ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

What about it?

Buster Keaton

I kind of liked that but fair enough.

THE GENERAL also avaiable in several other places, Amazon Prime, Criterion and... wait for it... Tubi. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-general

― The Windows of the URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, February 12, 2023 11:34 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also Wikipedia (it entered the public domain last year): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_(1926_film)

Oh wait, actually, it's been in the public domain for decades. But anyway, yeah, it's widely available.

That's happened to me more than once, seeing multiple versions of the same film, sometimes on the same platform, many in terrible shape, wondering why this is so and then... d'oh!

everything up to and including man with a movie camera is public domain (in usa, other places vary). i think the rules changed so that some things were, then weren't, then were again but I've also read that once a thing is pd its always pd so...

but what you will find is that some things have later audio, hence the completely silent versions on places like archive.org

the problem i had with Sherlock Jr was, despite having not seen it before, everything was a bit too familiar through clips and copies.

My current favorite BK is The Navigator which is in the sweet spot of having seen it enough times but not too many times, but that could easily change of course.

I just watched Sherlock Jr for the first time. really lovely film, a nice way to kick things off. a couple notes and questions:

- near the beginning, the pile of trash, the dollars within it, the wallet with many dollars within it, and the woman who was missing a dollar - that was masterful, very like a stage play, and did wonders to quickly establish the nature of his character.
- there's a banana peel gag in this film. when did the banana peel gag start? when was the last banana peel gag?
- i loved the film within a film, which is most of this film, "Hearts and Pearls", and especially how the musicians were shown at the bottom of the shot, playing along. but the music that is played (via youtube) was added later on, of course. so, i think it would particularly brilliant to see this film in theaters, as it was shown then, with buster keaton in a film within a film with the musicans in real life playing music to accompany the fake musicians on the screen above them.
- i know keaton did all of his own stunts. holy shit, some of them. it's such a quick shot, but that part where he's on them motorcycle and the bridge collapses and he smoothly glides from an upper plane to a lower? he should have died! amazing.

oh yeah, and also, what is this painting at the top?

https://i.imgur.com/TCazPDQ.jpg

it resembles matisse's Dancers, but it's not that

it's a metafictional action movie presenting alternative lives, but it has a heart too = it's the EEAAO of 1924!

Episode of "Hollywood" (1980) on Chaplin, Lloyd & Keaton is here, it's well worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PvymClFrPU

will try to watch SHERLOCK JR tonight

have we had a 2010s poll btw? I know we all gave some picks in one thread or another recently

Maybe it's because of my current steady diet of Hong Kong and Indian action cinema, but though Sherlock Junior is full of great jokes what stuck out more to me is how much Keaton laid down the foundations for action cinema. This is a matter of record - Jackie Chan has spoken of his influence a lot. The stunts of course, but also stuff like the pool table scene could totally fit into a modern action film. Morbius grumbled about the lack of Keaton when ILX did an action movies poll, and I recall rolling my eyes at that a bit, but yeah he was right!

otm

The world does not deserve Buster Keaton—yet he does not complain.
-David Thomson

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Vintage_Potemkin.jpg/424px-Vintage_Potemkin.jpg

Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Morbsies #762, Sight & Sound Critics #54, Sight & Sound Directors #93
YouTube link

I've been doing something like this since Xmas, starting with Dr M's list (I posted a list in the last movies watched thread).

And in the last month or so I've focused on the BFI list.

The Gleaners and I (Varda, 2000)
My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
Wanda (Loden, 1970)
City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)

Wanda was pretty good and the one film in the top 100 I hadn't heard of at all.

Miyazaki was fine (I took against anime for random reasons in a lame way in the past) and I felt quite a bit for the drawings of the little sister and the fluffy monster even if it was the overall package was no revelation in the end. But that's a deficiency in not really growing up with children's lit, I think.

The Varda was pretty much perfect despite the slightly annoying tics where she is playing a role.

OK, now here's one I rewatched pretty recently, and in proximity with another silent movie with thousands of cuts that will be coming up shortly enough, and ...

Eisenstein's insertion of homoerotics aside, this one just didn't hold up that well for me. Even the Odessa steps sequence felt a few, ahem, cuts below similar montage blitzes from the same era.

(And by "didn't hold up that well" I mean it's still pretty good, but I much much much prefer the theatrics of Ivan the Terrible.)

I saw it--meaning I was physically present when it was screened--in film class 40 years ago.

Potemkin's short enough to show in a film class, as I did last week with the Odessa steps sequence before switching to The Limey (the module was on editing).

Would've been better to flip from the Odessa steps to "Take Off With Us"

So here's where I admit I'm a bad cinephile when it comes to silent cinema. The stuff I do like tends towards the populist - comedy, serials, fantasy/horror stuff with lots of cool sets and effects for me to gawk at. When things get loftier I struggle.

Rooting for the lads in this an' all but I find it difficult to imagine this being anyone's favourite film. The last twenty or so minutes in partic were hard going for me, not a big war movie guy either.

That being said: the Odessa sequence is rightly famous and very exciting. There's some memorable shots - the sailors imagining themselves hanging off the sails, the broken glasses. The preacher dude was striking.

I like the pulpy flavour of the chapter headings - Drama On The Deck, A Dead Man Calls Out.

The coloured red flag (assuming this was painted in the original and not some bizarre choice from the restoration?) looks a bit garish tbh.

Props to the score from the version I watched (BFI Player); subtle it ain't but it kept my attention at many moments where I think it would otherwise have been flagging.

