Tag: silent film

Sergei Eisenstein: Film History Series

Sergei Eisenstein, “The Battleship Potemkin”, The Odessa Steps Scene, December 1925, Starring Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barksy, and Grigori Aleksandrov, Cinematography by Eduard Tisse and Vladimir Popov, Produced by Mosfilm

Born in January of 1898 in Riga, Latvia, Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a film director, scriptwriter, film theorist, and a pioneer in the theory and development of montage. Using his technique of montage film editing, he portrayed the rapid developments of events on the screen, separating each scene into fragments and rearranging them into his preferred order.

Eisenstein studied engineering at the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, leaving in 1918 to join the Red Army in the revolution. Still a member of the Red Army after the Bolshevik seizure of power, he took part in many theater productions and was eventually assigned to organizing productions and ensembles. In 1920 Eisenstein returned to Moscow and worked with the Proletkult Theater, becoming co-director and later the most noteworthy theater director in the USSR.

While still a theater director, Eisenstein wrote a manifesto, “Montage of Attractions,” for the literary journal “Lef”, rejecting the idea that dialogue is the dominant element in theater and claiming that all the elements function on equal terms, forming a fusion or montage that made the entire work. Montage in film, as Eisenstein understood it, means that a film should be constructed not in narrative fashion but from brief segments that serve to reinforce and counterpoint one another. The meaning of the film arises from the interplay of these elements, leading the audience into new recognitions.

In the spring of 1924, Eisenstein proposed that Proletkult undertake a series of films portraying the Russian revolutionary movements before 1917. Working with cameraman Eduard Tisse, a Latvian newsreel photographer who would go on to be the cameraman on all his films, he took on the making of “Strike”, the fifth film in the series. In 1925, Eisenstein made his second and probably his greatest film “Battleship Potemkin”, examining the  mutiny carried out by sailors of the Russian warship, Prince Potemkin, stationed in the Black Sea fleet near Odessa. 

Sergei Eisenstein’s film “The General Line”was an experiment in presenting the feeling of ecstasy in film. Directed by both Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov, the film, centering on a rural heroine instead of a group of characters, was a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, a policy championed by Bolshevik Leon Trotsky.  Eisenstein used his montage method with great success in the filming of the milk coop, its sequence conceived as a enthralling spectacle of raptured faces and the triumphant introduction of new farm machinery. After Trotsky’s fall from grace, the film was quickly re-edited and released in 1929 as “The Old and the New”.

Eisenstein’s vision of Communism brought him into conflict with officials in the ruling regime of Stalin. Frequent attacks on Eisenstein and then subsequent rehabilitation would be a repeated pattern throughout his life. His popularity and influence in his own land thus waxed and waned with the success of his films and the passage of time. In 1930, Eisenstein was approached with offers from Paramount Studios for several films; however, because of his artistic approach and disagreements with scripts, the contract was declared void by mutual agreement. 

Eisenstein came back into prominence with the 1938 “Alexander Nevsky”, in which Eisenstein exchanged his montage style for one that focused and developed the individual characters to a greater extent. This was due to the rise of Socialist Realism in the arts which was becoming the cultural and artistic policy of the state. Well received, the film won Eisenstein the Order of Lenin and the Stalin Prize.  

Eisenstein’s 1944 “Ivan the Terrible, Part One”, a film presenting Ivan IV as a national hero, also won the approval of Stalin and a Stalin Prize. However, the sequel “Ivan the Terrible, Part Two, although finished in 1945, was criticized by the government and not released until 1958. All footage from the unfinished Part Three was confiscated by the state and mostly destroyed, with only a few scenes still existing.

