No problem… Trailers From Hell is one of the best internet things. And Joe Dante did a good thing in getting directors to talk about overlooked and favorite films.
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And there’s one thing I forgot to mention. “Dunkirk” includes an appearance by Flanagan and Allen as themselves! Quite old by that time, but still effortlessly entertaining. Either you got it or you don’t, and they had it. They perform one of their best known songs, “We’re Gunna Hang Out the Washing on the Seigfried Line.”
It was very generous of them to appear in the film, since the song and their performance of it is used to symbolize the self-absorbed over-confidence that dominated British thinking during the early stage of the war.
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For some reason I thought of the old Sci-Fi Horror Flick Saturn 3 today.
I remember watching it or parts of it all the time on the Movie Channel back in the day.
I Googled it and noticed it was on Amazon Prime Streaming.
MMMM…yeah. Not sure what I saw in it.
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Farrah Fawcett?
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That or the robot?
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It is a pretty cool robot design… to bad it couldn’t save the awfulness of the film.
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Supposedly the film was far superior in its original version, but nevertheless did poorly during test marketing. This panicked director Stanley Donen into editing out all the musical numbers.
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I just saw 'The Flesh and the Devil." Quite good. A big-budget period romance with a bit of religion thrown in for fun.
The plot of this movie centers on the love — or should I say “passion?” — between Garbo and Gilbert, which is so powerful that it leaves ruined lives in its wake. In some ways, the story is quite similar to “Der blaue Engel” which came out a few years later. In fact, Garbo’s performance in this movie — arching eyebrows, half-closed eyes and a disinterested pout — seems to have laid the groundwork for all of Marlene Dietrich’s subsequent career.
John Gilbert was an interesting actor. He’s not exactly good looking, but there is something about his performance that draws you in. That’s “star-power” I suppose. He was like a combination of the best aspects of Douglas Fairbanks from the 20s and Ronald Coleman from the 30s. It’s too bad both his career and he himself ended as soon as they did.
Greta Garbo and John Gilbert give very subtle, natural performances. As opposed to their supporting actor Lars Hanson’s performance, which was quite exadurated.
Director Clarence Brown does a great job with the drama and romance, but he really had no idea how to set-up a joke. His style of humor could be described as, “OK a joke’s coming, here it is, now let me explain it to you.”
The biggest highlight of this movie is the cinematography by William Daniels paired with the scenic design by Cedric Gibbons. The look they established was a combination of Hollywood glamour with touches German expressionism. There are some scenes that literally had me say “wow.” A real standout is the scene where Garbo and Gilbert are alone for the first time. They’re out in a garden illuminated by moonlight filtered through the trees — you can’t see much, but you see just enough. It’s no wonder William Daniels was Garbo’s favorite cinematographer.
The movie takes place in some undefined time in the late 19th century. Curiously, the two leading ladies wear contemporary fashions, so in that regard it’s similar to “The Road to Utopia.” Another interesting thing about this move is that it’s about Germans and takes place in Germany, and was made less than 10 years after the Armistice. The movie makes effective use of many matte painting to recreate a snowy German landscape presumably somewhere in Los Angeles.
The ending was dramatic, but not entirely satifying. Spoiler! The two blood-brothers, John Gilbert and Lars Hanson, are going to have a duel on the Isle of Friendship. Because it’s the middle of winter, they’re able to trudge across the frozen lake. Very symbolic. Garbo has what can only be described as a quick, violent exorcism, which leads to a spiritual awakening, and rushes off to stop the duel. You would expect she is going to run in between the two men and die stopping their bullets, but no. While running across the lake, she falls through a hole in the ice and quickly drowns. Also very symbolic, but as I wrote unsatisfying. It’s also a bit disturbing to see her disappear under the water without anyone noticing.
Surprisingly, the weakest aspect of the film was Carl Davis’ music. Usually I like him, but in this time. Frequently I think his queues missed the emotion the director was trying to achieve.
For further information:
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When I visited home last month my mother insisted I had to see “Darkest Hour.” This is a movie I had no interest in seeing and had been actively avoiding. To me it seemed not so much a movie, but was instead simply a product designed to fulfill two purposes: To make the British — or more specifically, the English — feel good about themselves, and to win an Oscar or two. But because my mother is English, of course she had to see it. And because I am a semi-decent son, of course I had to see it too.
So how was it? The first half was as bad as I had been anticipating — it had more clichéd style over substance than an episode of Downton Abbey, and more expositional dialogue than an Avengers movie. I had to look away from the screen periodically to keep from laughing. But the second half actually became interesting. It’s as if everyone had warmed up and decided to tell an interesting story. But I doubt Churchill had a warm-hearted encounter with a young West Indian man on the Choob.
Gary Oldman’s Churchill makeup was interesting. From some angles he looked exactly like pictures of Churchill. But from other angles he instead looked exactly like Kruschev.