I've also just finished this. First thought: that must have been some really bad soup.

But yes, there were so many brilliant shots or scenes here - the tracking shots at the start of the steps sequence are just astounding for example - but as an entire film it didn't really do that much for me. I can see why it's important, there's a lot that feels brand new here, but it's obvious why this is typically excepted rather than watched in full.

I think I need a good commentary track to really unlock this one for me, provided one exists that actually engages with what is happening onscreen as opposed to rambling off the movie's production and cast and crew's other credits as seems to have become the norm for the form.

xppst it was made with beef that had bugs in it!

they are maggots, not worms!

Revolutions podcast had an episode mostly about the history behind this story, may have to dig it out.

More dead kids in this one than a lot of other movies in our Film Club, fwiw

yeah the kid getting trampled was pretty gruesome and unexpected

Inspired jarring shots in Bonnie & Clyde and The Godfather:

https://anthropoetics.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/bc30-230x300.jpg

Eisenstein thought a lot about editing on a shot-by-shot level but didn't seem to concern himself too much with overall pacing. As a Godard fan, I don't mind didactic movies, but I'm never not going to feel like I'm sitting in a classroom when an Eisenstein film is playing.

More dead kids in this one than a lot of other movies in our Film Club, fwiw

2nd only to Children of Men

(shoah?)

Sadly Narciso Serrador's Who Could Kill A Child? didn't make the cut.

As a Godard fan, I don't mind didactic movies, but I'm never not going to feel like I'm sitting in a classroom when an Eisenstein film is playing.

But Godard has doubts, he contradicts himself, he changes his mind! By contrast Potemkin is as clear cut and certain as any white hats vs black hats action film. There is no interest in interrogating anything.

To be clear, I'm not saying I wanted the czarist officer class to get a more sympathetic portrayal - it's not an event that can be Both Sides-ed. But I think the very nature of silent cinema means there's a ceiling on the interiority the characters can display, and as a result on how well the film can portray the actual complexity of events (not that silent acting can't evoke interiority, but the examples I can think of go heavily against naturalism, and so wouldn't really work here).

I'm reminded of Tom Ewing once saying on here that he doesn't think pop music is a good vehicle for actual political arguments - agitprop, sure. I think the same may be true of silent cinema; Potemkin works well as propaganda, it is cathartic and stirring and as I said the events it portrays deserve such feelings. But it doesn't teach you much of anything about politics, I don't think.

The czarist officer class are well worth criticising, but the film also functions as a piece of anti-Cossack propaganda, made in the midst of this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Cossackization

so some more moral ambiguity would probably be welcome.

"But Godard has doubts, he contradicts himself, he changes his mind! By contrast Potemkin is as clear cut and certain as any white hats vs black hats action film. There is no interest in interrogating anything."

It's quite a bit to expect from a film made when the revolution hadn't yet reached its tenth anniversary. Plus it's a historical film.

Really need to see Ivan the Terrible

Wait until you've seen it to call it "terrible"

It's quite a bit to expect from a film made when the revolution hadn't yet reached its tenth anniversary.

Art of that sort is made often enough even as events are unfolding, let alone ten years later. But let's be real, if it was any of that it wouldn't have gotten made.

Plus it's a historical film.

I don't know what this means.

All the President's Men is, I think, a truly great film made two or three years after the events it depicts.

Battleship Potemkin was made 20 years after the events it portrays, think how many WWII films were made between 1940 and 1965.

I mean a lot of historical films just take a look back at a version of events, but ofc there is a reading to them so nevermind that.

"But let's be real, if it was any of that it wouldn't have gotten made."

It depends what you wanted to say that it didn't. Stuff can get through the censor, depending on how it's told, or it can be told in an underhand way.

xxp

Stuff can get through the censor, depending on how it's told, or it can be told in an underhand way.

Agreed, but I think that a) most regimes go through phases where such subterfuge is more viable or less viable and b) it is as a rule much easier to do if there aren't too many eyes around you, so easier in literature than film for example. A big budget spectacle made under Stalin I think would have odds set against itself in that department, though you never know - are there examples of this in 20's Soviet cinema?

At any rate, I don't think propaganda is necc a bad thing, as I said it can be cathartic. Just think it's apples and oranges when compared to a Godard film.

When I was comparing the two of them, I wasn't actually thinking of the political message, more the way that everything onscreen is "presented" through an explicit explanatory frame, where the audience is supposed to notice the way events are being portrayed, and the formal means, along with the events depicted.

more the way that everything onscreen is "presented" through an explicit explanatory frame, where the audience is supposed to notice the way events are being portrayed, and the formal means, along with the events depicted.

Interesting, do you take this from Eisenstein's writings? I haven't read him.

I can't say I noticed this in the film itself, which I felt to be reasonably immersive - I do think I noticed the formal aspects more than with yer average movie, but I think that always happens to me with silent cinema. In fact I've heard an argument be made that they should show more of it in film school because it forces students to focus on form.

It is one of Eisenstein's theories that cinema must be as didactic as possible.

Dialectical too.

The Watermelon Woman is on MUBI UK ATM. Watched it a couple of days ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Watermelon_Woman

And it's on the S&S list (100-250). What's remarkable is the person's background: woman, black, Lesbian. Making a film about those very things but the film isn't worn down by them, as the script is often funny and charming.

I wouldn't say it's top 250 but who cares it absolutely should be there. It's an excellent example of the gaming of the poll. Many voters used their votes smartly.