Whipping up pogroms

Elsker Hverasndre (The stigmatized, or Love one Another), a silent movie about pogroms in Russia, made in Germany in 1922, by Danish director Carl Th Dreyer with a mainly Russian cast, still frighteningly prescient 100 years later. Hanna-Liebe Segal grows up in the ghetto of a Russian town on the Dnieper.  For some reason her mother sends her to a Cristian school, which is odd since her older brother Jakov was cursed by their father for converting after he moved to St Petersburg and got "Russianized". When Hanna grows up she falls for a student revolutionary, Sasha, so she, too, heads off for St Petersburg.  She lives with a Jewish family since her brother is  passing for Russian.   Jakov, a successful lawyer, recognizes secret police infiltrators among Hanna's friends, one of whom is Rylowitsch, who seems to hate everyone, Jewish, radical or Christian. After smashing the progressives, Rylowitsch poses as a mad monk, whipping up fear. "The Tsar is signing your land over to te Jews!"  You'd think that might be a logical reason for dumping the Tsar, but instead, the peasants kiss icons of the Tsar and kill Jews instead.  Then, as now, populist mobs are easily manipulated. Jakov goes back to the village when his mother dies and sees a ghost in a prayer shawl, walking through doors.  Though he's a Christian, sincere enough to wear a cross, the mob kills him, too.  The village goes up in flames, many are killed. Hanna's revolutionary boyfriend returns, and the pair head off for the Polish/German border.......  Everyone's screwed when mobs run loose. Could a film like this have been made in Russia at the time ? And will such things happen again, to different communities, in different times and places ?  Though the pace is slow and stylized, there are many good moments here. The ghetto scenes were filmed in a studio in Berlin, but based on real places in the ghetto in Lublin.  Brother-in-law "Red haired Abraham" operates a machine that rocks the cradle while he works across the room.  Mama Segal lays out her daughter's trousseau though Hanna has no intention of settliung down.  The scenes in St Petersburg are in some ways even more poignant because they aren't artificial sets but real furniture and furnishings, new at the time, antique now. The family Hanna lodges with owns a keyboard iunstrument with no apparent backboard, unless it's built into the wall. Above the keys is a depiction of a lyre which must stand 2 metres tall.  A world that's  gone. Or does history repeat ? Plenty of Rylowitschs around, though they don't pretend to be monks.  Please see my other posts on early film and on Carl Th Dreyer, using the label below, including his Der Vampyr and The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Race, Religion and Whaling : Down to the Sea in Ships

Down to the Sea in Ships (1922, Elmer Clifton) is famous because it made Clara Bow a star, but it's even more interesting as a semi-historical document.  It's also a surprisngly subversive commentary on race, religion and hypocrisy.

When this film was made whaling in tall ships was still an important industry, and many of the shots are authentic, shot with local whalers, who still practised their trade. This film is much more than a movie. The plot is melodrama, but plays out against a background which would be impossible to replicate today.  Though the story is set in the mid-nineteenth century (the Gold Rush is news), those times were living memory to many people 100 years ago. Just as Nosferatu (1921 - read more here) depicts a Germany of the recent past which was soon to vanish, So when we look at the whalers in their small boats, struggling with the ocean, we aren't watching stunt men, but men who really did know how to ride the waves.  There are shots where we can see whole herds of whales, and porpoises, swimming freely. Possibly not so easy to envisage today.  Down to the Sea in Ships is like a last, loving snapshot of a world we might reconstruct but can never experience. The best scenes, shot on the high seas, are grainy and not posed for dramatic effect, but they were made when motion picture technology was barely 25 years old.  Special credits then, to the two photographers, A G Penrod and Paul H Allen, "who, in small boats, stood by their cameras, at the risk of their lives, to film the fighting whales".  But there's even more to this film than meets the eye: its sub-texts on social issues are way ahead of its time. 

Down to the Sea in Ships was made by "The Whaling Film Corporation", specially set up for the purpose and shot in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the premiere took place. At the time, cinema wasn't dominated by big studios but by small independents, so this film is also a record of a film making model completely different to Hollywood, much closer to European art film of the period.  The director/producer was Elmer Clifton (1890-1949) who worked with D W Griffith, though in this film he shows a very different approach to movie-making.  

