ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

Sunrise screened yesterday at a local arts theatre: about 25 people, no walkouts. The presenter did adequately but didn't prepare the uninitiated for Murnau's marriage of late 19th century tropes about city vs country, the infantilzation of a certain kind of feminine object of desire. This is a movie whose male lead chokes his lover, walks out on his wife, tries drowning her, returns to her, and tries choking the lover again; and at the same time Murnau, refreshingly, objectifies O'Brien, arranging him in one scene to look like a Harlequin romance model reversed.

I'd forgotten the comedic bits, i.e. dude obsessed with woman's shoulder strap.

the tone was just wildly all over the place, the whole fairground sequence was so out of place, and then "I know I tried to drown you this morning but let's go sailing at night!" think I could easily write pages about how bad it was and how much I hated it, but in truth it was wonderful and I absolutely loved it.

otm

I had the good luck for my first viewing of Sunrise to be on a big screen, and I went in not knowing much except it was supposed to be great. Thought it was pretty amazing visually, and yes also crazy.

I've seen Sunrise maybe 3 or 4 times through the years and it never fails to amaze me how much its pieces shouldn't work together but, ultimately, absolutely do. Best movie to ever win a best picture Oscar outside of All About Eve.

finally saw SHERLOCK JR yesterday and loved it. the film within a film conceit, culminating in proposing to the girl at the end after seeing it done on the screen, so well executed and I imaging it felt especially fresh 100 years ago. the stunts were awesome and mostly didn’t detract from the story. only major issue I had was the female lead who was kind of a zero

Enjoyed sunrise, my favourite part was the photographers face when he saw his remade statue

yeah, total reversal of expectations, like many other touches a complete joy.

I was thinking Sunrise reminds me a little of Before Sunrise, not just the name, both films we're mainly just hanging out with a couple as they spend time together.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc_%281928%29_English_Poster.png

The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928

Morbsies # 40
Sight & Sound Critics # 21
Sight & Sound Directors # 30

This was the first one I've seen already (shocking) so I just put on my DVD, but here is a youtube link for easy viewing.

So yes, I voted for this in the morbsies poll, love it, now not sure I would put it above everything else from the 20s. her performance is outstanding, what utter devotion to a role, and not only does it look absolutely incredible, but the use of dolly shots seems revolutionary. but, do I care about it beyond the performance and the cinematography? not sure. there is a lot of theology here that goes over my head, cannot pretend I understand everything that's happening. feel like critic-wise this might be the new battleship potemkin, and there will be another in 20 years.

This one never doesn’t work on me. Watched it fresh after the S&S results and, unlike with POTEMKIN, I was engrossed the whole time and wet-cheeked by the end.

Falconetti is riveting, just one of the all-time great performances. And Dreyer basing the script on the actual trial records was a smart choice — the film is adulatory in a way but not hagiographic, imo, and I think the trial transcripts keep it grounded.

I've only seen it once, live accompaniment, definitely unforgettable (as is the quotation in My Life to Live, as is the "Nothing Compares 2 U" video).

And just in case all that’s not enough for you, Dreyer threw in Antonin Artaud to sweeten the deal.

as far as films from this era go, I loved Chaplin’s The Kid with Jackie Coogan (1921) and Safety Last! from Newmeyer/Taylor (1923) starring Harold Lloyd.

Sunrise and The Passion of Joan of Arc are two of my favorite films of all time, but I hated Metropolis

The Kid and Safety Last are both good, but a bit too basic for my tastes, I thought these two Keaton films were a nice step up from that.

I considered adding the best-rated film for every missing year, on the plus side that would have meant not just Harold Lloyd and even Méliès, but unfortunately on the negative would also have meant sitting through many hours of D.W.Griffith.

I'm hardly the person to advocate for Griffith--I've never voluntarily seen a film of his, just what I saw in film class; maybe j.lu would want to--but there are at least two films of his that are highly regarded (Way Down East and Broken Blossoms; I've seen the former) and I'm pretty sure have zero to do with the film that destroyed his stature or the follow-up that was supposed to excuse that one. But if you can't get past the fact that it was him who made them, I can appreciate that.

Yes, omitting all of Griffith, as good as it might feel, is not an accurate portrait of film history

sorry, didn't want to get into the griffith debate again, will just say that I don't agree and leave it at that

I mean, it's empirical but whatev

(Intolerance and Broken Blossoms aside, I don't even particularly enjoy Griffith that much.)

I'm doubtful there's any such thing as "an accurate portrait of film history" but even if there was I don't see that that is what we're supposed to be doing on this thread?

Been having a look through and these are the films which would be added if I followed the "one for every year" rule

Voyage dans la lune, Le Méliès, Georges 1902
After Death Bauer, Yevgeni 1915
Intolerance Griffith, D.W. 1916
Outlaw and His Wife, The Sjöström, Victor 1918
One Week Keaton, Buster & Edward F. Cline 1920
High Sign, The Cline, Edward F. and Buster Keaton 1921
Nosferatu Murnau, F.W. 1922
Safety Last Newmeyer, Fred C./Sam Taylor 1923
Unholy Three, The Conway, Jack 1930
Shanghai Express von Sternberg, Josef 1932
39 Steps, The Hitchcock, Alfred 1935
Make Way for Tomorrow McCarey, Leo 1937
Holiday Cukor, George 1938
His Girl Friday Hawks, Howard 1940
Double Indemnity Wilder, Billy 1944
Enfants du paradis, Les Carné, Marcel 1945
Victims of Sin Fernández, Emilio 1951
Kes Loach, Ken 1969
Goodbye, Dragon Inn Tsai Ming-liang 2003
Transporter 2, The Leterrier, Louis 2005
Clock, The Marclay, Christian 2010
Field in England, A Wheatley, Ben 2013
First Cow Reichardt, Kelly 2020

Love Holiday, love Kes. Simple as.

