ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

Yeah, sitting this one out.

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I'm actually curious what Camaraderie has to say!

I am compelled to drop Morbs' own review of the movie here:

https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/intolerance/

I'm glad he settled on "influential" rather than "innovative"

Also, I'll do clem's work here and link up Kael's review too (which, very much a product of its time, does not stop short of calling Birth of a Nation a great film):

https://letterboxd.com/notpaulinekael/film/intolerance-loves-struggle-throughout-the-ages/1/

I think it’s fair to say that Movies Silently isn’t a fan of Griffiths or Intolerance.

One pervasive myth is that DW Griffith apologized for the racism of THE BIRTH OF A NATION by making INTOLERANCE, which examined the ways prejudice caused suffering throughout history.

So let's just cut down that argument at the knees, shall we? pic.twitter.com/xfwuvEceib

— Movies Silently 🐀 (@MoviesSilently) October 13, 2022

Yes, I have been very tempted to post her threads on DWG.

Very fair game

I agree that the idea that Intolerance was any kind of mea culpa is basically bunk

I mostly agree with the review; I saw the film long ago, bug-eyed over its bat shit insanity. But, yeah, it's not a mea culpa so much as a chance to do TBOAN again but more bat shit.

I will say I had a lot of fun traipsing around the collapsing sets of Intolerance in the video game LA Noir.

OK, finished it! The second time I've seen the film and it was a lot easier to follow each of the four plots this time. I would say I have softened on it slightly, there are certainly some parts I liked, but overall I still feel its importance is wildly overstated and much of it is bad or dull.

Ancient Babylon - this was by far the strongest section, in fact if this were the film I'd probably be singing its praises. The cinematography, the set design, the sheer scale of the thing are incredibly striking and impressive. Constance Talmadge puts in a brilliant performance too. But what is the story? under the spectacle it's a load of nothing, just a few bible verses padded out.

Jesus - this story is barely there, less than ten minutes of screen time, but still manages to be heavy-handed incoherent antisemitic guff.

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre - Presumably here as a concrete example of intolerance? But what do we have, an evil woman plans a massacre, the massacre takes place, that's pretty much it, not even interestingly staged, though the killings are surprisingly graphic.

Modern day - This is the core of the film really, everything else is presumably here to illustrate it. There is some good cinematography here, some shots are stunning, some editing is fairly good, the chase scene with the car and the train is great (but very much bolted on to the story without any justification) But also what the fuck is any of this? A factory owner massacres his workers for striking, a man is unjustly convicted of murder, but somehow this is not the focus. Instead the moral is that social services and welfare charities are the greatest evil of our times because they take money from honest capitalists and are also ugly jealous old women who take babies away? I mean, what exactly the fuck is that? That's your takeaway, DWG?

Also there is a good deal of poor editing and direction in this section, I know it's 1916 but if we are crediting DWG with innovations then I have to say his tricks are not original and others have done better.

Overall I also feel like such a long film covering four separate time periods should have a central story or concept uniting the threads, but it's completely missing. I can understand how the French story is about intolerance, but the other three have nothing to do with it by any sane definition. So I'm left trying to imagine what DWG's point is beyond "baddies do bad stuff" and I can't see what it is at all. "The baddies should tolerate the goodies and then get out of their way, the goodies are under no obligation to tolerate the baddies"? I feel stupid even trying to figure it out, it's just his feeling that he has a right to his prejudices and nobody should dare challenge him, presented with a massive budget over several hours.

The cases I see for why this film is important are innovation and influence, I would question the first of these as above, the second I'm not sure where to go with - yes there later were some epic dramas which attempted a similar scale. Would they have existed without Intolerance? No idea, it seems perfectly possible, but could concede that - and then what? Why does that make this worth watching?

ugly jealous old women who take babies away?

a menace of our times imo

fwiw there is absolutely a terrible history of govt social services being paternalistic-to-outright-hateful to the working class in general and marginalised groups within it in particular, and adoption in particular is a huge can of worms within that context. griffith def not the guy to tackle that tho.

I mean he specifically says they are motivated by being too old & unattractive to attract men any more, right at the start of the film.

Those old caption writers sure did go hard back in the day

Anita Loos wrote the intertitles, so god only knows what DWG would have put there if unfiltered.

All else aside, I appreciate you giving it a fresh shot, caal

no worries, I need something to do while my wife sticks needles in me every weekend.

anyone else have a few hours to spare to see if you agree? fine if not.