This film is not studio spectacular but direct engagement with Nature.  Nowadays there'd be warnings that "no real animals were harmed in filming". Not so in 1922. The massive sperm whale the whalers kill was probably a real whale.  No way the technology of the time was fancy enough to fake a whale like this. It fights back, flipping over one of the boats. The men fall into the sea but look as though they've done that before.  When the whale pulls three boats and their crews (weighing 6000 tons the subtitles tell us) the whale wasn't acting.  There are shots of blubber being stripped off the carcass, buckets filled with sperm and so on, lovingly captured in detail.  Presumably that's what happened : the whalers had to make a living and weren't paid much by the film company.  So if the filming is grainy, and the shots unposed, without the special effects we expect today, we shouldn't complain.  Although some scenes are clearly staged, technology of the time wasn't advanced enough to fake all that we see. The whaling ship, with three masts and nine sails, was almost certainly authentic. As the credits say "The brawny boatsteerer still throws the hand harpoon".  Though the hero is cast as boatsteerer, the man doing the job was evidently the real thing. 

It's interesting, then, hat the close knit community depicted is staunchly Quaker, though Quakers eschew killing.  I had a hard time squaring that with hunting whales almost to extinction, but I guess that's because we live in more enlightened times and don't depend on whales for fuel, bones and oil.  Quakers were whalers for economic reasons.  Captain Morgan is a retired whaleman, ramrod straight and unbending, and rich.  A bit of a tyrant too, who insists his daughter Patience cannot marry outside the faith or profession.  He's so uptight he complains that Patience's wedding shawl is "gay" because it has a fringe.  Being pig-headed is his downfall, though he doesn't live to find out.  For he's easily fooled.  Two men plot to steal his ships. One is Finner, a ne'er do well, the other is Siggs, from a "nearby city".

Siggs is seen dressed in Chinese clothes with Chinese antiques.  "You're almost white" says Finner.   Down to the sea in Ships is a whole lot less innocent than you'd expect.  Although race laws prevailed in the United States and elsewhere, not everyone was racist. Please see my piece  Broken Blossoms : Racist reversal the 1919  film by D W Griffith, Clifton's mentor, which subverts racist stereotypes and was banned in British colonies for fifty years as a result.  Griffith's Birth of a Nation presented the KKK in a good light, demeaning their victims.  But Clifton, who never made it big in Hollywood,  went on to make low-budget independent movies on difficult social issues. As in Broken Blossoms, and other films on race relations like The Cheat : racism and dishonesty (read more here)  fiendish orientals are defined as sex-obsessed maniacs, lusting for white women. The actor playing Siggs leers and grimaces, like a masked demon.  All Siggs has to do to pass as Quaker is wear a Quaker hat and talk thee and thou.  Is he mixed race, (in the 1850's) or is his race a ruse to justify titilliation? .And, in this film,  Finner is even more of a lecher, salivating over Dot,  Morgan's pre-pubescent  orphan granddaughter.  Later he attempts to rape her. (Dot and Finner in the photo below)

Dot is played by Clara Bow then aged 16 and chubby faced.  Captain Morgan cannot understand Dot, who was found floating on a raft when her parents' ship,went down.  Maybe she's not his at all.  She's a forceful whirlwind of a girl, more tomboy than lady, who hangs out with the labourers at the copper works and shamelessly pulls Jimmy's newly grown whiskers. Grandad grew rich from killing animals. Dot confronts men who tease a dog. She gets into fights. Eventually, she dresses as a boy to run off to sea when Jimmy signs on as a whaler.  Bow plays the part so well that she steals the show: the other actors are wooden in comparison.  And what a part it is, so unusual and so daring for its time.  Her more famous It Girl roles are tame stereotypes in comparison.

Patience is a wimp, who still plays with dolls, though she's at least in her 20's.  Siggs prevails on Captain Morgan, who,lets him court Patience. But Dexter, the Boy Next Door, returns from college and he and Patience fall in love. Finner gets Dexter shanghai'd on a whaling ship. Unfortunate term, given the racism in the depiction of Siggs, but a reminder that white men got screwed by a brutal system too.   Finner kills the master of the ship and takes control.  Dot, dressed as a cabin boy defends Jimmy when Finner fights him, and reveal she's a girl.  Finner gets caught molesting her and is locked in a cage. Dexter ends up becoming Boatsteerer, having earned the respect of the crew.  Having caught the big sperm whale (more innuemdo) the ship sails back to New Bedford. That very day, Patience is marrying Siggs, having promised her Dad on his deathbed to do so.  Dexter runs through a thunderstorm to the church, smashing a window, disrupting the ceremony and the decorum of Quaker propriety. Love prevails!  Next year Patience has a baby instead of a doll, and Dot cavorts in a flower strewn meadow with Jimmy. Along the way we see other vignettes of "real" life, like the Black ex-slaves of the Sea Islands, and Tacoma, Patience's First Nation maid, with an uncredited actress who clearly isn't white, and is dressed in Missionary Indian costume.

