The Epic of Everest (1924)

What kind of an individual looks at Mount Everest and says, “I will overcome that”? A person of rare drive, I think; a lot of courage and even more ego. And a person of means—lucky in life and in the moment. You’d need all those qualities, so that your fear of the mountain did not lead to intimidation, and then, to a hesitation to climb at all.

You’d need to check your awe, I suppose. Just enough to keep going.

The Epic of Everest is a documentary about that act: that checking of awe. It details a 1924 attempt by a team of Englishmen, aided by Tibetan men and Sherpas, to reach the summit of the world’s tallest peak. As if it were not enough for them to reach the top, the team wished to capture their ascent on camera. And so, through a tremendous mixture of planning and will, endurance and scientific experimentation, they produced the footage that would become this film. I’ve no doubt that Captain John Noel and his companions were told, many times, that it could not be done. But they did it, mostly. And we still have the record today.

Grass (1925)

A friend asked me the other day if documentaries were common in the silent era. I told him I’d seen a few—Nanook of the North (1922) for one, and Chang (1927), and that Nanook was the most famous. I also told him that silent documentaries differed a bit, philosophically, from what came later.

The qualities by which we judge a documentary successful today aren’t simply artistic ones. We also want a story we can believe in—on more than emotional grounds. If we see staged scenes, for example, we wonder how the real event differed from what we’re seeing. If persons or groups depicted in the film aren’t given voice, we wonder about the filmmaker’s bias. We acknowledge that bringing any story to the screen requires a degree of artifice—that documentaries are art, like other films. But like a well-written magazine feature (for example), they must be delivered with that objective sheen.

The reason my friend had asked me about silent docs was because I’d told him I’d just watched Grass. The film depicts a Bakhtiari tribe’s migratory odyssey from modern-day Turkey to western Iran, in search of pasture land for their livestock. Grass is, by the standards of the decade in which it was filmed, a successful documentary. By today’s standards, not so much.

Mistress Nell (1915)

There is more than one way to appreciate Mistress Nell, and it depends, I think, on how many Mary Pickford films you’ve seen in your life.

I’ve seen a lot of them. Enough to know the prototypical Pickford part when I see it: the plucky, forceful youth, the rough-mannered gem who knows herself and inspires the rest of us. And so I can say with confidence that if you like that kind of thing, and you’ve never seen a Pickford film before, Mistress Nell is a good one to start with.

Mabel's Dramatic Career (1913)

Mabel Normand was Keystone Studios’ greatest female star. A comedienne of the first rank, she also wrote and directed, and would be better remembered today if her personal life hadn’t ended her career, and her life, too soon.

For those of us who do know her, the rewards of a Normand performance remain as clear as they were in the 1910s. She had impeccable pacing and natural pathos, and an ability—unmatched, I think, in the silent era—to appear overwhelmed by the chaos surrounding her. This was calculated, of course, and it was a perfect fit for the short comedies Mack Sennett’s studio produced. For those films were fast—sometimes too fast—and populated with comedy grotesques. Normand brought heart, and even sympathy, to the Keystone films she starred in. She slowed the tornado down.

Mabel’s Dramatic Career isn’t Normand’s best work, nor is it one of Keystone’s best shorts. But it exemplifies what Normand’s presence could add to a film. And, maybe, what her absence could take away.

The Manxman (1929)

There is no love triangle quite like this one.

I first watched The Manxman years ago, having already seen several of Alfred Hitchcock’s other silent films. None of those ones had overwhelmed. Though they showed touches of the brilliance to come, they were also the products of a youthful director still finding his footing. They were uneven and, by the standards of late-20s silent cinema, nothing to write home about.

But The Manxman? I loved it. Was transfixed by it. My heart broken by it. Could predict not one moment of it. I told people to watch it, promising they’d have a similar experience. A few did, and most of them agreed. But it remains a film few people know about, available in lousy video copies and rarely mentioned even when Hitchcock’s silent films are (rarely) mentioned.

I like to think BFI is changing that. Its 2012 restorations of the “Hitchcock 9” (the surviving nine silents that the master directed—out of a total of ten) lets these films shine as best they can—eliminating, for the most part, the wear of time, and allowing them to be judged, without qualification, on their artistic merits. Some still fall short. The Manxman, in my opinion, soars.

Blackmail (1929)

Yesterday evening marked the start of the Toronto Silent Film Festival’s Hitchcock 9 screening series—an event that will be executed over several weeks. Could you, by chance, be unfamiliar with the Hitchcock 9? You are not alone.

