MC Yearly Consensus: 1926-1927

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from these years and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the thread is locked, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Spinal]

1. Metropolis
2. The General
3. Sunrise
4. Faust
5. College

[Russ]

1. The General
2. The Kid Brother
3. For Heaven's Sake
4. Metropolis
5. College

[Qrazy]

Feel like I really ought to see the Gance and Pudovkin's first but...

1. Sunrise
2. Metropolis
3. Faust
4. The General
5. Duck Soup

[MadMan]

Damn, one film short. The other two (Metropolis, Sunrise) I would gladly submit.

[Raiders]

1. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
2. The Love of Jeanne Ney
3. Faust
4. The Unknown
5. The General

[Derek]

1. Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
2. Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
3. La glace a trois faces (Jean Epstein)
4. By the Law (Lev Kuleshov)
5. The General (Buster Keaton)
**************************
6. The Girl With the Hatbox (Boris Barnet)
7. October (Sergei Eisenstein)
8. Emak-Bakia (Man Ray)
9. Menilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff)
10. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Karl Koch & Lotte Reiniger)

[Russ]

10. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Karl Koch & Lotte Reiniger)
The is the early animated feature using silhouette technique, right? The clips I've seen on YouTube were very cool.

[Derek]

The is the early animated feature using silhouette technique, right? The clips I've seen on YouTube were very cool.

Yup, that's the one. It's a cool little film and they manage to keep the technique interesting throughout. I think it was released on DVD last year, so it's worth checking out for something different.

[Yxklyx]

1. Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
2. Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
3. The Love of Jeanne Ney (Georg Wilhelm Pabst)
4. The General (Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton)
5. Faust (F.W. Murnau)

6. Hindle Wakes (Maurice Elvey)
7. Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown)
8. Bed and Sofa (Abram Room)
9. The Gaucho (F. Richard Jones)
10. Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff)

[Yxklyx]

Damn, one film short. The other two (Metropolis, Sunrise) I would gladly submit.

Search for "Ménilmontant 1926" on youtube. It's in 4 parts and under 40 minutes. Of course - not the best way to see it.

[Spinal]

Search for "Ménilmontant 1926" on youtube. It's in 4 parts and under 40 minutes. Of course - not the best way to see it.

Here you go. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=WWqCNmfJ1hY)

I promise, it's not Rick Astley.

[Yxklyx]

Here you go. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=WWqCNmfJ1hY)

I promise, it's not Rick Astley.

I refuse to click on your links. It's probably pointing to some Uwe Boll interview.

[Russ]

You've been Bollrolled!

:lol:

[Spinal]

I refuse to click on your links. It's probably pointing to some Uwe Boll interview.

Ridiculous!

I prefer to think of it as an 'experimental short'.

[Ezee E]

1. The General
2. Sunrise
3. Metropolis
4. Faust
5. The Jazz Singer

[MadMan]

Search for "Ménilmontant 1926" on youtube. It's in 4 parts and under 40 minutes. Of course - not the best way to see it.Perhaps I will. What's it about? I'm curious.


You've been Bollrolled!

:lol::lol: That was great. I knew something was up too when Spinal made that Rick Astley comment.

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. Metropolis
2. The General
3. Flesh and the Devil
4. The Unknown.

[monolith94]

Um, fellas, is not Duck Soup 1933?

[Spinal]

Um, fellas, is not Duck Soup 1933?

The Marx Brothers one is.

There is a Laurel and Hardy film by that name that I suppose they could be voting for.

[Ezee E]

er... wrong film, I'll edit it.

[Derek]

Perhaps I will. What's it about? I'm curious.

It has one of the greatest axe murders in the history of cinema. That's all you need to know.

[monolith94]

It has one of the greatest axe murders in the history of cinema. That's all you need to know.
Which is, apparently, trumped by one of the greatest shotgun murders in the history of cinema. :D

my top ten of the year(s)

1. The Love of Jeanne Ney
2. Napoleon
3. By The Law
4. Metropolis
5. The Adventures of Prince Achmed

6. The General
7. The Gaucho
8. The End Of St. Petersburg
9. Flesh and the Devil
10. The Black Pirate

[Duncan]

1. Metropolis
2. Sunrise
3. October
4. The General
5. The End of St. Petersburgh

[soitgoes...]

1. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau)
2. Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff)
3. The General (Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton)
4. Napoléon (Abel Gance)
5. Faust (F.W. Murnau)
---------------------------------------
6. Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
7. The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström)
8. Do Detectives Think? (Fred Guiol)
9. The Unknown (Tod Browning)
10. Anémic cinéma (Marcel Duchamp)

[Yxklyx]

Perhaps I will. What's it about? I'm curious.



Seedy low life and poverty in Paris.

[Grouchy]

1. Metropolis
2. The Lodger
3. The General
4. October
5. Faust

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Napoleon
2. Metropolis
3. Sunrise
4. The Scarlet Letter
5. The Kid Brother

6. The General
7. By the Law
8. The Adventures of Prince Achmed
9. Ménilmontant
10. Mother
11. When a Man Loves
12. The End of St. Petersburg
13. For Heaven's Sake
14. Faust
15. The Lodger
16. The Unknown
17. Sparrows
18. Seventh Heaven
19. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
20. The Jazz Singer

[Russ]

5. The Kid Brother
Glad to see this show up in another list. Overall, Lloyd may have been the lesser talent of the big three, but this film is every bit the masterwork that classics like The General and City Lights are.