Sergei Eisenstein suffered a heart attack in February of 1946, recovered, but died from a second heart attack in February of 1948, at the age of fifty. His body laid in state in the Hall of the Cinema Workers, was cremated two days later, and his ashes buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Second Insert Image: Sergei Eisenstein, “The Battleship Potemkin”, 1925, The Odessa Steps Sequence

Third Insert Image: Sergei Eisenstein, “Que Viva Mexico!”, 1932, Directed by Eisenstein and Gregory Aleksandrov

Bottom Insert Image: Sergei Eisenstein, “Strike”, 1925, Cinematography by Eduard Tisse, Vladmir Popov, Vasili Khvatov

Calendar: December 23

Year: Day to Day Men: December 23

The Blue Leather Armchair

December 23rd of 1912 marks the release of director Mack Sennett’s comedy short “Hoffmeyer’s Legacy”, notable for being the first Keystone Cops comedy.  There are no known existing copies of this film; it is now considered a lost work. 

Mack Sennett was a Canadian-American producer, director, actor and studio head. Born in Danville, Quebec in 1880, he started his career in films with the Biograph Company of New York City, which during the height of the silent era was the most prominent and respected film studio in the United States. In 1912, Sennett, with backing from the owners of the New York Motion Picture Company, opened Keystone Studios in California. This studio possessed the first fully-enclosed film stage and studio ever constructed.

At Keystone Studios in 1912, Sennett created the slapstick antics of the Keystone Kops. The idea for the Keystone Kops came from Hank Mann, a Russian-American comedian who became one of the first Keystone Kops. Mann played the police chief Tehiezel in the group’s first film, “Hoffmeyer’s Legacy”. The popularity of the Keystone Kops began with the 1913 comedy short “The Bangville Police” which had comedian Ford Sterling in the role of chief. 

Notable members of the Keystone Kops were comedic character actor Edgar Kennedy; Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s; William Frawley known for his later role as Fred Mertz in “I Love Lucy”; and Alfred St. John known for his scruffy character role in both the 1940 “Billy the Kid” and 1941 “Lone Rider” series. The casting of the Keystone police changed from one film to the next; many of the members were per diem actors who remain uncredited. 

Mack Sennett continued producing films with the Keystone Kops through the 1920s but, with the arrival of sound films, the group became less popular. In 1935, Warner Brothers director Ralph Staub staged a revival of the group with his short film “Keystone Hotel” which featured the Kops’ frantic movements. Homages to the group appeared in the 1939 “Hollywood Cavalcade” which had Buster Keaton in a Keystone chase scene, and the 1955 “Abbot and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops” which include stuntmen dressed as the Kops in a lengthy chase scene. The “Abbot and Costello” film had cameo appearances by two of the original Kops, Hank Mann and Heinie Conklin, as well as a cameo by Mack Sennett. The master of comedy, Mel Brooks included a Keystone Kops-styled chase scene in his 1976 comedy “Silent Movie”. 

Calendar: November 27

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of November

The Bare White Wall

November 27, 1920 marks the release of Douglas Fairbanks’s “The Mark of Zorro”.

“The Mark of Zorro” was a 1920 silent adventure romance film, starring Douglas Fairbanks and Noah Beery Senior’, based on Johnston McCulley’s 1919 “The Curse of Capistrano” which introduced the character of Zorro. The story was adapted into a screenplay by Fairbanks, under the name of Elton Thomas, and Eugene Miller. “The Mark of Zorro” was the first film released through United Artists, formed by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Fairbanks.

Douglas Fairbanks played Don Diego Vega, the effete son of a wealthy ranch owner, who has the secret identity of a masked Robin Hood- like rogue, known as Zorro, or The Fox. He is the champion of the people who appears out of nowhere to protect and right wrongs. He has a love interest, Lolita played by Marguerite De La Motte, and is pursued by the authorities, including Sergeant Pedro Gonzales played by Noah Beery Senior.