Revolution : Russian Art and Eisenstein

At the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the exhibition Revolution : Russian Art : 1917-1932 runs until 17th April.  "This far-ranging exhibition will – for the first time – survey the entire artistic landscape of post-Revolutionary Russia, encompassing Kandinsky’s boldly innovative compositions, the dynamic abstractions of Malevich and the Suprematists, and the emergence of Socialist Realism, which would come to define Communist art as the only style accepted by the regime."

"The Revolution That Changed Everything" - watch the RA Video on the website -it's short but good.  There will be discussions on the role of art under state control and weekend course on  the effects of revolution on Russian art.  The overthrow of the Tsar was just a beginning. Several revolutions were taking place all at once - political, social and artistic. For a moment, Russia was the vanguard of  progressive innovation.  Futurist ideas inspired new approaches to visual art, music, film and literature.  Lots of interesting issues arising. What is "the Art of The People" ?  What is propaganda and what isn't ?  Does it depend whose side you're on ? Most provocatively, who are "The People" ?


A good time to revisit Sergei Eisenstein's October : Ten Days that Shook the World (1927) reflecting on ten years of revolution.  Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the soundtrack for the re-issue of the film on the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. The narrative is straightforward, told with broad brush directness. But whatb Eisenstein does with the story is turn it into a work of art.  A statue of the Tsar is seen outlined against the sky. It's torn down by diagonal ropes.  A crowd cheers, arms raised heavenwards. Scythes are seen, en masse. Close ups of soldiers faces, grinning, then suddenly, we're in an ornate palace, with elaborate mosaic floor tiles. Cut to angular shots of heavy machinery, to images of starving children dwarfed by huge columns of stone, to shots of a crowd waiting, at night for a train. "Ulyanov ! It's him !"

Diagonals fill the screen, shaking up flat, "natural" order.  Flags and banners wave, crowds march, individuals lost in orchestrated movement.  Gunshots are fired. Suddenly the tightly packed march disintegrates, figures running wildly across a huge city square.  Cannons, horses fall to the ground, crippled.  The gates of a huge bridge open, magnificent abstract lines : but a horse is impaled in the machinery.the modern age versus the past, in one horrific image. In a palace, the Provisional government  gathers. Officials walk up and down grand staircases, pre dating the works of M C Escher.  Hurried footsteps, leading nowhere. When the words "For God and country" appear in subtitles, we see, not Orthodox depictions of God but alien Gods - primitive sculptures, Buddhas, Gods so primitive and atavistic that they can't be identified. Tanks arrive to crush the revolution. What we see are rolling tracks, machines of destruction  terrifying because they are impersonal.  Close ups of guns and individual bullets : the proletariat will fight back.

The bridge across the Neva is raised again,  but a ship- with four, impressive funnels. We see sailors, and cadets marching, as the massive gates of an imperial palace are pulled shut.  A  half naked woman cavorts on the billiard table of the Tsar.  What's going on ?  Through a collage of images,   Eisenstein recreates the tension and uncertainity that people must have felt in the upheaval.  This is cinematic technique as art, not unlike the fractured visuals of Cubist painting.

The Bolsheviks mobilize. Eisenstein shows images of hands operating telegraph machines, of armed men rushing up and down staircases, men with bayonets. swathed in smoke.  A ravaged looking woman looks up at a marble sculpture : without explicit dialogue, is Eisenstein suggesting the idea of redemption through the high ideals that art can symbolize ?  Or something completely different ? Because the nature of art is not necessarily specific, but the opening up of possibilities. Foir all we know, that's why Stalinists needed conservative "realism". where no-one needs to think.

The army declares for Bolshevism: a forest of bayonets. Wheels are turning, the machine surging ahead.  Machine gun clips fire, and cannons, in such rapid sequence that the images hardly have time to register.   Troops swarm into the palace, ascending the marble staircases : we can "hear" the sound of their boots in short, sharp images.  The Revolution is won ! we see the faces of clocks mark the moment, in Petrograd, in Moscow, around the world.

Aelita Queen of Mars 1924 Soviet Sci Fi

Aelita, Queen of Mars, an early Russian Sci Fi film made by Yakov Protazanov (1881-1945) who'd worked in German and French film studios before returning to the Soviet in 1923, the year before Aelita was made.  Aelita thus exemplifies the ideals of the Soviet experiment, where dreams of modernity and progressive change flourished, briefly, before the Stalinist clampdown. Constructivism and Futurism, inspiring Eisenstein, and so many others.  This context matters, for it was the background to Shostakovich's opera The Nose (reviewed here).  The teenage Shostakovich is believed to have played piano at screenings of the film.  Although the plot is loosely based on a story by Tolstoy, Protazanov's film contrasts the reality of Soviet life in his time with a brilliantly exotic fantasy kingdom on Mars. 

