I’m going really slow these days but I can blame on someone: Griffith! Like I said the other day, it is hard to sit in front of the computer or tv if I have to face a three hour epic. But someone has to do it…
I started the day having my breakfast while watching “Intolerance” (Griffith, 1916). The movie is the most well know work done by D.W. Griffith, helping him to get his name in movie books while bankrupting his production company (they spent 2 million dollars – about 41 million today – to produce the movie while not making much in the box office).
There are a couple of reasons that make the movie so important. First of all, the sets and costumes are incredible. Like he had done in “The Birth of a Nation”, Griffith tries to be realistic and true to the historical facts when telling a story. You can clearly see this when the scene showing the Babylonians celebrating after the first batle against Cyrus opens. The shot starts with a high camera angle showing a gigantic set, extravagantly decorated and filled with properly dressed people. It is incredible! It is hard to imagine that the movie was made in 1916 after this shot. And the most unbelievable part? The camera, postioned on a high angle, starts to descend – yes, it moves down! We have the first crane shot ever!
Griffith also uses colores filters to add some emotions to some scenes. He was successfull in some shots – like when “the boy” and “the girl” are in Coney Island and the filter is red, but overall I still like what Feuillade did in “Les Vampires” a lot better.
The way the story was told was another revolutionary aspect of the movie. Griffith pasted together four different stories that took place in four different times in history. He did it in such a way that I was extremely confused in the begining and hopelessly curious by the end. Each story would be told in parts, like chapters, purposefully ending at a crucial moment (any resemblance to soap operas is purely coincidental…) I don’t have to mention that he got audiences really confused with this masterpiece, do I?
If you want to take a look in the movie you can opt for the good and faithful youtube:
The other movie I watched today is one of my top ten movies of all time – “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (Wiene, 1920). Shadowy, nightmarishy and completely distorted, the movie is one of the best examples of the German Expressionism period.
The movie drags you in a kind of frightful nightmare that reveals itself little by little. Not without sending you warnings, of course. There are the sets, clearly made out of cardboard, showing creepy and slanted houses and tents. The angular walls, positioned in such a way that they seem to be claustrophobicaly enclosing the characters . The furniture, disrproportional and irregular. The strange graffiti on the walls, looking so colorful in a black and white movie. And the shadows, you can’t pretend you didn’t see them. Watching Cesare killing Alan through the shadows on the wall can be more traumatic than watching blood squirt from the screen in contemporary horror movies.
Besides the wonderful aesthetics of the movie, there were not many technical experiments going on in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”. The camera is completely still for the entire movie and the characters appear on the shot like actors on a stage. There is a lot of fade in and out throughout the movie, and I haven’t noticed this technique beind used in the other movies I’ve watched so far. Colores filters are also used and help to set the mood in some scenes.
You can also check this movie on youtube:
After four hours and ten minutes worth of silent and black & white movies I’m ready for tomorrow. The book shows me that I have two Griffiths in a row now: “Broken Blossoms” and “Way Down East”. At least they bring Lillian Gish and are not three-hour long historical epics. Argh!
723 days and 995 movies to go