“The Mark of Zorro” is a landmark in the career of Douglas Fairbanks and in the development of the action adventure film. This was Fairbanks’s thirtieth motion picture; and he used it to transition from comedies to costume adventure films, which is how most people remember him. The audiences responded with enthusiasm to Fairbanks’s new persona, which allowed him to flaunt his considerable athleticism to its fullest advantage. Fairbanks’s stunts have lost none of their impact; no later cinematic superhero has ever been half so convincing as his Zorro leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and over the heads of his enemies.

This film helped popularize one of Americas’s most prominent creations of fiction; the enduring character of the superhero. It established the pattern for future caped crusaders with dual identities. “The Mark of Zorro” was remade twice: in 1940 starring Tyrone Power and in 1974 starring Frank Langella. The United States Library of Congress selected it in 2015 for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In DC Comics, it is established that “The Mark of Zorro” was the film that young Bruce Wayne saw just before the death of his parents outside the movie theater. Zorro is often portrayed as Bruce Wayne’s childhood hero and an influence upon his Batman persona. Bill Finger, co-creator with Bob Kane of the character Batman, was inspired by the Zorro played by Fairbanks, leading to similarities in costumes, the secret caves, and the unexpected secret identities.

Alfred Hitchcock, “The Lodger”: Film History Series

Alfred Hitchcock,“The Lodger”, 1927, Cinematography Gaetano di Ventimiglia, Woolf & Freedman Film Service

The Lodger, the silent film that Hitchcock directed in 1927, is generally acknowledged to be the one where he properly found his “voice”: that distinctive combination of death and fetishism, trick shots and music-hall humour, intense menace and elegant camerawork that assured his place among cinema’s giants.

The material, drawn from a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, is rather obviously inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders; they were still within living memory. Hitchcock himself claimed later that producing studio Gainsborough, including Michael Balcon, ordered him to remove any ambiguity that the central character, the mysterious room-renter of the title, might be guilty of the crimes himself, instead of simply the innocent victim of false suspicion.

Jean Cocteau: Film History Series

Enrique Riveros, “The Blood of a Poet”, 1932, Director Jean Cocteau, Cinematographer Georges Périnal

Jean Cocteau’s “The Blood of a Poet” is an avant-garde film which starred Enrique Riveros, a Chilean actor who had a successful career in European films. It is the first part of the Orphic Trilogy, which is continued in the 1949 “Orphee”, and followed by the 1960 “Testament of Orpheus”.

The film was financed by French nobleman Charles de Noailles who gave Cocteau one million francs to make the film. Shortly after the completion of the film, rumors began circulating that it was an anti-Christian message. Due to the riotous public reaction to Noailles’s previous film “L’Age d’Or”, Cocteau’s release date for his film was delayed for more than a year. “The Blood of a Poet” was finally released on January 20, 1932.

In this scene from the second section of the film, the artist played by Riveros is transported through the mirror to a hotel, where he peers through several keyholes, witnessing such people as an opium smoker and a hermaphrodite. The artist finally cries out that he has seen enough and returns back through the mirror.

“Many years ago, as I was glancing through a catalogue of jokes for parties and weddings, I saw an item, ‘An object difficult to pick up’. I haven’t the slightest idea what that ‘object’ is or what it looks like, but I like knowing that it exists and I like thinking about it.

A work of art should also be ‘an object difficult to pick up’. It must protect itself from vulgar pawing, which tarnishes and disfigures it. It should be made of such a shape that people don’t know which way to hold it, which embarrasses and irritates the critics, incites them to be rude, but keeps it fresh. The less it’s understood, the slower it opens its petals, the later it will fade. A work of art must make contact, be it even through a misunderstanding, but at the same time it must hide its riches, to reveal them little by little over a long period of time. A work that doesn’t keep its secrets and surrenders itself too soon exposes itself to the risk of withering away, leaving only a dead stalk.” 

Jean Cocteau, Cocteau on the Film, 1972, Dover Publications

Reblogged with thanks to http://bandit1a.tumblr.com

Calendar: October 25

A Year: Day to Day Men: 25th of October

Flair for the Orient

October 25, 1909 was the birthdate of American character actor Whitner Nutting Bissell.

