Friday, Oct. 21 Movie Notes by Jon Hildreth
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SHASTA COUNTY ARTS COUNCIL Friday, Oct. 21 Movie Notes by Jon Hildreth ... kept in his head – a burst of creativity that has never since been equaled in the movies. This film is remembered as an early Lillian Gish star part, though the location shooting is equally interesting, and the costumes, hair styles and so forth take us to an alien world. What’s interesting is that this is a A vitally important piece of action director’s picture. All the comedy takes place in long shot at the very comes from reaction shots, which is edge of the frame – a rare directorial just as well since there wasn’t anything gaffe for Griffith -- but after all, the particularly funny about Davidson. rules were not yet graven in stone, and nobody suspected that a day might “It’s A Gift” is the one and only Snub come when, watching movies on TV, Pollard masterpiece. Pollard was a fine we’d miss important little details like 6pm - $1 Laugh Program second banana, but no genius, and this one. Just keep checking out the never found a mentor to make him a left side of the picture in the bar scene Angora Love (1929) major star, as Harry Langdon briefly and you’ll be fine. Laurel & Hardy did – but this one time Snub set the world on fire thanks to wonderful Griffith’s reputation has been tarnished material that perfectly embodies the by the revulsion modern audiences In “Angora Love” Stan Laurel and spirit of the Roaring Twenties, when feel towards The Birth of a Nation, a Oliver Hardy get adopted by a goat, everything new was the bee’s knees great but flawed film with more than a which somehow brings on landlord and everything old was merely hint of racism. In future festivals we trouble. I’m grown-up enough to Victorian. hope to show that Griffith was a accept The Boys together in a hotel Dickens-like moralist, not the demonic room with a double bed, but when monster we read of on the Internet, there’s a goat involved, one that badly 7:30pm - Outside the Law and that The Birth in no way typified needs a bath, I’m not sure what to his pictures. In fact, none of his think. There’s no way around it: the Underworld (1927) pictures are typical: the extraordinary film may be a trifle grotesque. Even Preceded by Musketeers of Pig variety of his work is one of the many the title is a head-scratcher. Angoras Alley (1912, D.W. Griffith) qualities that made him a master. are sheep, I think, and that ‘Love’ business is a little odd, too, Underworld marked Josef Von Both of tonight’s films have been considering the film’s last shot, but at Sternberg’s first success in a career called “the first gangster film,” but least homophobes will rejoice to know noted for wild ups and downs. His first since a great many early North for sure that the goat is a lady. film, The Salvation Hunters, was made American films were set in big city for less than $3,500 and caught slums, gangsters have been in Pass the Gravy (1928) Chaplin’s eye, says legend, when the pictures for nearly as long as movies (Max Davidson) film’s lead actor bribed a projectionist have told stories. Who knows what the to show the first reel “by accident” in first gangster picture really was? Charlie’s home. Hunters showed a Max Davidson, a Jewish comedian profit, having cost virtually nothing, born in Berlin, made a number of “The Musketeers of Pig Alley” has the and the famed comic hired Sternberg comedies for Hal Roach, many better claim. It was made by the great to make a feature, A Woman of the directed by the great Leo McCarey. American film pioneer David Wark Sea, starring former partner Edna This item has a fairly elaborate plot Griffith 99 years ago, at which time he Purviance. We don’t know, but there leading inexorably to – a food fight, of was making two pictures a week, may have been a falling out; in any course. usually from scripts he developed and case the film was either never publicly Silent Film Fest 2011 at Old City Hall, 1313 Market Street, Redding, CA Page 5 SHASTA COUNTY ARTS COUNCIL Friday, Oct. 21 Movie Notes Continued ... shown or only shown once, depending remake of Underworld, making one moments as the one when Feathers on who you believe, and Chaplin is wonder if he’d seen either film.) first arrives at the club where the said to have destroyed it deliberately seedy Clive Brook works as a janitor. in the presence of an I.R.S. agent to Underworld is usually called a She’s at the top of a spiral staircase