Aelita lives in a palace designed in extravagant art deco angles with shards of reflective glass and strange perspectives. She wears a headdress of spikes, vaguely "Japanese", plays a fountain of light as if it were a harp and paints pictures with a shimmering wand. The Kingdom is ruled by The Elders, led by Tuskub, a malevolent-looking dictator, and Gor, a hunk known as the "Guardian of the Tower of Energy".  The soldiers are faceless robots whose movements are stylized and jerky  yet also vaguely reminiscent of the Ballets Russe.  Aelita's maid hops about in a cage-like dress, her movements  mechanical, though her personality is cheeky and vivacious.

Aelita's kingdom is so technologically advanced that it can send out radio messages to Earth.  At 6.27 CET time on 4th December 1921, a transmission is broadcast: "Anta Udeli Uta". No-one understand, except Engineer Los in Russia, who dreams of space travel and has drawn up plans for a trip to Mars. Los's best friend is Spiridnov, a wild-eyed intellectual, even more of a dreamer than Los. Significantly, Los and Spiridnov are played by the same actor. Los is newly married to Natasha, who is down to earth in every way. She is pursued by Erlich, a black marketeer who takes her to illegal speakeasys where people dance and drink as if the Old Days of  Tsardom had never faded.  She rejects him, but Los does not understand and goes away on a long business trip.  While Los is away, Spiridnov hides Los' spaceship plans in a hole behind a fireplace.When Los comes back from his trip, he thinks Natasha has been unfaithful and shoots her. As she lies in her coffin, Spiridnov appears.  Where's Los ? Los is building his space ship to escape, helped by Gussov, a cheerful Soviet soldier.  They have a stowaway, Kratsov, an inept bounty hunter who wants to arrest Los for murder and/or black marketeering, another sign that Los and Spiridnov might be two sides of a whole.

Aelita, meanwhile, has been watching Earth on Martian TV and sees Los and Natasha kiss. She's fascinated and rejects Gor, her suitor.  It's interesting that Aelita, although played by a female actress, is decidedly androgynous, her heavy makeup more masculine than feminine.  She's also unnaturally  flat chested, so perhaps there are other levels in this film the censors might have missed.  When Los and Gussov arrive on Mars, Aelita wants Los, though he's still in love with Natasha.  Gussov fools around with Aelita's cute maid, though he has a wife back in Russia.  The maid gets sent down to the dungeons for consorting with foreigners.  Gussov follows to save her, and rouses the prisoners to revolt.  "Freedom of speech put an end to thousands of years of slavery on Mars".  "It used to be like this in our country" cries Gussov. "October 25th, 1917" flashes  a subtitle Men are seen breaking their chains, beating weapons into sickles, placing sickles over hammers.  The Martian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" is declared.  Fabulous battlescene between the soldier robots and the Proletariats, who have boxes for heads.  The Elders are routed. Aelita  says that she'll now rule, alone. "I don't buy that" says Los, "Queens can't run revolutions". Sure enough, she orders the army to shoot the mutineers.  Los pushes her off the steps and "she" turns into Natasha. Suddenly Los wakes up. The words "Anta Uteli Uta" ring in his mind. Then we see a workman pasting a poster for a brand of tyres with that slogan.  Suddenly Los is back on earth with Natasha, who's very much alive. He runs to the fireplace, snatches up his plans for space travel and throws them into the fire "That's enough for dreams!" he says "We have other things to worry about".

Troll-Elgen : Landscape and culture

Slow moving but strangely compelling, Troll-Elgen, a Norwegian stumfilm (silent) from1927, directed by Walter Fyrst (1901-1993). It's fascinating because it describes a world poised between the past and the modern, magic and reality. Think of Edvard Grieg's song cycle Haugtassa, where a girl lives alone in the mountains, communing with unseen spirits. Think also of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, where a young huntsman must  prove himself, even if it means dealing with the devil.  The very pace of the film is part of its power, forcing us inward, cleansing us of the toxic muzak that passes for life.  Troll-Elgen is also important because it connects to the aesthetics of culture. Read Daniel Grimley Landscape and Norwegian Identity (2006), or, for that matter, Simon Schama : Landscape and Memory (2004) on forests and German art.

Fyrst's Troll-Elgen was based on the 1921 novel Troll-Elgen by Mikkel Arnesen Fønhus (1894-1973). Notice the time frame : Norway became independent from Sweden only in 1905   Literature and culture strengthened Norwegian identity, just as language and culture helped Finland break away from Russia.