Born in New York City, Whitner Bissell trained with the Carolina Playmakers, a theatrical organization associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in drama and English. Bissell also was in the Moss Hart play “Winged Victory”, produced by the US Army Air force during World War II as a morale booster and a fund raiser for the Army Emergency Relief Fund.

Whitner Bissell’s first role in film was in the 1943 “Holy Matrimony”, playing the valet Henry Leek in the comedy film. He regularly was cast in science fiction and horror films, appearing in the 1954 “Creature from the Black Lagoon” playing doctor Edwin Thompson who is severely injured by the creature. Bissell has an uncredited role in the 1956 “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as Doctor Hill, the psychiatrist in the film’s opening scene.

Between the early 1950s and the mid-1970s, Bissell guest-starred in many television series followed by more occasional roles in later years. He appeared in episodes of “Whirlybirds”, “Peyton Place and “The Brothers Brannagan”. He was also cast in the NBC education drame series “Mr. Novack” for the 1965 episode “May Day, May Day”. Bissell made four appearances on the “Perry Mason” series and played different roles in multiple episodes fo the long-running western series “The Rifleman” starring Chuck Connors.

Whitner Bissell often played silver-haired authority figures in many of the television series. His most prominent television role was that of General Heywood Kirk in thirty episodes of the 1966-67 season of the sci-fi series “The Time Tunnel”, establishing his screen persona of a man of military bearing, but in an annoyingly dominating way, especially with regard to petty or trivial matters. This characterized persona  showed up in other series: “The Outer Limits”, “Hogan’s Heros”, and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”.

In 1960, Whitner Bissell appeared in George Pal’s production of “The Time Machine” as Walter Kemp,, one of the time-traveler’s dining friends. He also appeared in a 1978 television movie of Wells’ novel set in the modern era. Thirty-three years later, in the 1993 documentary film “Time Machine: The Journey Back” featuring the original stars of the movie, Rod Taylor, Alan Young, and Bissell, he recreated his role as Walter Kemp. This was Bissell’s last acting performance.

Whitner Bissell served for many years on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild, and represented the actors’ branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board of governors. In 1994, two years before his death, he received a life career award from the Academy of Science fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films.

Calendar: October 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of October

The Maroon Leather Armchair

October 14, 1893 was the birthdate of silent film and stage actress Lillian Gish.

After appearing for thirteen years with her sister Dorothy on the vaudeville stage, Lillian Gish eventually found her way onto the big screen. In 1912, she met famed director D. W. Griffith, who immediately cast her in what was to be her first film, the 1912 “An Unseen Enemy”. This was followed the same year by two more films: “The One She Loved”,  and “My Baby”. Gish would make a total of twelve films for Griffith in 1912.

After performing in twenty five films in the next two years, Lillian Gish’s exposure to the public was so great that she fast became one of the top stars in the industry, alongside “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford.. In 1915, Lillian Gish starred as Elsie Stoneman in Griffith’s most ambitious project to date, the 1915 “The Birth of a Nation”. Although the number of films that she now appeared in were not as frequent as her first years, she was popular and successful enough to be able to pick and choose the right films. In 1916, Gish appeared in another Griffith classic, “Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages”.

By the early 1920s, Gish’s career was slowing down; new actors and actresses appeared on the scene, replacing former stars. Lillian Gish did not appear at all on the screen again until the year of 1926. She appeared in “La Boheme” as Mimi and “The Scarlet Letter” in the lead role as Hester Prynne. As the 1920s ended, silent films were being replaced with the new sound films. At this time, Lillian Gish returned to stage productions which were acclaimed by the public and critics alike.

