Wings (1927)

I caught a free Veterans Day screening of this first Best Picture winner at AFI Silver in Silver Springs, MD with live piano accompaniment. There was a fifteen minute intermission (the second half of the movie is much more exciting), but this pianist played 2.5 hours of music synced to a silent movie, turning her own pages, vamping a bit. It was very impressive. The composer was apparently a student of Dvorak. It is consequentially very melodic. In a silent movie, facial expressions and music have to pull double duty to convey emotion.

This early movie is not just a war film. It is a melodramatic character study. There are a significant number of non-battle scenes that show character evolution. I must say, I was not a fan of our hero, Jack. I know he's supposed to be our American hero, but he treats everyone terribly. Sylvia and David tiptoe around him so as not to hurt his feelings while he has no regard for theirs. I know he's supposed to be the scrappy hero that gets the girl, but he doesn't deserve any of this. He even gets Mary fired! And he can't hold his liquor--that was a weird scene. Also, they get away with some stuff in this pre-Code era.

Visually, it is a very impressive movie. There is the famous scene at the nightclub, with the rigged camera that moves towards our hero seemingly pushing straight through a set of tables and guests. The early scene with the camera on the swing is charming. The climactic battle scene is extraordinary. The number of extras alone, before computers could generate them, is astounding. You see them shooting guns and dropping bombs, crashing planes and causing all this destruction, and you wonder, how did they not kill anyone? It looks so real because it is--how did they do that? And then after reading Wikipedia, I discovered they actually did kill someone. There were two accidents, one fatal. I was even wondering how they got these huge 1920s era cameras on planes? The aerial dog-fighting scenes are incredible for the 1920s. Dunkirk, being in the computer era, is comparatively less impressive. The gunfire is painted in red onto the film, which I'm guessing was only in the restoration.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) & At Land (1944)

Maya Deren is an important figure in experimental film making. She creates an experience for the viewer, bending time and playing with our sense of reality. The houses is like something out of an MC Escher painting. She dances around her house in Meshes of the Afternoon in a carefully choreographed short film to the twangs of dissonant strings. She depicts things on screen that can only be done on film, and then shes pushes the limits of the medium. It is surreal and as I've learned from watching Bunuel, when it comes to surrealism you just have to accept it and enjoy the ride. 

An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) (1929)

I loved The Exterminating Angel so much that I wanted to watch this classic short film as well. Professor Roberto Buso-Garcia started his lecture on The Exterminating Angel with the iconic opening scene from Un Chien Andalou. Then he put up the lights and yelled "OH SHIT," putting into words the gasps that escaped from all our mouths simultaneously. "THE CLOUD CUTS THE MOON!" he exclaimed partly sarcastically but also seriously. Of course the shock came from cutting the eye, but the juxtaposition of the two images is such brilliant film technique.

The film doesn't have too much discernible plot, but the scenes have common elements that you recall. It is surreal. And you don't ask why, you just accept that it doesn't matter why. Film is a really wonderful medium for surreal art. I really appreciate Brunuel's and Salvador Dali's wild imaginations.

The Crowd (1928)

King Vidor was a master of melodrama. I really enjoyed this movie. Despite its silence, or perhaps due to its silence, it conveys so much raw emotion. The facial expressions and gestures are very exaggerated. The action is incredibly regular. The movie depicts normal life. It does not require a villain because life itself is tough enough. We overcome obstacles that are mundane, but we rarely see them on film. And it is not even so much that it was realistic, but that it was real. It is genuine. It is as if Vidor recorded an actual married couple without a script, and captured real life.

I also took notice of the music. It is two hours long, and the music is continuous in a silent movie. The music does not resolve when you think it will because it just has to keep going for two hours. It is actually pretty incredible. Professor Jelavich told us that when the movie was shown in theaters back in 1928, the music would have been played live and it would have been improvised. We did not even hear the same music. Every viewing would have hypothetically been different.

Warner Brothers has been sitting on this movie for many years. And we are waiting for Warner Bros. to re-release this movie in decent quality. All we had was a DVD version of the VHS release from back when people still used VHS. They have the print...they just have to share it.

A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune) (1902)

This 1902 silent French classic is a landmark in world cinematic history.  The movie was lost and rediscovered in the late 1920s when Melies's importance was recognized.  In 1993, a hand-colored print was found incomplete and it is this version that was restored and screened at Cannes in 2011.  The black-and-white prints were colored by hand to fill in the missing scenes.  To be honest, the coloring was a little distracting, kind of trippy as the shades kept changing ever so slightly.  The restoration also features strange music by the French band Air, which is very twenty-first century.  It did not match 1905 at all, but it did fall in line with the psychedelic colors.  I also saw the pure black and white version, featuring a piano score and some awkward narration.

What is the significance of this film? It pioneered entertaining narrative storytelling in film,  primitive special effects, expensive production value, and "long form" movies (~15 minutes).  The most famous scene is one in which the camera seemingly zooms into a moon with a face.  The special effect is a mechanical rigging system in which he moved the moon toward the camera.  Some substitution splicing lets the capsule rocket ship magically/fantastically appear in the moon's eye.  This is all brought together by a very overly theatrical cast that sort of scrambles about the set in a comical fashion. All filmmakers owe everything to Melies and this film.