That’s basically all I have to write about this movie, except for one more thing. There is an aspect to this movie that seems obvious to me, but I have not heard anyone mention it. It is this: I am of the opinion that this movie was made as an answer to — and as an exact inversion of — the 2004 German movie “Der Untergang,” also known as “Downfall.”
Think about this. Whereas Downfall takes place at the end of the Second World War with Germany facing its lowest moment, Darkest hour takes place at the start and shows Britain heading towards its finest hour. In Downfall we’re introduced to the central character by a newly-hired secretary. Same in Darkest Hour. There’s even a scene in DarkestHour where Churchill orders everyone out of the room so he can have a private shouting match at two people. No doubt that scene will become a popular meme in Germany.
So, on the whole, if you want to see a good movie, I recommend you see Downfall. It’s much better movie. But don’t fear Darkest Hour too much if you’re forced to watch it.
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I didn’t mind Darkest Hour, kinda enjoyed most of it. But that scene on the Tube was awfully hard to stomach. Thought it might give me cavities.
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Jazz Singer had several scenes on vitaphone discs where Al Jolson sang and improvised dialogue until the disc ran out, then the film went back to silent. It is therefore, still a silent film. However, it was the beginning of using song in films.
What do the local cineastes think of the assertion in bold?
Fun fact: The alternate spellings my browser provides for “cineastes” are “incinerates” “intestines” “steaminess”…
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As a non-cineaste: Inflexibility in categorization is the mark of an unimaginative mind.
Even looking at movies from the 50s (I’m thinking Hans Christian Andersen and Guys and Dolls in particular), these films look a bit dated, but they are not a radically different experience from a modern blockbuster, sixty years later. Silent films, on the other hand, feel alien to me. I haven’t seen The Jazz Singer, but I imagine that it (and other vitaphone recordings) would have that same “alien” feel to them; I can understand the desire to categorize Jazz Singer with silent films more than modern sound-on-film films.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the transition from silent films to fully-synchronized, full-dialogue sound-on-film films consistent with the current tradition wasn’t instantaneous. Jazz Singer was an important first step from the former towards the latter, but placing it solidly in one category to the exclusion of the other will fail, because it inhabits the very definition of “transitionary.”
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By that measure, several films of the last ten years are silent films. Because there are silent bits. Star Trek Beyond had a bit where a spaceship is under attack, there’s a hull breach, and a woman’s scream is cut to silence as the atmosphere dissipates and there’s no medium left to transmit the sound of her scream.
That doesn’t make Star Trek Beyond a silent film.
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I figure if the film shipped to the theaters with an included sound element, no matter how short, no matter what medium, then the movie is not entirely a silent film. Even if the live accompanist hops in for part of the film. If the movie comes with a sound element, it ain’t silent.
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I think the point being made is that in Star Trek, having sound is the rule and silence is the exception, whereas in Jazz Singer, silence is the rule, with sound only being provided for small portions of it - the rest of the dialogue is done through intertitles (as in previous films).
I don’t buy the idea that Jazz Singer has more in common with even The Wizard of Oz way back in 1939 than it does with Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, or than Oz has in common with literally anything today. I don’t see why it could’t be categorized as “a silent picture, but with a few snippets of sound,” like Star Trek Beyond is not a silent film desire the few moments of silence it has.
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Fair 'nuff, but I’ve heard an awful lot of film profs call TJS “the first talkie”.
Like people said up thread: it wasn’t a hard transition, so it makes no sense to treat it like one.
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The Jazz Singer is a sound film. And so is The Singing Fool.
Don Juan, however, is a silent movie.
End of argument.
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They do feel alien. That’s one of their superpowers.
See for yourself.
Enjoy the non-sequitur humor of Jack White and his Montrealers:
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That’s my take on it, too. It’s certainly fair to call the film a partially silent film or even a mostly silent film, depending, but to call The Jazz Singer, the film that triggered the sound revolution, a silent film doesn’t wash with me.
A little background for this: I’ve enrolled in TCM’s latest film course, Mad about Musicals, and I’m becoming disenchanted with the professor. Her first lecture claimed that The Broadway Melody (of 1929) was the first movie musical. I went over to the film discussion boards, saw no thread to discuss the latest lecture, so I created one specifically to discuss the first movie musical, in which I stated that The Jazz Singer had a better claim to the title.*
She didn’t comment on my thread, but created her own stating “[I]t is a wonderful idea that we discuss other important musicals or early films that influenced musicals in a forum. So that will be this forum.” (Emphasis mine.)
De-legitimizing my thread like that rather peeved me, so I didn’t trust my immediate, instinctive opinion that to uncategorically label TJS a silent film is, to put it politely, wrong-headed.
* I didn’t state that TJS was the first, simply that it came before. After all, we all know that this was the first movie musical:
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But, what about The Dancing Cavalier?
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