Avatar (2009)

One of my rare forays into the sound-filled and modern. Spoilers follow.



Seeing Avatar is not easy. I twice failed to purchase a ticket to it, finally squeezing my backside into another sold-out Toronto theatre only yesterday afternoon. Had I shown up 20 minutes later, I probably would have been turned away again. This is a three-hour movie that, in Week Eight of its North American run, can still pack a house in a major city, at 3 p.m. on a Friday. That’s impressive. More impressive is how it can do this despite being an all-time low for big-budget Hollywood film-making. I can’t think of a movie that offended me more, and I’ve seen some trash. Just hear me out.

Veidt and Lang

First up, a clip from a short film directed by reader Max Sacker:

Nice opening sequence. It's so tempting, I find, for modern directors to portray the silent aesthetic in an exaggerated way. Max didn't do that here. The influence, obviously, is Metropolis, (with a little Frankenstein thrown in, I'd say), but the mad scientist reminds me me of Conrad Veidt. Which got me to thinking: "did Veidt and Metropolis director Fritz Lang ever collaborate?" I couldn't think of any examples, but it turns out there is one:

Anyone seen this? I never have. Lang didn't direct it anyway--as you can see, he wrote it, along with his then-wife, Thea von Harbou, who also wrote Metropolis, among other screenplays.  I have seen (and reviewed) one of Lang's action-adventure pics, Spiders, which is about as close to Indiana Jones as you're going to get in the 1920s. And a pair of future Silent Volume posts will be dedicated to the first and second parts of Lang's lush and violent super epic, Die Nibelungen (1924), which, I imagine, bears some similarities. If you recommend The Indian Tomb (or know of any other obscure silents starring or directed by famous people) let me know.

A Fool There Was (1915)

There’s a moment late in A Fool There Was when John Schuyler, former lawyer and U.S. diplomat, now a disgraced, debauched shell, crawls down the staircase of his home, headfirst toward the floor. At one point he stops, eyes round and haunted, and pushes his arm through the spindles of the banister, as though they were bars. Soon, we see ‘The Vampire’ (Theda Bara) looming over him; the woman who seduced him to leave his family and, as her name implies, sucked him dry. She looks ravishing as she sprinkles bits of flower upon him, but it is no gentle gesture—the moment the petals rest on his face, she blows them away.

Go 2 LAMB...

...in fact, thanks for ALREADY going to LAMB. That is, the Large Association of Movie Blogs, via Silent Volume (see button in upper right corner). It seems that my little silent movie blog has respectably ranked on the LAMB Leaderboard, after only one month of contention. Many thanks!

Not much else to report today. I may be catching myself a little vamp tonight--that is, some Theda Bara--for this weekend's feature film. You think Theda'd be a star today? It's an interesting question:

Have a great week, and thanks again for your quantifiable support.

Chris

One Week (1920)

One Week was Buster Keaton’s first starring vehicle—a 19-minute short that kicked off a decade of artistic achievement matched by few people afterward, including Buster Keaton. To me, it’s like a commercial for him. Herein you’ll find a set of gags that run the gamut of Keaton’s skills and preoccupations, from the very big, spectacular and dangerous to the small, subtle and satirical. He loved both. Moreover, he was still learning how to do them well, so in One Week, you’ll also see an artist perfecting his craft. The seeds of great films like The General (1927) can be found in One Week; that alone would be enough to recommend it. Fortunately, it’s a funny, well-paced gem in its own right.