ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

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.

I love a ranking where The Watermelon Woman outranks, say, The Deer Hunter.

I watched it at the height of the pandemic when Criterion made it available.

Always wonder if Cimino's work is going to get revisited in view of the revelation that they were maybe trans? I can't get much clarity on that, but there's enough evidence for the New Yorker to mention it - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/a-new-biography-of-michael-cimino-is-as-fascinating-and-melancholy-as-the-filmmaker-himself - it's not like a fan fiction thing.

Anyway yeah Watermelon Woman rules. The film it reminds me most of, though obviously it's miles ahead of it in quality and intelligence, is Clerks.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/The_general_movie_poster.jpg

The General, Buster Keaton, 1926
Morbsies #733, Sight & Sound Critics #95

Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001). A lot more action than Totoro. Lots of adventures were had.

Really love the drawings, like just the quality of them, the colour schemes...very beautiful to look at.

Saw The General semi-recently, so won't rewatch. It's good ofc, less blown away by it than Sherlock tho.

I really enjoyed The General, it feels much more advanced than Sherlock Jr, almost like a modern action film in many ways. There wasn't a single moment where I felt it dragging, those train sequences were flawless. Still I feel it is a bit tainted by its taking the side of The South, in particular the battle scenes at the end are very reminiscent of Birth of a Nation. The Civil War and in particular the "Lost Cause" narrative are such fixtures of pre-WWII Hollywood.

Yeah, it's so needless as well, not like the film is about the Lost Cause or a Rebel Stand or anything ideological like that, switch the sides and nothing would change. It's depressing how much this was just something in the air, that ppl would employ without even thinking about it.

it was a solid hour of train japes, was good.

the leading ladies on both this and the previous one, was that a fashionable look at the time, because they both looked like such frumps.

(xpost, yes, the south thing was a bit o_O)

real jeopardy in what he was doing as well, i mean a real train, moving along, him dancing along the top of it or sat on the cow catcher in a bid to stop it derailing.

were a couple of time when i wondered if it was a real locomotive actually. do they move off that fast? istr there being a lot of build up before they actually move. but maybe i'm thinking of trains with lots of carriages, which this wasn't

afaik it's all real trains, yes. including the one going over the bridge, allegedly the most expensive shot in history.

This was also the movie wherein he broke his neck, no?

again? he's already broken his neck once in this thread! (sherlock jr, the water tower fall)

actually, i didn't know until someone mentioned it. and sherlock jr fall does look more jarring than anything in the general. but yeah, similar train setting

it was the water tower in Sherlock Jr, yes. though I did wonder why he felt like doing such similar scenes so soon after such a traumatic experience.

Ah I was wrong ... I remembered it being the water tower gag, but for some reason misremembered it as being in The General.

There was "movie poster on walls" talk which reminded me that on watching The General I realised that my parents had a framed print from it on the wall all through my childhood. Asked my mum about it and it turns out they only watched it for the first time a couple of years ago.

I remember a lot of Chaplin posters in relative's houses growing up.

i do remember being home for christmas and turning The General on as a random alternative to the endless sport and we all sat there quite happily as a family and watched it. (similar thing happened with Hulot's Vacance iirc a decade earlier)

Just finished Sherlock Jr. and moving onto Battleship.

I am the young one that never touched silent cinema. I offer myself as the dunce for you all to play off in this thread. I realise now I had a quiet and small fear I wouldn’t enjoy silent cinema due to only ever gouging on high definition colour and sound. Glad to have all fears and inhibitions ridiculed with how amazing Sherlock Jr. is! That motorcycle scene was just hit after hit. Then to be reminded it is all Cinema with the fade back to reality (with another hit!) was the perfect affirmation of the art form. Such a celebration of life and goodness. None of this 21st century cynicism, no irony, no meanness. It was so refreshing.

How many of these one-vote wonders from the #SightAndSoundPoll have you seen? https://t.co/wM9jWDP2ZD@letterboxd pic.twitter.com/oExu2YmQWu

— BFI (@BFI) March 6, 2023