Faust (1926)

Of Faust’s dozens of memorable images, big and small, comic and tragic, harrowing and absurd, it is for me the looming, bat-winged shadow of Mephisto over a medieval town that means the most. In terms of plot, this is the moment when the king of demons (Emil Jannings) unleashes Plague upon the town; a scourge intended to be so virulent that it will drive the town’s foremost wiseman, Faust (Gösta Ekman) to bargain with the Devil for help. This is really Mephisto’s game to lose. If Mephisto can corrupt Faust (so claims his angelic opposite number), then the Earth is his.

 From an aesthetic standpoint, however, it is this scene which establishes director F.W. Murnau’s vision for Faust: An overly-dramatic, excessively costumed being, impressing its will over what appears to be toy buildings—a scene of almost impudent fakery. So obvious is the artifice in Faust that I doubt it will wholly draw you in—it never has me, with the exception of a single scene late, late in the film. But Murnau does entrap us, in a way. Through the tricks of his craft, he takes an operatic tale and buries it in a dismal, soundless basement, and us with it. His Faust is a claustrophobic experience, even by Expressionist standards.

Chungking Express (1994)

A talkie, courtesy TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto

People fantasize every day, often about love. I believe that’s a healthy thing to do, and practical. So long as we can conceive of better things, we’ll continue looking for them in the vast, perceptible space beyond our heads and homes. Our only other choice is to close down, settle, and get weird.

Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express is about four single people coping with loneliness.  Two are young, their fantasy lives still freshened with hope, and two are older, wiser in some ways but narrow-minded. They form two pairings, told in two stories that barely intersect. All are lost in their own lives.

"It" (1927)

I love Clara Bow. Love her looks, love her charm; love her little bit of everything a man might want. I love her confidence, I love her jokes. I love her fiery centre, burning down the ingénue roles around her, exposing them as paper. In every film of hers I’ve seen, Clara Bow’s in three dimensions; a laughing, crying, fully fleshed, dynamic being, pulling your eyes from the silent archetypes surrounding her.

Love her, love her, love her.

“It” is Bow’s most famous film today, though she made many. She was an enormous star in the late-1920s; a flapper writ large. She was scandalized, sometimes fairly, often not; she was propelled to stardom by a studio that also exploited her. She came from nothing, rose to the top, broke down, came back, and broke down again. She died alone, in front of her television set.

The Beloved Rogue (1927)

In the opinions of at least two eminent men, John Barrymore’s performance in The Beloved Rogue isn’t very good. One was Orson Welles, who said, regretfully, that his friend John was ‘not at his best’ in the role of medieval French poet and adventurer, Francois Villon. The other eminent, John Barrymore himself, agreed.

I don’t.

Barrymore’s a piece of ham in this film, I know. He flits through scenes on tip-toes and keeps a look on his face that I might have had at the age of five, before ripping the paper off a birthday present. That he’s dressed like Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood—in wintertime Paris, no less—is no help. But The Beloved Rogue is not really an actor’s movie to begin with, despite Barrymore’s and co-star Conrad Veidt’s statures and talents, so it’s better to measure Barrymore’s success in terms of how well he meshes with director Alan Crosland’s exceptional visual space.

The Jack-Knife Man (1920)

Last night the Toronto Silent Film Festival presented a very rare film, screened for the first time in this city since 1920 and for the first time, anywhere, in 40 years. We sat gleeful in our seats as The Jack-Knife Man began. It could have been a disaster and we’d have kept watching, just to say we'd seen it. But it was great. Last night was a good night to be a fan.