It was good of you to take one for the team.

One Way or Another (Gomez, 1974)

This is simply excellent, it's in the top 250 of the S&S poll and a great example of how the poll has improved and isn't shit anymore as you get to see this strange documentary/normie narrative/agitprop hybrid from Cuba.

I think it's still on MUBI UK for a little while.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Berg-Ejvind_och_hans_hustru_1918_film_poster.jpg

The Outlaw and His Wife, Victor Sjöström, 1918

Morbsies #1133

Youtube link

That's a good one!

Sjöström! I've only watched The Wind.

I've just got about half an hour left of this one, should have some thoughts tomorrow.

For UK readers, this is on Netflix, as part of that weird deal between Netflix and the Swedish Cinematheque.

does the one on Netflix have a soundtrack? the criterion dvd rips on YouTube are completely silent, this is the only one with sound and it seems to have been tacked on

No soundtrack, no. Nice looking copy tho.

Some good tunes on that YouTube one tho

For UK readers, this is on Netflix, as part of that weird deal between Netflix and the Swedish Cinematheque.

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 17 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Good stuff lol, always wanted to check Sjostrom..

Well that was relentlessly grim.

I mean, it was still good. I think. but really not what I needed to see when I'm worrying about how to support my family over the next year, that's for sure.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Buster_keaton_one_week_poster.jpg

One Week, Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1920

Morbsies #947

I went through the Keaton shorts a while ago and this was really a big jump in quality when you watch 'em chronologically, one of his best imo.

Here's the youtube link

Yeah, a very enjoyable 25 minutes, every joke felt extremely well-crafted. Not really as ambitious as his longer films, obviously, but for what it is, it couldn't be much better.

It's been

you know I don't think I've ever heard that song. and yet I got the reference somehow.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/The_High_Sign_%281921%29_-_Ad_1.jpg

The High Sign, Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1921

Morbsies #630

I found this one to be a bit of a step back from One Week, which makes sense as it was actually filmed earlier and held back for some reason. A boilerplate silent comedy short plot - Buster is hired to protect a man from the mob and also hired by the mob to kill him, but of course there are plenty of brilliant stunts and set pieces to keep you entertained, and as it's less than 20 minutes there's no danger of boredom. Still nothing here as inspired as Sherlock Jr, The General or even One Week.

here's a youtube link

Tantalised by the 101 films on @SightSoundmag’s Hidden Gems list? @_edb’s pick, Claudia von Alemann’s ‘Blind Spot’ (1981), is now on @mubiuk. Here’s what Erika had to say about it: https://t.co/b59rDtKdqV pic.twitter.com/ql1eU1TTlc

— Arjun Sajip (@ArjSaj) May 2, 2023

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Nosferatuposter.jpg

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, F. W. Murnau, 1922

Morbsies #833
Sight & Sound Critics #196

Youtube link

Would anyone be interested in some kind of watch-along stream for the public domain movies?

how would that work? like a twitch stream?

i don't know, to be honest.

Ok, so Nosferatu then. I had already seen this, a few times I think, but in memory it is much less absorbing than I found it this time. Think the restoration job and the soundtrack on the link above really make a lot of difference here. It succeeds where other Dracula adaptations fail because Murnau wisely cuts the interminable gentlemen's meetings, in fact the much weaker second half of the story is cut to less than 30 minutes, and that includes the famous bedroom scene. I don't think it's at all scary, think perhaps due to overfamiliarity.

What I have noticed this time around is the antisemitism, and am not sure how I missed it before. it's not just Orlok who's uncomfortably like a hideous Jewish caricature, the estate manager Knock (who doubles as Renfield) is also obviously coded as Jewish. so yeah, that's not great.

still there's a lot if great art here, most scenes are intricately set up and lit. shocked to find out that the restoration was needed because a court ordered every print destroyed, and it's a miracle it survived that when the majority of films from this era are gone forever. is this the first ever victim of a copyright troll (in the form of Stoker's estate)? probably someone can think of an earlier one.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Safety_last_poster.jpg

Safety Last, Fred C Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923

Morbsies #1133

Youtube link

I have a blu-ray of this! But for some reason my allegedly region-free Chinese DVD/blu-ray player is insisting that it's the wrong region, so here I am watching it on youtube with the plebs, present company excluded of course.

Whole film is apparently embedded on the Wikipedia page as a webm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Safety_Last_(1923).webm