Alfred Hitchcock directed ten silent films at the beginning of his career, nine of which survive. They vary in genre, theme and style, and they are little known today—in part because they are silent, but also because they’ve long been available, on video, in prints of such a quality that Hitchcock could’ve sued for vandalism.

But things are looking up. In 2012, the British Film Institute (BFI) completed restorations of all nine silents, and by all accounts they look gorgeous. I can vouch for only one so far: the opening film of TSFF’s series: Blackmail.

The Yellow Ticket (1918)

Imagine being told you could not go to school because of your last name. Imagine, even, being barred entry into a city—unless you accepted a legal standing that made you part of a permanent subclass.

I’m not referring to current events, although I could be. That’s the thing about bigotry—it’s always a metaphor for, and a callback to, earlier bigotries. And so, while we turn on the news and see (or simply, live through) today’s hatreds, we can also turn to the past and see them manifested there. Even dramatized, as is in The Yellow Ticket.

La Voz de Los Silenciados (The Voice of the Voiceless) (2013)

Long ago (in the 90s) I fell in love with a video game called Out of This World. The game’s protagonist was a scientist, transported to an alien planet where he could understand neither the language nor the motives of the natives.

Out of This World was unsettling, because its designer, Éric Chahi, sought to make it art. The game featured a character in isolation, but it also evoked isolation through its game play, using music sparingly—often relying on tones, rather than whole melodies, to make a point about how bad the player’s situation had become. Action sequences were intercut with cinema scenes of dough-headed aliens talking urgently but inscrutably. When the player failed a task—which was often—he returned to the same starting point; usually a prison of some kind, from which he had to escape all over again.

Talk to men and women of my vintage about Out of This World and they’ll tell you it was fun. But what they’ll really want to talk to you about is how it made them feel.

One artwork suggests another. I thought of Out of This World many times while watching La Voz de Los Silenciados (The Voice of the Voiceless), a contemporary silent film by Maximón Monihan, an American director with a background in skateboarding and skateboarding films. Here again we are presented with a protagonist plucked from her own environment and placed in a new one both hostile and difficult to understand. Again we have a narrative broken down into a series of quests, bookended by sameness, repetition. And again there is an undertone of horror. But while the game’s hero was lost among aliens, in this case, our hero is lost among her fellow humans. She is displaced not just geographically, but linguistically. Because she is deaf.

The Wind (1928)

You can say a thing a lot of ways. That’s why we watch silent films, isn’t it? To see how, when the sound’s taken away, some great artist got his or her point across. To be reminded of all the options.

Imagine, for example, that you’re watching the story of a man and his wife, both young. They were married under pretences the male party now considers false. They’ve grown estranged. Now he is out on a job and she is home. An intruder muscles his way into the house and attempts to take her away. Realizing, finally, that she would rather stay with her husband than move on, she dispatches the intruder. As his heavy body hits the floor, two dinner plates, set askew on the table behind her, slide into an even stack.

There is no intertitle to tell us their marriage is saved. But it is. The plates said so.

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

When you mention Grave of the Fireflies to someone who’s seen it, they give you a rueful grin. “Saddest movie ever,” they say, or something like that.

I’ve seen Grave of the Fireflies three times: most recently in advance of a screening happening at TIFF Bell Lightbox, here in Toronto, next month. I don’t know if I’ll be attending that screening or not, but I did want to write about it, to help promote the film, and hopefully entice you, if you haven’t seen Grave of the Fireflies, to go. Because sometimes, it’s good to be sad. And when it comes to being good, and very, very sad, Grave of the Fireflies is nearly unparalleled.

The Show (1927)

Carnivals tread a fine line between entertainment and pity. The performers are talented and they work hard; but they live a transient life that, we suspect, they might not have chosen if their luck had been better. We feel much worse for the carnies we see in old films—especially the fat ladies and dog-faced boys and the like. What a way to make a living. But then again, at least they made one.

Tod Browning understood the complexity of audience reactions when it came to this world. He knew it better than most, having worked in carnivals as a talker (like a barker) and a clown. Some of his films, include the silents, The Unholy Three (1925) and The Show, and the early-talkie, Freaks (1932) are set in carnivals of one kind or another. Though these films are very different, they all present us with real characters—people with real problems—who make their way in a business built on the weird and the phony. The films’ structures reflect this: the dignity of their leads juxtaposed with high kitsch. Browning, no arthouse snob, never polished the carnival life for the sake of ‘deeper meaning.’ What you see is what you would have got, had you been there.