The film begins with a panoramic shot of the mountains, densely forested and hostile to humans.  Wonderful landscape shots fill the screen throughout, emphasizing the beauty and power of nature.  In the wilderness lives an ancient elk, the Troll-Elgen , raely seen by humans, reputedly supernatural. Gaupa the huntsman tries to kill it but is driven insane. Huntsmen, like elks, are happiest in the woods but their lives are filled with hardship.  The craft in which Hans lives with his widowed mother is  utterly spartan. Even the rich don't do luxury. The local landowner, Rustebakke, throws a party, but his guests eat off wooden tables, No linen. There's no plumbing. Water is kept in a bucket and ladled into bowls.  Hans is forced to work on Rustebakke's farm, but he and Rustebakke's daughter Ingrid fall in love. The social divide between landowner and tenant is so great that he can't win Ingrid. "Unless", her father says, he can do something impossible, "like shoot the Troll-Elgen".  Gunnar, a horse dealer, and Hans fight over Ingrid. Gunnar gets stabbed. Hans runs away to the big city, thinking he's now an outlaw. He gets a job in the circus as "The Texan" sharpshooter.  Ingrid runs away too, hoping to find him.There's quite a bit of social comment in the film. Hans's boss abuses female employees and the relative Ingrid lodges with turns out to be a lecher. Separately, Ingrid and Hans return to the mountains, rejecting corrupt society.

Hans looks after mad old Gaupa, from whom he learns that Gunnar didn't die, so he isn't being hunted by the law after all.  Gaupa gives Hans a magic bullet, with which he fells the Troll-Elgen.  Ingrid is living alone in a remote cottage. Gunnar comes and attacks her. Hans walks in and the two men fight, but this time Rustebakke and his men intervene.  Hans and Ingrid marry. Presumably with elk for dinner. Or symbolically, anyway.  Although the plot is simple, the film is beautifully shot.  When Hans pursues the Troll-Elgen we see more panoramic vistas, and see the elk galloping over steep slopes and valleys, running along the river, its legs immersed in water. How did the camera crew set that up? The elk doesn't look tame.  The print is in good condition. Whispers of colour appear, too elusive to be remnants of hand tinting. I don't know the technology enough to know how that was done, but the effect enhances the magic of this film.

George Antheil, Daughter of Horror

George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique (1924)  (read more here) is one of the seminal classics of the avant garde. But what happened to him?  Like just about everyone else, he found work in Hollywood, getting work where he could. But his creative spirit wasn't entirely dimmed. .For Halloween, I watched Daughter of Horror (1953)  for which Antheil wrote the soundtrack. His contribution, though, is huge - there are  hardly any spoken words, no dialogue, or even narrative. The music "is" the story. This isn't your average B horror flick. It's an extended musical work, illustrated with images. And gosh, what music!  Think about Tom Waits music videos.  Or Eraserhead and Twin Peaks. George Antheil got there first, establishing the iconography.  The director and producer was John J Parker, who doesn't seem to have made other movies, which also suggests Antheil's primary role as auteur.

A woman walks into the sea, apparently crushed in the surf. She wakes in a bedroom, feeling anxious. As she walks down the stairs she sees a cop arrest a man for beating up a woman.  The music wails: a long wordless vocalize like an unending scream. This might now seem standard horror movie fare, but Antheil was doing this very early on and very well indeed. The singer, incidentally, is Marni Nixon who also had a career outside Hollywood, making some of the first recordings of Charles Ives songs, for example.  The woman wanders into a street that could come straight out of a Tom Waits set. Drunks hang out in the shadows, moving with strange, contorted griomaces - very Tom Wait !  A newspaper seller holds a up a headline about a murder. The woman seems to think she's guilty. The newspaper seller is a dwarf - another Tom Waits image. As is the flower seller from whom the bent cop buys a carnation. A drunk confronts the woman. Does she stab him? Why does the cop beat the drunk into a pulp? 

The woman enters a nightclub. She looks horribly out of place in her repressed tweed suit and no makeup. Listen to the jazz band though,  African drums and, of all things, a French horn. The woman goes in a cab with a strange man.  Served by a butler, the man gobbles a meal, which disgusts the woman, whom he completely ignores. Is she really there in the room with him? She stabs him with a shiny flick knife. The butler seems totally unperturbed. As he dies the man grabs hold of the woman's ornate pendant necklace, the only thing about her appearance that looks individual. Great shots of the elevator and the magnificent marble staircase she runs down. 

