ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

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

4

Fear
Macario
Casting Blossoms to the Sky
The Organizer

Sadly zero.

And speaking of things I shamefully had not seen before...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Metropolis_%28German_three-sheet_poster%29.jpg

Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927
Morbsies #597, Sight & Sound Critics #67

Still have to watch last 40 minutes, here's the version I'm watching- youtube link

Possibly my most famous haven't-seen film.

Undoubtedly the greatest film featuring Loverboy and Bonnie Tyler songs.

Thanks for doing this
Had a blast watching the two Keaton films - that suitcase stunt in insane

Finished Metropolis (finally) - some thoughts

I said that Battleship Potemkin was a few brilliant shots & scenes surrounded by a lot of other stuff that didn't grab me. Well Metropolis includes an absolute load of simply astonishing scenes and shots, ones I was familiar with, ones I was not, just so many superb ideas in design, direction, editing, the dancing scene with all the eyes watching has to be my favourite. However, as a whole film I was often left either confused or bored. The plot is nonsensical, the villain of the film is a grotesque personification of communist revolution, and the ending where the heroic son-of-the-billionaire makes his dad shake hands with the union leader is straight-up terrible. I'd love to put together a solid 60-minute edit, no intertitles, no explanations. So I'm basically looking forward to Man With A Movie Camera.

Oh and Brigitte Helm is an absolute genius.

Does the version you linked have an intermission, Camaraderie? Would like to tick this one off but I don't think I can do a single setting.

there's a note at the start of this that it includes a lot of once-lost material which has been recovered, tbh I would have preferred to see the cut-down version, but some of the deleted parts are worth including. I'll have a look for a shorter cut.

Just checked and no intermission, not even chapter breaks! Damn Fritz.

I did find a shorter cut, but the quality is terrible.

there's no intermission, but the version of the film Camaraderie linked to is divided into three parts - 'prelude', 'intermezzo' (beginning at 1:06:25) and 'furioso' (beginning at 1:34:49).

I think the full length version is by far the best, but maybe you need to see it on a big screen with the soundtrack blaring to really appreciate it? It's not a film that really suits being watched on youtube, with all the extravagant gestures and balletic elements.

the villain of the film is a grotesque personification of communist revolution, and the ending where the heroic son-of-the-billionaire makes his dad shake hands with the union leader is straight-up terrible.

The politics of the film are definitely crypto-fascist (society is on the verge of being torn apart by the division between workers and bosses, what is needed is a charismatic populist figure who can unite the whole city/nation in common purpose) and the screenwriter (and Lang's wife at the time) apparently became a supporter of the Nazi party. Goebbels apparently admired Metropolis enough he asked Lang to become head of UFA.

The plot is nonsensical

this is true, but I don't think it matters because it's not a realist film, it's more like a ballet or opera.

I love Metropolis and I love Moroder, but the 1984 Moroder soundtracked version is just dire. The soundtrack is ok to listen to as an album in itself, but as a soundtrack to the film it's dreadful. One thing that makes more a difference than I'd have expected (for the worse) is the replacement of intertitles with subtitles.

Intertitles are a silent film tradition that I've never liked, despite being a Godard fan. The only film I can think of where they really work to punctuate the images is Dreyer's Joan of Arc. Surely the technology existed to superimpose titles on images before 1930?

If you think Metropolis is nonsensical, try Sunrise.

the intertitles on Metropolis are more impressionistic though, you don't get the impression that you're supposed to be seeing every single line of dialogue the characters are saying. And they express things physically rather than via dialogue.

xxp it did (you make another film with just the subtitles and everything else black, project one over the other and film the result) but it's fiddly and messy - audiences expected intertitles at this point in any case.

xxp I will, this weekend!

another thing wrong with the Moroder version - in the original the score is constant, only stopping between the three chapters, the Moroder soundtrack is divided into individual tracks

ideally I would cut all the intertitles. just let the viewer either work out what's going on or just enjoy the experience without understanding the plot

have to keep this one though

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/CrazyTatteredBlackfish-size_restricted.gif

also the titles that go from the bottom to the top of the screen as the elevator is descending

ok, keep that one. the elevator ones were poorly re-made in the version I linked, just looked too shiny and computer-generated.

I thought there was another animated intertitle later on in the film (maybe during the whore of babylon part), but I can't seem to find it, maybe it's not in this version

projected metropolis a few weeks ago, silent w live accompaniment from our pipe organ: otm about its politics but if i couldn't let sentimental corporatism slide (even at a time like this) i wouldn't have any liberal friends, and this is metropolis. audience was thrilled.

subtitled dialogue (in anything) makes you look away from the image: bad imo.

(audience also didn't seem to mind the length; in 2023 being two and a half hours long makes you a brisk, zippy family entertainment)

(i minded it lol)

I am Grot

subtitled dialogue (in anything) makes you look away from the image: bad imo.

You always prefer dubbed dialogue in foreign movies?