Oh god, THE CLOCK needs to be added and mandatory

and Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Victims of Sin Fernández

One of my favourite screenings over the last few years.

One Week Keaton, Buster & Edward F. Cline 1920
High Sign, The Cline, Edward F. and Buster Keaton 1921
Nosferatu Murnau, F.W. 1922
Safety Last Newmeyer, Fred C./Sam Taylor 1923
Unholy Three, The Conway, Jack 1930
Shanghai Express von Sternberg, Josef 1932

All highly recommended by me.

I'm not inclined to defend D.W. Griffith, although he definitely helped create the feature film as we now know it.

ok, I've done it.
not sure if a good idea, but I've done it.
(check link at top of thread for confusing new details)

would advise anyone about to watch Man With A Movie Camera to check the updated list.

downloaded the whole of jeanne d'arc without noticing the inter titles were in French. i might be able to scrape by with my cse grade 2.

Youtube link above has english subs, I think

Such a counter-intuitive move for a film in the pre-sound era, a court proceeding. Yet Dreyer makes it work squeezing every last drop of emotion from those faces. And of course the ending becomes plenty cinematic.

Agreed that Falconetti is superb.

The gender dynamics are so front and centre now, perhaps more than they were to people when it came out - this woman being gaslit and humiliated by a procession of grotesque men.

Failed to recognize Michel Simon, holy shit!

My own cultural context makes me read the situation as "these guys are horrible sadistic pricks, Jeanne is troubled and in need of the kind of psychological existence that didn't exist back then", but Dreyer himself was a believer, so I don't think that's how he'd read it?

Philistine alert: 80 min did still have my attention wandering, might not on the big screen tho.

the few seconds i saw when ffwding through it to check last night had some odd framing in it, shots of characters from their knees to their chins, made me wonder if i had a bad version. it also had fake red curtains added at the sides to pad it out to 16:9. :puke:

One of my most philistine takes is that Passion, though extremely great, is even better with the now-standard Einhorn accompaniment.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Voyage_dans_la_lune_title_card.png

Le voyage dans la lune, Georges Méliès, 1902
Morbsies #562

Youtube link here - loads of versions on Youtube but this seems to be the best quality non-colourized, non-50fps one, if you prefer that then there are plenty of options. This version has a brass band backing which I don't care for, you can just mute it though.

Update! I had thought that the hand-colour version was lost, apparently it was found and restored. This seems to be the best version I can find - it claims to be 50fps but I can see no evidence of this.

Unlike most of the other films so far, I've watched this quite a few times. It's hard to judge by later film standards as Méliès doesn't really fit in the lineage, and if this were a history of the grammar of film-making, something like The Great Train Robbery (1903) would be more interesting, but it isn't, so it isn't. Obviously it's just a series of theatrical tableaux, but what tableaux!

https://i.postimg.cc/d012c5xZ/MV5-BZj-Jk-Mm-Ji-Ym-Mt-YTg4-My00-OWVi-LThh-ODIt-ZGM4-NGMy-M2-M5-Yj-Az-L2lt-YWdl-L2lt-YWdl-Xk-Ey-Xk-Fqc-Gde-QXVy-MDI3-OTIz-OA-V1.jpg

After Death, Yevgeni Bauer, 1915
Morbsies #1133

Youtube link

* A film which is likely too goth even for goths, it's essentially an advertisement for suicide.
* So, so beautiful though, all of the apparitions and that tracking shot at the party at the start is wonderful
* Male lead and director both dead within the next few years. Vera Karalli OTOH was one of two women present on the night of Rasputin's murder. Then she lived until the 70s.

More or less co-sign on all of that. This and Twilight of a Woman's Soul reached me at the right moment in my life to leave an indelible imprint.

Late to give my thinking on the Mélies: the version on Amazon has a dude narrating over it, was this perhaps common practice at some point in the silent era, pre introduction of intertitles? Anyway, it's great fun, reminded me a lot of Terry Gilliam (with the bonus that I know nothing about whether Mélies was an asshole).

fav letterboxd review, from user Allan:

Pretty realistic in the sense that if you did send a bunch of old guys into space, they probably would take a nap then try to kill some aliens and then expect a medal for it when they got back

After Death - This is the first thing discussed itt that I'd never even heard of! I think I never considered that pre-revolutionary Russia would have a film industry, Eisenstein and co cast such a large shadow.

Anyway, enjoyed this a lot! A lot more plot focused than most of what we've watched so far, could easily imagine it as a short story. Very Russian, of course. Do think the ending could have been pulled off more economically, I suppose they're trying to build towards a crescendo but it doesn't really escalate so much as maintain the same level imo.

that dinner party long shot was beautiful

watch my french jeanne d'arc. very strange framing at times as i've probably said before. and the burning at the end (spoilers) lingered on the corpse to an uncomfortable degree.

also recognised one shot of the cover of that adorable cd i have

https://www.discogs.com/master/20907-Adorable-Sunshine-Smile

the other startling thing, towards the end, is when he tracks people moving from in front of the camera to behind it - he rotates the camera in an axis such that the shot ends up upside down.

https://i.postimg.cc/7LpQnB7Y/517px-Intolerance-film.jpg

Intolerance, D.W. Griffith, 1916
Morbsies #956

Youtube link

I have 50 minutes left on my rewatch of this, so will save my thoughts for a bit.