In 1933, Gish filmed “His Double Life” with Roland Young, and then didn’t make another film for ten years. When Gish did return in 1943, she played in two big-budget pictures, the 1942 “Commandos Strike at Dawn” and “Top Man” released in 1943. Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had in her early career, Gish still proved she could hold her own with the best of them. She later earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role of Laura Belle McCanles in the 1946 “Duel in the Sun”, but lost to Anne Baxter for her performance in “The Razor’s Edge”.

One of the most critically acclaimed roles of Lillian Gish’s career came in the 1955 thriller “The Night of the Hunter”, also notable as the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton. Lillian Gish made in 1987 what was to be her last motion picture, “The Whales of August”, a box-office success that exposed her to a new generation of fans. After a seventy-five year career in film, on February 27, 1993, Lillian Gish died at age 99 peacefully in her sleep in New York City.

Gaston Velle, “La Metamorphose du Papillon”: Film History Series

Gaston Velle, “Métamorphoses du Papillon (The Butterfly’s Metamorphosis)”, 1904,  Silent Hand-Colored Nitrate Film, Running Time Two Minutes, Pathé Frères, Collection of the AMCI 

Born in Rome, Italy in 1868, Gaston Velle was a French silent film director and a pioneer in the field of special effects. He was a prominent figure in both French and Italian cinema in the early twentieth-century.

Gaston Velle was the son of Hungarian entertainer Joseph ‘Rrofessor’ Velle, a magician who traveled throughout Europe preforming for the nobility. He began his career as a traveling magician; however when the opportunity presented itself, he entered the developing world of cinematography where he employed his illusionist skills. Velle worked under the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis Jean, who were using the newly patented Cinematograph system to make short silent films. Velle nest served as the head of production for the Italian studio Società Italiana Cines, both a producer and distributor of films.

Velle created more than eighty films between 1903 and 1911. He is best known for those works produced at Pathé Frères, a business founded by the four Pathé brothers in 1896. By the early 1900s, this company developed into the world’s largest film equipment and production company, as well as, a major producer of phonographs and their cylinder and disc records. Velle produced for Pathè short films designed to feature special effects; these were intended to rival those of film director Georges Méliès, France’s leading pioneer of special effects films. 

One of Gaston Velle’s earliest directorial works was the 1904 short silent crime film “Les Devaliseurs Nocturnes (Night Burglars)”. Some of Velle’s films pioneered techniques which have been used by others over the years. His 1906 “Les Invisibles” is the first known invisible man film. Valle also created some of the first Féerie films known for their fantasy plots, visual effects and lavish scenery. These films used a fairy-tale design to combine theater with dance, mime and acrobatics.

Velle collaborated with other directors on film projects, including Spanish director Segundo de Chomón, who previously did the cinematography on Velle’s “Night Burglars”, and French director Ferdinand Zecca, who as a Pathé director set up the Pathé pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. Among these collaborative efforts were such silent film classics as the 1905 “Réve à la Luna (The Moon Lover)”, the 1906 “L’ecrin du Rajah (The Rajah’s Casket)” and the 1905 “La Poule aux Oeufs d’Or (The Hen Who Laid the Golden Egg)”. Director Martin Scorsese inserted “La Poule aux Oeufs d’Or”  into his 1997 Academy Award nominated film “Kundun”. 

Gaston Velle retired from the film industry in 1913. There is little information available about the last decades of his life. He still remained part of a prominent cinematic family as his son Maurice Velle, a cinematographer, married and had a family with screenwriter Mary Murillo. Gaston Velle died in Paris on the eighth of January in 1953 at the age of eighty-five. 

Gaston Velle’s 1904 “Métamorphoses du Papillon (The Butterfly’s Metamorphosis)” is a hand-colored, silent nitrate print film with a running time of less than two minutes. The film follows a caterpillar’s change into a butterfly which later morphs into a female dancer. It is currently housed in the collection of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, ACMI, at Federation Square in Melbourne. Additional information, as to cinematographer and the actress portraying the dancer, is not known. The full length film can be seen on several online venues including YouTube.  

