If you’ve never gone to Pordenone, then you just have to go next year. This was my first year, and what a treat it is! Gorgeous prints, even better musical accompaniment, and for someone like me who just doesn’t know anybody and doesn’t do much socializing, a chance to get lost in foggy thoughts about film, aesthetics, acting, lightings and staging issues — in almost perfect oblivion of the real world outside (almost: in the real world I missed my first flight to Italy and got to the festival a day late. Also in the real world, in the city of Pordenone, during that marvelous week, some crazy residents decided to take benches often used by immigrants to sit and turn them into a monument to Intolerance — benches that no-one can use anymore.)

If you’re looking for a clear diary of films shown at Pordenone this year, you might as well start at the indispensable Bioscope, which has a lot of notes on a lot of the films shown this year — even though Luke couldn’t stay until the end.

What I want to do here is reconstruct the thoughts and research ideas, however banal, that I’ve had during that wonderful week of movie watching (to allow you to skip to those I’ll write them in red). Watching six feature films a day (and then all those shorts in-between!) does something to one’s brain. It’s a highly pleasing experience that brings back happy memories of the film-filled afternoons of one’s lazy, Parisian youth. But it’s also a chance to test aesthetic hypotheses on the go. And the wonderful diversity of the Pordenone program, switching from Holland to Italy, Germany to the US, the 1910s to the late 1920s, really helps with providing a sense of perspective.

a night at the movies - 1912

just found this browsing the New York Times archives today: a sultry night at the movies

(anyone with info on “Married the Third Year”?)

Silent movies in the classroom — teaching English

Found a fascinating little journal article this morning, written by an English teacher based in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1923. It’s the result from a little test to see whether movies could help teach children about English literature, better than books. (CUNNINGHAM Adelaide: “Teaching English with the Movies.” English Journal. vol. 12, no. 7, sept. 1923: 488-490. You need a JSTOR subscription to access it).

Incidentally, this English teacher in 1923 has no qualms about using the word “movie”, though she seems to prefer “moving pictures” and she uses “movies” in between quotation marks the first time around:

The promise of a “movie” stimulated the class like an electric current. The idea that a school book was actually suitable material for a movie gave it a charm never before associated with the textbook, which had ever been the symbol of “all work and no play.” A movie! They would study Silas Marner in order to understand and enjoy the movie.

Now, results are indeed encouraging, not just as regards interest and attention of students (some things never change), but also plot retention, moral lesson, and - my favorite - documentary value:

The effect of the movie upon the pupils was expressed also by a theme written November 1 upon the subject “The Pleasure and Profit I Derived from the Silas Marner Movie.” To quote from several of the themes: “It is a pleasure to be able to sit down and see the people who lived in the seventeenth century pictured before me. Their quaint dresses and customs are interesting. I think that if a person reads a book and then goes to see the picture of that book, he will understand the book better. The events in Silas Marner were made clearer in my mind by seeing the picture. It showed plainly the different characters and helped correct any wrong ideas I had about their appearances.

Miss Cunningham may have been a rather enlightened individual (though movies, even fictional movies, were often thought in relation to their educational value in the 1920s):

it seems to those of us who teach English that our pupils should in a great measure guide and determine our methods of teaching. It is useless to condemn moving pictures; we may as well condemn all novels because “dime novels” are pernicious. Why not bring the movies into the schoolroom ? The future appears bright for the educational moving picture. The schools of New York City are using it in the teaching of English, history, and science.

Still, she does seem unaware that images also lie. One can wonder at the “truthfulness” of the last example she gives:

A film is being staged in the “Sleepy Hollow Region” featuring the comedian, Will Rogers, as Ichabod Crane.

One can also wonder about the unrecognized paradox of an art form that is described in the same breath as close to “dime novels” and as having educational value — or Will Rogers as historian. (the film mentionned by miss Cunningham appears to be the 1922 version of The Headless Horseman)

The word “movie”

Thanks to http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0501D&L=ads-l&P=5480 :

20 March 1915, THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD, pg. 1749, col. 1:

One thousand editors in the United States, asked by the Photoplay Magazine as to whether the word “movie” shall be entered in the dictionaries and used as pure English, have decided in the affirmative. Of the 733 who voted, 511 voted “yes” and 222 “no.”

27 March 1915, THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD, pg. 1912, col. 1:
CHICAGO LETTER
BY JAS. S. McQUADE

_Regarding the Childish Word, “Movie”_

IN a brevity in my Chicago letter last week, it was stated that out of 733 editors throughout the country who cast a vote for or against the use of the coined word “movie,” 511 voted “yes,” and 222 “no.” It is to be regretted that the reasons for their voting for or against were not given and printed.

Within the past week I have read an article in one CHicago newspaper in which the hope was expressed that the word “movie” would be retained, because it comes in so handily in the writing of newspaper headings! In another instance a writer was gleeful over the fact that even the infant, among the first words mastered by him, used the word “movie,” and that “movie” was also the children’s word and so had come to stay. But somehow, much as I still like the old nursery rhymes and love to hear children repeat them, I am of the opinion that it is best to put away tenderly childish things when one has reached manhood or womanhood.

The coinage of “movie” was most assuredly childish. It stands for “moving picture.” The coined word, please note, is not taken from the name of the thing itself, but from the qualifying word “moving.” It is not at all unreasonable, therefore, to call everything which is not at rest a “movie,” including the sun, moon and stars, the earth, an automobile, an airplane and the city garbage cart. Even man himself when in motion is a “movie,” and so is a fly, and so is that other pestiferous insect with a name nearly alike.

Is this childish word “movie,” on the ground of etymology, a correct word to represent “moving picture” in our dictionaries? Is it a correct word from the common sense point of view? Is it a correct word for grown-ups to use, unless they are still fit for the nursery in mind and accomplishments?

By all means let the children use “movie” to their little hearts’ content; but in the name of all that is logical and customary in the making and adoption of the words of a language, let us, grown-ups, put it tenderly away.