Switch to a bit of cod psychoanalysis.  In a graveyard a faceless man shows the woman her fatrher, a drunken, abusive slob, and her mother, a good time girl but frigid..  The sequence of events hardly matters. Aware that the dead man still has her pendant in his hands, the woman  cuts the man's hands open, watched by faceless observers. The actor who plays the woman's father also appears at the beginning of the film as a grinning man, and again later in the crowd who the woman runs into, who raise their arms, Nazi style, against her. She wakes back in her room. Is it all a dream? She opens a cupborad, and there's the dead man's hand, still grasping her pendant, and moving. All this might seem kitsch but the cinematography is very good. The images are carefully chosen, much in the way that 1920's German expressionist films were made.  And thus the connections with George Antheil's past and his glory days in Paris and with the avant garde scene, and the film makers of that era.  How Antheil might have thrived if he'd been able to stay in Paris! On the other hand, without Antheil in Hollywood, we might not have Tom Waits, and,David Lynch and a whole host of film makers both art and schlock, ever since. 

World's first gay movie ? Anders als die Anderen

The world's first gay movie? Anders als die Andern, made in 1919, has been restored, though some  scenes are still lost, a testament to the vicissitudes of an era when homosexuality was an unspeakable crime. In Anders als die Anderen,  Paul Körner, a virtuoso violinist, has a successful career, but he knows he's "different to the others" in mainstream society. In a vision, he sees a parade of gay people throughout history, forced to conceal their identity in a hostile world. Körner has an adoring fan, Kurt Sievers, who follows him everywhere.  Kurt's pretty innocent and loves Körner as an artist. When a blackmailer confronts Körner, Kurt is shocked and runs away. Eventually, the blackmailer is tried and sentenced, but Körner is jailed too because homosexuality was then a crime.  Ostracised, and his career in ruins, he commits suicide. Young Kurt wants to die, too, but is told by Magnus Hirschfeld (no less) that he must live on, to fight injustice.

"Science, not superstition!"  The film uses "scientific" testimony to prove that being gay is part of human nature. Magnus Hirschfeld is seen giving an illustrated lecture with photos of "virile women" and transvestite men posing in their underwear, like specimens in a zoo. To modern eyes, that's offensive, but less so a hundred years ago when people went to freak shows and exhibited skeletons of Africans and other "sub-races". Dodgy science, as if human nature can be so easily classified. Maybe I've jjust got an aversion to pinning labels on people. At least Hirschfeld mentions the French Revolution and the idea that men are born equal. The idea that all people have a right to an identity fits better with modern thinking, though the rise of kook konservatism would deny that.  The director was Richard Oswald (1883-1963), who made dozens of films in the Weimar era, including the well-known Alraune (1928) starring Brigitte Helm, which deals with  quack science. Körner is played by Conrad Veidt, matinee idol, who  made many films in Germany before escaping to star in many more films as a dodgy German.  I also like the film for its  sets - "modern" architecture of the time, much of it destroyed in the Depression and war that followed..

 

Abel Gance J'accuse RARE screening

A superlative restoration  by Philippe Schoeller of Abel Gance's J'accuse (1919) was screened in Paris on November 11th, and is now available on arte tv, only until 11th December. It was made within months of the end of the 1914-18 war, and scenes were shot on battlegrounds scarred by fresh craters, and in trenches hardly recovered from damp and shellfire. In 1938,  Gance remade J'accuse, turning it (by his standards) into a fairly conventional war movie. This 1919 version is altogether more remarkable. The cinematography is state-of-the art. Nearly every frame is brilliantly inventive, using unusual angles and shadows.  Some are shot through a pinhole, with claustrophobic effect. Even the opening credits, which show the cameras used making the film lined in a row  like strange, alien creatures.  Gance would make his name with long, indulgent extravaganzas like Napoléon (1927) but this first J'accuse is a masterpiece of intense focus and concentration. Excellent new soundtrack, too.


A panoramic long shot with soldiers. A figure in silhouette blows a whistle; the soldiers instantly rearrange to form the word "J'accuse " with their bodies.Throughout the film, the words reappear in different forms, an insistent leitmotiv that cannot be ignored.  In a village, peasants are dancing. Jean Diaz, a poet, spots a woman, Edith. They fall in love. "Beware, she's married" says his mother. Jean keeps his poems in a journal "Les Pacifiques", lavishly illustrated with watercolours done in a stylised modernism. Somehow, a vision of Edith being raped by her husband.Her breast falls out of her blouse, revealing her nipple. How philistine Hollywood was, and how it blighted film as art. War is declared. The villagers celebrate. Edith's father, an old soldier, sees skeletons dancing. Edith's husband, François Laurin, sends her to his parents' home in the war zone. When Jean hears the news, the words J'accuse pop up, formed by images of women in chains.