Second Insert Image: Gaston Velle, “Voyage Autour d’Une Étoile (Voyage Around a Star)”, 1906, Short Silent Film, Pathé Frères

Bottom Insert Image: Gaston Velle, “La Poule aux Oeufs d’Or”, 1905, Short Silent Film, Pathé Frères

Calendar: September 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of September

Red Atop of Gray

September 22, 1885 was the birthdate of director, actor and producer Erich von Stroheim.

Erich von Stroheim is considered one of the greatest directors of the silent era; he created films representing both a cynical and a romantic view on human nature. His style of directing was known to be dictatorial and demanding on the actors. Stroheim’s best remembered work was his adaption of Frank Norris’ period novel “McTeague”, released in 1924 under the title “Greed”. It originally started as a project with Goldwyn Pictures, which later during the filming, Merged with Loew  and became MGM,

“Greed” was intended to be a highly detailed version of the book, shot at the actual locations in the book. Scenes with actors in period dress and Silent movie make-up were shot amidst a modern day San Francisco, with its automobiles seen in many scenes. The Death Valley scenes in the book were shot on location in the heat of summer, the first feature-length film shot at the location.

The original print of “Greed” ran for ten hours. Stroheim and director Rex Ingram, after cutting more than half of the footage, edited it into a four-hour version that could be shown in two parts. Metro- Goldwyn Mayer, tired of Stroheim’s attempts to cut the film to less than three hours, removed him from control and gave the film to head scriptwriter June Mathis with instructions to cut it further. Mathis gave the print to a routine cutter, who reduced it to two and a half hours in length. In what is considered one of the greatest losses in cinema history, a janitor at the studio destroyed the cut footage. Stroheim disowned the released version which became a commercial failure. 

Erich von Stroheim’s unwillingness or inability to modify his artistic principles for the commercial cinema, his extreme attention to detail, his insistence on near-total artistic freedom and the resulting costs of his films led to fights with the studios. As time went on he received fewer directing opportunities. In 1929, Stroheim was dismissed as the director of “Queen Kelly” after disagreements with star Gloria Swanson and producer Joseph P. Kennedy over the mounting costs of the film as well as Stroheim’s introduction of indecent subject matter into the film’s scenario.

Stroheim played the role of producer Max von Mayerling in Billy Wilder’s 1950 “Sunset Boulevard”, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award fo Best Supporting Actor. Excerpts from Stroheim’s previous work “Queen Kelly” were shown in the film. His “Sunset Boulevard” character had lines stating that he used to be one of the three greatest directors of the silent era. These lines reflected the actual humiliations and trials Stroheim had actually suffered through his career. Erich von Stroheim, paralyzed from cancer in his body, passed at his chateau near Paris on May 12, 1957 at the age of 71.

Calendar: September 5

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of September

Mystical Smoker

September 5, 1916 marks the film release of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance”.

“Intolerance” is an epic silent film directed by D.W. Griffith and regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the silent era of film.  The three and a half hour epic has four parallel story lines: a Modern melodrama of crime and redemption, a Judean story of Jesus’ mission and death, a French story of the 1572 Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and the story of the fall of the Babylonian Empire. In the original print, each story had its own distinctive color tint.

Breaks between the differing time periods are marked by the symbolic image of a mother rocking a cradle, representing the passing of generations. The film simultaneously cross-cuts back and forth and interweaves the segments over great gaps of space and time, with over 50 transitions between the segments. Director Griffith wanted his characters to be emblematic of human types; thus, in the film many of the characters do not have names. The central modern female character is called “The Dear One”, her young husband “The Boy”, and the leader of the local Mafia is “The Musketeer of the Slums”.

“Intolerance” was a colossal undertaking featuring monumental sets, lavish period costumes, and more than 3,000 extras. The lot on Sunset Boulevard featured a Babylon set with 300 feet walls as well as streets of Judea and medieval France. The extras were reported to have been paid a combined total of $12,000 a day. The cost of producing the film was almost $386,000, which was financed mostly by Griffith himself, contributing to Griffith’s financial ruin for the rest of his life.