The Act of Killing (2012)

Anwar Congo is an older man: dark skinned, grey haired, slight, but fit. He smiles easily. Asked to explain how he forgets his troubles, he is forthright: “Good music, dancing…a little alcohol…a little marijuana…a little—” he struggles to find the word he wants. “—Ecstasy.” In any other documentary, Anwar would be a charmer. But in this one, he is not. The troubles he must forget are his nightmares. And he has those nightmares because he killed over 1,000 people.

Red Sorghum (1987)

Red is everything in Red Sorghum. It places the elements that matter most to the film along one continuum: binding the sacred, like ceremonial garb, to the profane: crops, wine, sex, and blood. It symbolizes birth and death—the big concepts—but also the living in between. It is everything.

Red Sorghum marked the directorial debut of Zhang Yimou, a man who appreciated the power of colour. A noted cinematographer, Zhang had brought his vision to Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth three years before. He’d distinguished that film’s vast landscapes from an equally vast sky with forceful use of yellow, green, and brown against blue. Now, helming a film of his own, he chose a scarlet pallet both lurid and violent.

Three Ages (1923)

Everyone reading this knows Buster Keaton, and most of you probably know a little bit about Three Ages, his first feature, too. Untested in hour-long comedies, Keaton agreed to film something that was splittable into three short films: each one able to stand on its own, if need be. As it turned out, Three Ages worked out just fine as a feature. Today, we remember it as the start of the second, and most artistically successful, phase of his career.

If you like Keaton’s shorts, you’ll like Three Ages. And who doesn’t like his shorts? Almost all of them are fast-paced, sharp comedies, with good gags that obey the laws of physics. They were ambitious too—in scale, as in Cops, and in technical reach, like The Playhouse. The trio of films that make up Three Ages fall about in the middle of that pack. One, though, offered a glimpse into Keaton’s future work, and for that reason, it the most special of the three.

The Goddess (1934)

Ruan Lingyu’s career was short, but she spent it building a memorable body of work. Her starring role in The Goddess may be her greatest. A prostitute who is blessed with a young son but beset by cruelty and bigotry, it was the quintessential sympathy-part, but by no means an easy one. It takes a fine actress to keep a role like this from collapsing into schmaltz. And Lingyu was more than fine—she was fantastic.

The Horse Thief (1986)

I saw The Horse Thief on DVD, two nights ago. “You should see The Horse Thief,” I told my friend, over coffee, one night later. She’ll have the chance: the film is screening at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox this June 29th. And she’ll probably see it for free, because she works there.

But time is money. And so she wanted to know what made it so great—so worth her time—and that I found tricky to explain. For while it would be easy to make a case for the quality of Tian Zhuangzhuang’s direction, or a little tougher, but with research, still possible, to explain the film’s significance within the Chinese cinematic canon, for me these were not the reasons to see it. It was the film’s moodiness that set it apart. I wanted her to be unsettled by it, as I had been. As you would be, I think. 

Yellow Earth (1984)

To describe places or inanimate objects in a film as “actors” is cliché. Writing about Yellow Earth, I’m tempted to do it anyway. The landscape shot by cinematographer Zhang Yimou—made of bobbing, bowl-like valleys, treeless and vast, across which one might still see a friend or enemy walking, hours after they’ve been abandoned—seems like more than a setting to me. It contains the players; holds them together; thwarts them. It forms a pocket universe, isolated from the very busy and fraught time in which the events of the film occur. It is doing something.

The Grub Stake Revisited

When you attend a silent film screening with live accompaniment, you can’t be sure that the music you’re going to hear will be to your taste. It’s rare that the music is actually bad—but sometimes it seems wrong for the film you’re watching; or at least, wrong for you. This is a risk you take, mitigated by the possibility that you’ll hear an expertly delivered, revelatory score instead. One that approaches the film in ways you hadn’t considered. I’ve been to such screenings. They’re wonderful.

Last night wasn’t one of those nights.

I Declare War (2012)

I’m not sure what most informs my opinion of I Declare War. It could be the school shootings we’ve heard and read about for years now. It could be the memory of war games that me and kids like me played—in our own backyards and in nearby woods, many years before that. Maybe it’s the current video game debate. But I know I found I Declare War to be a frustrating film: compelling, memorable, disturbing, but not always good. Not everything it had the potential to be.

The General (1926)

The General is the greatest of Buster Keaton’s features—his most inventive, ambitious, and perfectly crafted film. To say this is not simply to conjure up some scale of achievement, with The General at one end, and say, Battling Butler at the other. The General is more than a highpoint in a Keaton Continuum; it is also unique among his works. And this is thanks to a little man, Johnnie Gray, whom Keaton plays, at the centre of it all. Utterly capable, Johnnie Gray is no typical Keaton hero.

In fact, I’d trust Johnnie with my life.