The Dream (1911)

Rare was the Mary Pickford film where Mary gave less than she got. Rare was the lout, thief, or cheat who did her wrong and stayed intact. Those mournful looks, that tiny body—they might bolster a bully’s confidence, but not for long. He’d soon find out what he’d awoken. And the result would be all his fault. This is an insight that Pickford’s husband in The Dream has forced himself to forget.

Do or Do Not... There is No Try.

Many sci-fi fans love silent film--maybe because some of today's most popular, accessible silent films belong to the Science Fiction genre, or its sister-genres of high-geekery: Horror and Fantasy. Silents certainly provide the sort of weird imagery that pleases such fans, though it's not quite so weird as some of them think. More on that in a moment. I'm a sci-fi fan myself--not the convention-going type, but still a fan--and I love those images too.

Here's something for the silent-film-fan and science-fiction-fan alike. It's the famed Cloud City duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, culminating with Vader's revelation that he is (SPOILER) Luke Skywalker's dad.



This little film is one of many on YouTube, proving there's a renewed appetite for the silent aesthetic, even if it is through parody. That pleases me much. I particularly dig the Imperial logo on the intertitles and the convincingly-faked high contrast.

But then again, why the high contrast in the first place? Why the blurry images, when many silent films survive in pristine condition even today? Last night I watched a 100-year-old Mary Pickford film so clean it could have been made last week. LOTS of silent films look as good or better than films made in the Sound Era, yet the stereotype persists that they're foggy, dim or over-lit, torn and jumpy. For many people--even those who love these films enough to pay them homage or employ them for parody--the 'damaged look' is part of that aesthetic, rather than a barrier to its appreciation. They mean well, I guess.

One other thing: no real silent film would transcribe the dialogue of this scene so thoroughly. Luke's expression makes "No, that's not true! That's impossible!" superfluous--and that goes double for "HaaaaAAAAaaahh!" I know it's funnier that way, because we know the source material so well, but it's not true to the medium.

Artists, keep the parodies coming. I'm grateful to you. Just--please?--know your material a little better.

Modern Times joins the Criterion Collection

Modern Times is easy to find on video, but no one gussies up a classic quite like Criterion, right? Here's what you'll be buying, alongside the masterpiece itself:

Disc Features
•New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition

•New audio commentary by Chaplin biographer David Robinson
•Two new visual essays, by Chaplin historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance
•New program on the film’s visual and sound effects, with experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
•Interview from 1992 with Modern Times music arranger David Raksin
•Chaplin Today: “Modern Times” (2004), a half-hour program with filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
•Two segments removed from the film
•Three theatrical trailers
•All at Sea (1933), a home movie by Alistair Cooke featuring Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, and Cooke, plus a new score by Donald Sosin and a new interview with Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge
•The Rink (1916), a Chaplin two-reeler highlighting his skill on wheels
•For the First Time (1967), a Cuban documentary short about a projectionist who shows Modern Times to first-time moviegoers

•PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Saul Austerlitz and a piece by film scholar Lisa Stein that includes excerpts from Chaplin’s writing about his travels in 1931 and 1932 

*****

Chaplin's Depression-era tale of men, machines and Paulette Goddard is available for preorder today. While you're waiting for the mailman to arrive, re-read my Silent Volume post on Modern Times then ponder the connection between the Tramp and Alex DeLarge.
 

If you're in Toronto...

...tomorrow night is a great night for free screenings of silent films, courtesy the Toronto Entertainment District Business Improvement Area (BIA). Keaton, Pickford, Arbuckle, Maddin... even I will be there. Here's the link.

The Bat (1926)

In a wealthy American suburb, where the women wear pearls on a quiet evening and the men smoke pipes while pondering things, and the houses look like miniatures both rustic and opulent, a killer skulks.

He (if it is a ‘he’) wears a grotesque mask over his face, complete with snout, teeth and wide ears. His coat is long and black, concealing pistols and rope and hooks for climbing walls and jimmying windows. He may be able to fly, and if he can’t, there’s some very large bats bobbing in the night sky above the homes and businesses he robs. We see these little details from the beginning of The Bat, but the police do not—they arrive on the scene just as The Bat’s gloved hand recedes from view, leaving a socialite bent over the windowpane with a broken neck. The police chief, pinching a bat-shaped paper calling-card between his fingers, can do nothing but vow:

“I’ll send ‘The Bat’ to the chair, if it’s the last thing I do!”