“Intolerance” had enthusiastic reception from the film critics at its premiere. Even though the film was the most expensive American film made up to that point and it did far less business than Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”, it earned approximately $1 million for its backers, a respectable performance and enough to recoup its budget. In 1989, “Intolerance” was one of the first films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

In 1989 “Intolerance” was given a formal restoration by film preservationists Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. This version, running 177 minutes, was prepared by Thames Television from original 35 millimeter material, and its tones and tints were restored per Griffith’s original intent. It also has a digitally recorded orchestral score by Carl Davis. This version is part of the Rohauer Collection who worked in association with Thames on the restoration. It was given a further digital restoration by Cohen Media Group and was reissued to select theaters, as well as on DVD and Blu-ray, in 2013. This print contains footage not found on other versions.

Calendar: August 12

A Year: Day to Day Men: 12th of August

Key to Life

August 12, 1927 was the release date of “Wings”, the only silent film to win an Oscar.

The American silent war film “Wings” was a romantic action-war movie set during the First World War. It starred Clara Bow, Charles”Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen. The film was shot on location at Kelly Field, a military facility in San Antonio, Texas, from September of 1926 to April of 1927 on a budget of two million dollars.

Producers Lucien Hubbard and Jesse L. Lasky hired director William Wellman as he was the only director in Hollywood at the time who had World War I combat pilot experience. Actor Richard Arlen and writer John Monk Saunders had also served in World War I as military aviators. Arlen was able to do his own flying in the film and actor Charles Rogers, a non-pilot, underwent flight training during the course of the production, so that, like Arlen, Rogers could also be filmed in closeup in the air. Director Wellman was able to attract War Department support and involvement in the project, and displayed considerable prowess and confidence in dealing with planes and pilots onscreen.

Primary scout aircraft flown in the film were Thomas-Morse MB-3s standing in for American-flown SPADs and Curtiss P-1 Hawks painted in German livery. Developing the techniques needed for filming closeups of the pilots in the air and capturing the speed and motion of the planes onscreen took time, and little usable footage was produced in the first two months. Wellman soon realized that Kelly Field did not have the adequate numbers of planes or skilled pilots to perform the needed aerial maneuvers, and he had to request technical assistance and a supply of planes and pilots from Washington.

Hundreds of extras were brought in to shoot the picture, and some 300 pilots were involved in the filming. If possible, Wellman attempted to capture footage in the air in contrast to clouds in the background, above or in front of cloud banks to generate a sense of velocity and danger. During the delays in the aerial shooting because of weather conditions, Wellman extensively rehearsed the scenes for the Battle of Saint-Mihiel over ten days with some 3500 infantrymen. A large battlefield with trenches and barbed wire was created on location for the filming. Wellman took responsibility for the meticulously-planned explosions himself, detonating them at the right time from his control panel. At least 20 young men, including cameraman William Clothier, were given hand-held cameras to film anything and everything during the filming.

On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Award ceremony was held at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927–1928. “Wings” was entered in a number of categories and was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture; Roy Pomercy, the special effects artist for the film, won Best Engineering Effects for that year. For many years, “Wings” was considered a lost film until 1992 when a print was found in the film archive of Cinémathèque Française in Paris. It was quickly copied form nitrate film to safety film stock and is shown again in theaters, sometimes accompanied by Wurlitzer pipe organs.

Segundo De Chomon, “Le Grenouille”: Film History Series

Segundo De Chomon, “La Grenouille (The Frog)”, 1908, Pathé Films

“La Grenouille” is a short early silent film that was released in France in 1908.  It was created and directed by Segundo De Chomon. The story follows a magical frog and a young woman whom upon climbing unto a fountain rock initiates a series of spectacles.  It was a rather unusual film for the era; it employed film illusion techniques used only by a few directors at that time of early filmmaking .

Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz was born on October,17 in 1871, He  was a pioneering Spanish film director who produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères. De Chamon has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions.

The soundtrack is contemporary, not the original score.

Buster Keaton, “The Bell Boy”: Film History Series

Buster Keaton: “The Bell Boy”, 1918, Silent Film

“The Bell Boy” is a 1918 American two-reel silent comedy film produced by the Comique Film Company. It was written by actor and director Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle with starring roles by Arbuckle and Buster Keaton as bell boys in the Elk’s Head Hotel. The cinematography was done by Elgin Lessley, an American hand-crank cameramen of the silent film era,  and cameraman George Peters. “The Bell Boy” was released by Paramount Pictures on March 18, 1918 with a running length of thirty-three minutes. 

Much of the material in the film was later re-used by Buster Keaton in his 1937 “Love Nest On Wheels”, one of the rare films in which Keaton appeared onscreen with his family, with whom he had performed on the vaudeville stage. The mop sequence in the film was reused by Keaton in his last film appearance in the 1966 comedy short “The Scribe”, filmed shortly before his death from lung cancer on February 1, 1966. 

Buster Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest film director by Entertainment Weekly in 1996 and the American Film Institute ranked him in 1999 as the 21st greatest male star of the classic Hollywood cinema. Keaton was presented in 1959 with an Academy Honorary Award to celebrate his achievements in the film industry. 

Calendar: June 26

A Year: Day to Day Men: 26th of June

The Art of Concentration

June 26, 1925 marks the release of the Charlie Chaplin film “The Gold Rush”.

The 1925 American comedy “The Gold Rush” was in every respect the most elaborate undertaking of Charlie Chaplin¹s career. For two weeks the unit shot on location at Truckee in the snow country of the Sierra Nevada. Here Chaplin faithfully recreated the historic image of the prospectors struggling up the Chilkoot Pass. Six hundred extras, many drawn from the vagrants and derelicts of Sacramento, were brought by train, to clamber up the 2300-feet pass dug through the mountain snow.

For the main shooting the unit returned to the Hollywood studio, where a remarkably convincing miniature mountain range was created out of timber (a quarter of a million feet, it was reported), chicken wire, burlap, plaster, salt and flour. The spectacle of this Alaskan snowscape improbably glistening under the baking Californian summer sun drew crowds of sightseers

In addition, the studio technicians devised exquisite models to produce the special effects which Chaplin demanded, like the miners’ hut which is blown by the tempest to teeter on the edge of a precipice, for one of the cinema’s most sustained sequences of comic suspense. Often it is impossible to detect the shift from model to full-size set.

“The Gold Rush” abounds with now-classic comedy scenes. The historic horrors of the starving 19th century pioneers inspired the sequence in which Charlie and his partner Big Jim  are snowbound and ravenous. Charlie cooks and eats his boot, with all the airs of a gourmet. In the eyes of the delirious Big Jim, he is transformed into a chicken – a triumph both for the cameramen who had to effect the elaborate trick work entirely in the camera; and for Chaplin who magically becomes a bird.

The lone prospector’s dream of hosting a New Year dinner for the beautiful dance-hall girl provides the opportunity for another famous Chaplin set-piece: the dance of the rolls. The gag had been done before, by Chaplin’s one-time co-star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; but Chaplin gave unique personality to the dancing legs created out of forks and rolls. When the film was first shown audiences were so thrilled by the scene that some theaters were obliged to stop the film, roll it back and perform an encore.

“The Gold Rush” was the first of his silent films which Chaplin revived, with the addition of sound, for new audiences. For the 1942 reissue he composed an orchestral score, and replaced the inter-titles with a commentary which he spoke himself. The film today is accepted to be one of Chaplin’s most perfectly accomplished films and declared by him to be the one by which he wanted to be remembered.