Jean and François serve together in the trenches. The film captures the tension between the two in lucid detail. Despite their rivalry, they're friends and decent men. In the midst of battle, Jean writes poetry, while shells fall around him. Jean covers for François on a dangerous mission behind German lines, blowing up the German ammunition stores. Jean and François learn mutual respect. They both love Edith. Surreal juxtapositions of battle scenes, cultured images like the Three Graces, and more dancing skeletons.  Jean's mother lies dying, so he's called back home. The old lady has Torah candles in her room, a detail shown several times, so it must have meaning. He recites his poems for her: we see images of woods, sunsets, and images of Edith (filmed in transparency) seen juxtaposed over the surreal watercolour paintings in Jean's book of poems.

Running through a rainstorm, Edith returns to the village, telling Jean how she was raped by the Germans and now has an illegitimate daughter. Edith's father cannot tolerate the child's presence so she's sent to live with Jean, who dotes on her, yet shows her how to write the word J'accuse. Subtly, we're beginning to suspect all is not quite right in Jean's soul.

Back at the front, François rejoices at the news of Edith's return, though he doesn't know what's happened to her. The soldiers throw a wild party - African troops take part, playing strange instruments.  When he gets home, he finds the babe and think it's Jean's. Edith is remote. Heartbroken, François cuddles his dog. At heart he's a decent man who can't express himself the way Jean the poet can. Then he realizes that the child is Edith's. He tries to kill Jean but Edith tells him the truth. 

Jean and François both return to the front. Now the battle scenes are more horrific. A man is seen, smiling, but he's dead, frozen in the mud of the trench. We see a vision of an ancient Gaulois warrior standing beside the soldiers, who don't notice. The intertitles become more elaborate, like formal poetry. Back in the village, the children are playing, putting a pickelhaube on Edith's daughter, making her "shoot" a little boy. She refuses. Edith is seen, her arms stretched out, as though she's crucified. Back at the front, on the eve of battle, Jean has a premonition.. Long sequences of scenes from the battlefield: giant cannons and rows of soldiers running, the living among the dead. Already we see Gance's panoramic perspective that will appear so well in Napoléon. Jean goes mad and is taken to hospital.  François is wounded and dies thinking of his beloved dog, holding the hands of a comrade. 

Jean returns to the village, but walks through the streets at night, mumbling strange words. He's haunted, seeing ghosts everywhere. He tells the villagers about the "prodigieuse miracle", of the battlefield covered in crosses (see above)  which turn back into corpses, who then come alive. "Rise up, my friends!".  The corpses get up and march til they read the Arc de Triomphe. "Ils avaient la figure terreuse et les orbits pleins d'etoiles, Ils venaient innombrables du fond de l'horizon, comme les vagues reveillées".

Then Jean confronts the villagers, What have they done to respect the dead  The woman who parties instead of mourning, the men who've profited from the suffering of the poor, "J'accuse, J'accuse, J'accuse! " The corpses march into the village and confront the villagers.
François stares through a window. The villagers reach their arms out, but Jean tells them that the dead cannot come back. It's enough that the dead know that their lives were not lost in vain. The corpses depart, wooden crosses on their shoulders.

Jean retrieves his book and sees the paintings of peaceful scenes. "Le soldat a tué en lui le poete". He sees a ray of sunshine. "Attends-tu, soleil, avant de disparaitre. Chez les morts, ce soir, J'en vais. Et si mon main s'agrippe au bord de ma fenetre, c'est que, caprice amer !.....pour mourir je veux etre a la place ou je te chantais". And he accuses the sun itself "d'avoir illuminé l'effroyable Epopée  muet, placie et sans dégout comme un face horrible a la langue coupée, a ton balcon d'azur, sadiqument crispée, d'avoir regardé jusqu'au bout !" Jean collapses, lifeless. Outside, the lanscape remains immobile, as the sun rises. 

Genuine the Vampire - Wiene download

Robert Wiene's Genuine the Vampire (1920) was  eclipsed by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, completed a few months earlier. But Genuine the Vampire is genuinely interesting, and not just for the hilarious name.  There's Genuine in all her glory wearing a dangerously revealing costume of belts and straps over what one hopes is a body suit but might be real flesh since she flashes naked thighs many times, and strikes poses that let the viewer linger. There's more nudity in this film than possibly any other of its period, and possibly long after. Note the coy "butterfly wings" and the stylized pose. One of the features of this film is the way Wiene freezes formal, stylized poses. In Dr Caligari and other films of the time, movements are theatrical, but not to this extent. In Genuine the Vampire, the poses are so stiff and held for so long that they clearly reference tableaux vivants, which were often used in pornography on the reasoning that, if the body resembled sculpture and wasn't natural, it could be deemed legit.

