The White Desert (1925)

The White Desert devolves me to one of those studio-paid ultra-shills: the men and women who tell you about The Smash Hit of the Summer! before the movie’s drawn a dime; the writers of screaming poster text; the names stuck beneath hyperbole. That’s how this movie makes me feel.

30 Second Review: Jeanne d'Arc

Date 1899      Category Historical Epic

The Story
C’mon, you know... it’s Joan of Arc.

The Verdict
Transition ’tween stage and screen. Ten minutes’ lean.

Best Scene
In this sequence of about two minutes, French soldiers storm a castle, which is presented as a backdrop against the fixed camera. There is fencing (that is, a fence) in the foreground. Joan appears first, on horseback. She is huge before the camera (especially by the standards of this film) and then we see the castle gate open. Burgundian soldiers spill from inside, drag Joan off her horse and into the castle. Now the French arrive, frantic, spilling into the frame from either side. They, too, are close to the camera—at a proximity no stage show could provide us—and so we are pulled into the scene as they tear down the fencing and, through a bit of falsified perspective in the form of a second stage level, appear to charge into the distance and scale the walls. A smoke-filled battle ensues.

For the full-length Silent Volume article, click HERE.

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A Tale of Two Worlds (1921)

Yutaka ‘Jack’ Abe gives the best performance in A Tale of Two Worlds. Abe, a Japanese actor, plays The Worm, a young Chinese-American shop clerk. Though The Worm is a rascal, he proves his courage more than once, and Abe’s expert body language ensures we see this boy’s real feelings of regret, pain, and longing. The character is wonderful, and a Japanese man playing a Chinese one isn’t too much of a stretch, visually. But what if a white man does it? Can a bad illusion still pull us in?

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