substantiate a tax write-off. No fool, he gangster picture, and often cited as and he’s at the bottom. A single retained a print or two, but after his the first of the gangster cycle, but it’s feather from her wrap floats down to wife died, rumor says his wife, Oona, really a love triangle set in Von him, and the viewer knows that fate destroyed all prints. In any case, the Sternberg’s land of glittering surfaces intends to tie the two together despite picture seems to be gone. and shadows where beautiful people her shimmering glamor and his general meet and drift apart. His characters grubbiness. I couldn’t begin to say Between Hunters and A Woman, always have A Past, a disillusioning how this scene works, but it does, Sternberg directed The Exquisite one at that; they rarely fit silent film brilliantly, and of such small details is Sinner for Metro. The studio disliked stereotypes. the Art of Film composed. the movie, called journeyman director Phil Rosen in for retakes, the film Sternberg lasted only seven more failed, but at least one copy exists. years at Paramount, with one After two debacles in a row Sternberg excursion to Germany to make the landed a job as an assistant director at smash hit Die Blaue Engel (The Blue Paramount. As a reward for re- Angel) for UFA, with Emil Jannings and shooting half of Frank Lloyd’s Children Marlene Dietrich. Of his talkie output, of Divorce in three days, he was only Morocco and Shanghai Express, tapped to make Underworld, which both starring Dietrich, were successful Paramount then shelved. “You poor at the time. On loan-out to Columbia ham, take my name off the film,” wired he made Crime and Punishment with a its writer, Ben Hecht. perfectly-cast Peter Lorre as Raskolnikov, but the film did about as But in New York it appears that the much business as you might think. spirit of Preston Sturges had taken up Paramount let him go shortly residence, and lo and behold, a Times thereafter, when The Devil Is a Woman Square theater needed something to played to slow business, and his last show. On opening there, Underworld According to at least one writer, six films were either flops or never created such a sensation, solely by Sternberg apprenticed with a New completed. I, Claudius, his last shot at word of mouth, that the theater had to York portrait photographer and later a great picture, was to be produced by stay open all night, George Bancroft claimed he brought the art of still Alexander Korda in England, but the became a star, and Hecht changed his photography to the moving pictures. production collapsed for complex mind, which was just as well because Another story has the young Sternberg reasons, as told in a fascinating BBC the film won him the first Best haunting New York’s famed Armory documentary, The Epic That Never Screenplay Oscar there ever was. Show, which gave the young man and Was. One other, The Shanghai indeed the U.S., a first taste of modern Gesture, often seen on early TV, has Incidentally, Howard Hawks claimed art. In any case, he somehow become a serious contender for the he had a hand in writing the picture, developed a stunning visual sense, all-time #1 camp classic, and there but he was a man who never let the and few films are more beautifully was also a fine Army documentary truth get in the way of a good story, so photographed than his. He was, in called The Town, but the rest are we don’t know if he really did – but fact, the first director admitted to the mercifully forgotten. Hawks used a character’s name American Society of (“Feathers”) and the spittoon scene Cinematographers. The victim of a childhood made from Underworld in his classic John miserable by a brutal father, Sternberg Wayne western, Rio Bravo. (At least For me, Underworld is pure delight. believed that to be respected, he had one critic claimed that Rio Bravo is a What stays in mind are such privileged to be feared, and his own lack of Silent Film Fest 2011 at Old City Hall, 1313 Market Street, Redding, CA Page 6 SHASTA COUNTY ARTS COUNCIL Friday, Oct. 21 Movie Notes Continued ... anything like common politeness may have been the chief cause of his difficulties in life. In any case, he made too many enemies and his career came to a standstill. Interest in his films returned to life when The Scarlet Empress, about Catherine the Great, was released by the prestigious Criterion Collection and became recognized for its bizarre sets, extraordinary photography, and Marlene Dietrich’s radiant presence.