Genuine the Vampire isn't a vampire story in the Bram Stoker mode but quite explicitly connects to psychology theories popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The film unfolds like a dream, where characters emerge and disappear without logic.  Genuine was an African goddess, kidnapped and sold as a slave to Lord Melo who keeps her prisoner in a geodesic dome in his mansion. Each day a barber comes to shave Lord M, who seems to like being shaved while he's sleeping. One day the barber can't come but Lord M's grandson Florian turns up. Like everyone else in this film, his costume is bizarre - exaggerated love locks and waxed curls and jodphurs. When Florian shaves his grandad, Genuine tells him to kill the old man, so he does. Go figure.

Other personages appear - a Black Slave (in real life possibly from Kamerun) , and Henry and Percy who seem relatively normal.  Genuine appears in different costumes, one made of ostrich feathers, with a Madam Pompadour head dress. Because the action is so slow, viewing the decor is very much part of the experience. The sets are Expressionist paintings, jagged angles and blocks, a collision of Franz Marc, the Cubists and Second Empire excess. Because the plot isn't rationale, the story ends when a mob waving scythes invade the mansion. Notice though that the mob aren't peasants. Their scythes are working tools but symbols of death.

Genuine is played by Fern Andra, in real life Verna Andrews from Watseka, Illinois (1893-1974) who married a Baron von und zu, though he was dead by the time she made this movie. Those strange set designs are by Walther Reimann, the painter and architect who did the sets for The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.  For a download of Dr Caligari, please see HERE.
 

Feminist Finnish Jenůfa, Anna-Liisa 1922

Even if you don 't know Finnish or Swedish, this 1922 movie Anna-Liisa, is so dramatic that you can follow the story without words. Anna-Liisa, a nice country girl is about to marry a wealthy hunk called Johannes, in an idyllic Finnish farm by a lake. But she has a secret! Three years ago she murdered her own baby. This is Jenůfa, except that she does the dirty work herself .

The film was based on a play by Minna Kanth (1844-1897) the first great Finnish playwright, a contemporary of Ibsen .She was a feminist, and interested in modern social issues. Follow the link above to find out more about her. Hers was a liberal, artistic and free-thinking milieu that produced artists, writers, musicians and poets who created the Finnish Republic. To really appreciate Sibelius in context, it helps to understand the "Finnish Renaissance".The film is subtitled both in Swedish, which most educated people spoke, and in Finnish, the language of national identity (which Sibelius, among others had to learn as a second language). English text HERE

Kanth wrote the play, Anna-Liisa, in 1895.  This film, by Teuvo Puro and Jussi Snellman, was made in 1922, but is very well shot for its time. They use the background as an essential part of the story. Look at the detail: life in a simple country farm as it was long ago : the fence built with diagonal logs, windows built of shutters to keep out the winter. When Anna-Liisa's kid sister wants to look into her room, she shifts a slat aside. Modern audiences will be wowed by the elaborate spinning wheel, used for making woolen thread. People didn't just make their own clothes, they made the thread. Look out, too, for the well, operated by an elaborate but obviously efficient mechanism. Horse drawn carts and actors who don't need to be taught how to move around them.  Even a wood sauna by the water, and a naked man strolling out. This pure, simple lifestyle represents Anna-Liisa's world. You can almost smell the clean, fresh air and trees.

Anna-Liisa is seduced by a farmhand called Mikko, who runs off to work in a logging camp. In the play, there's be no way of showing what logging involved. Here we see the mighty forests, and logs being floated down the river. Logging is a dangerous business, loggers jump into the river to shift the logs. Understanding this makes you appreciate how much Mikko has achieved by leaving the village, and why he assumes that Anna-Liisa should have to marry him whether she wants to or not..

Anyway, Anna-Liisa gets pregnant and the baby dies, but she keeps her secret from everyone. Yet guilt weighs heavily upon her. Her little sister has a dream (around 33 min) where we see the "dream" girl superimposed on the sleeping girl. In her nightdress the dream girl finds Anna-Liisa dead, by the lake and garlands her with wild flowers. This simple device sets the mood for the real drama. Anna-Liisa sits by the lake, distraught, and suddenly throws herself in, screaming "My Baby!" Along comes Mikko, who drags her out. On Sunday, Anna-Liisa has to marry, but whom? Mikko or Johannes? Marrying Mikko will hide her guilt, but she doesn't love him anymore. But Anna-Liisa's no wimp. In front of the parson and people, she reveals her secret and says she'll take the consequences. And she doesn't marry either man!