I am not going to comment on everything I watched but I’ll talk about some of it. May write more tomorrow.
I am still exploring the foundational history of film and I have found this journey to be very insightful. It has made me appreciate the entirety of cinema on every level, and I think it’s a stunning example of human innovation that perhaps grew at least partially out of our need to communicate emotions and ideas to one another. It also gives perspective of where we are now. Seeing how things developed then, and how these cinematic artists were combining technology and artistry to create a bold and powerful new pieces of art, makes me think about where we are now and where cinema is headed.
Since my last post I revisited
A Trip to the Moon twice. I really enjoy the addition of the vibrant colors and Jeff Mills score. I think they do a great job bringing out the sense of imagination and wonder that was clearly intended. It's just stunning to me that we are able to see this kind of masterpiece. I was still so enraptured the third time that I showed it to my filmmaking buddy, who had already seen it but I didn’t care - I wanted to experience it with someone.
Since then, I have watched a few other shorts from the early silent era:
The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903)
Not much to say about this one, even though it is pretty engaging it’s mostly a good watch for historical purposes regarding filmmaking. I think I have seen it before. The last shot is damn classic.
Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910)
The depiction of science here is pretty silly, but the creation-of-the-monster scene is absolutely fantastic - one of the best monster creation/transformation scenes ever? It felt as iconic to me as the transformation in
An American Werewolf in London (which may be my favorite so that’s saying something), and yet I never hear it get talked about so maybe it’s just cool to me.
Alice in Wonderland (Cecil Hepworth & Percy Stow, 1903)
Another great example of ambitious cinematic storytelling with clever use of camera trickery, props, and optical illusion. I think that is what I am most drawn to with early cinema. I remember watching
The Invisible Man as a kid, and being absolutely inspired by it’s creative effects, which captivated me partly because I didn’t know how they were accomplished. While the effects in earlier work like this and
A Trip to the Moon are usually easier to figure out, they are still incredibly charming and magical. It’s clear to see that they are pulling from how theater and magicians at the time went about their “effects” - Méliès, for example, was a stage magician. Whatever the case, it’s enthralling and feels like something from a different world entirely. Knowing it’s our own history makes it somehow more magical, more of a fantastic dream.
Moving on from the silent era…
The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941)
The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933)
Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931)
One of my friends has not seen any of the Universal monster flicks except
Frankenstein, and my horror buddy and I want to change that. We started with
The Wolf Man, which is great and a little more polished than the earlier ones.
The Invisible Man, as I mentioned earlier, has an incredible use of special effects, and it also has an equally incredible performance by Claude Rains.
Dracula surprised me this time. I thought it was my least favorite Universal monster film (or one of them), but being reminded of the stunning gothic atmosphere, enthusiastic performances by Lugosi and Frye, and overall iconic influence it had on the horror genre, made it become one of my favorite Universal monster flicks. It’s wonderful.
Children of the night... what music they make!
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