[Boner M]

1. Sunrise
2. The General
3. The Lodger
4. Metropolis

[Sven]

The Lodger needs some representation.

1. Napoleon
2. The Lodger
3. Faust

[origami_mustache]

Napoleon
Metropolis
Sunrise
The End Of St. Petersburg
The Unknown

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Sunrise (F.W. Murnau - 1927)
2. A Page of Madness (aka A Crazy Page) (T. Kinugasa - 1926)
3. Napoleon (Abel Gance - 1927)
4. The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard - 1927)
5. The General (Buster Keaton - 1927)

[Melville]

1. Napoleon
2. Metropolis
3. Emak-Bakia
4. The Unknown
5. Menilmontant

[SirNewt]

Glad to see this show up in another list. Overall, Lloyd may have been the lesser talent of the big three, but this film is every bit the masterwork that classics like The General and City Lights are.
My favorite Loydd is probably 'The Freshman'. That stupid handshake gets me every time. I need to get one of my more nerdly friends to make me an animated gif of it. I did quite enjoy, 'The Kid brother'

I feel unqualified to choose a number one as I haven't seen 'Surise', 'Napoleon' (damn you Francis Ford Coppola), and a few others.

1.
2. Metropolis
3.
4. The General
5. The Kid Brother

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

A Page of Madness would own this consensus if it was available. The opening is on youtube for the curious (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQiHR-mYgTM). At about the 1:45 minute mark is just :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: :eek:

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/503/kuruttaippejifrentewx2.jpg

[Spinal]

Time Man of the Year for 1927:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/time.gif

Charles Lindbergh

Note: This was the first Time Man of the Year presented.

[Qrazy]

A Page of Madness would own this consensus if it was available. The opening is on youtube for the curious (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQiHR-mYgTM). At about the 1:45 minute mark is just :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: :eek:

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/503/kuruttaippejifrentewx2.jpg

I think I have it dl'd off Karagarga somewhere, not sure though.

[Spinal]

1926 in television:

* John Logie Baird demonstrates the world's first television system to transmit live, moving images in tone graduations, to 40 members of the Royal Institution.

* A weather map is televised for the first time, sent from NAA Arlington to the Weather Bureau Office in Washington, D.C.

* Japanese researcher Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrates a system that uses a mechanical Nipkow disk and a photoelectric tube in the transmitting device, and a cathode ray tube in the receiving device.

1927 in television:

* Bell Telephone Company transmits a speech by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover 200 miles over telephone lines, which becomes the first successful long distance demonstration of television.

* John Logie Baird demonstrates the first ever system for recording television. His Phonovision VideoDisc apparatus records 30-line television pictures and sound on conventional 78 rpm gramophone records.

[MadMan]

Thanks to TCM I can submit a list, although I will try and see some of the other short films that have been linked to in this thread. Anyways for now:

1. Metropolis
2. The General
3. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Metropolis
2. Sunrise
3. Faust

[Qrazy]

I'd just like to say how much I love Faust.

[Spinal]

One more day.

[Spinal]

Last call.

[monolith94]

Which is, apparently, trumped by one of the greatest shotgun murders in the history of cinema. :D

my top ten of the year(s)

1. The Love of Jeanne Ney
2. Napoleon
3. By The Law
4. Metropolis
5. The Adventures of Prince Achmed

6. The General
7. The Gaucho
8. The End Of St. Petersburg
9. Flesh and the Devil
10. The Black Pirate

1. The Love of Jeanne Ney
2. Napoleon
3. By The Law
4. Metropolis
5. The Adventures of Prince Achmed

6. The General
7. The Gaucho
8. The End Of St. Petersburg
9. The Kid Brother
10. Flesh and the Devil
11. The Black Pirate

[Spinal]

The list to follow will only contain 9 films.

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/Le_petit_frere.jpg

The Kid Brother

Director: Ted Wilde and J.A. Howe

Country: USA

The most important family in Hickoryville is the Hickorys, with sheriff Jim and his tough manly sons Leo and Olin. The timid youngest son, Harold, doesn't have the muscles to match up to them, so he has to use his wits to win the respect of his strong father and also the love of beautiful Mary.

Harold Lloyd always claimed this to be his favorite of all his films he ever made. Production originally began with Lewis Milestone as director. Milestone directed a few scenes but due to contract difficulties with Warner Brothers, he had to resign.

“There are other films in Lloyd’s oeuvre that cram in more gags per minute ... or that are more sentimentally touching ... but it is The Kid Brother that represents the ideal balance of the best of Lloyd’s work, and is the most well-rounded and accomplished of all his features.” -- Stephen D. Greydanus

[dreamdead]

That monkey... looks familiar.

[Spinal]

#7 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/lodger.jpg

The Lodger

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Country: UK

A serial killer known as The Avenger is on the loose in London. A mysterious man arrives at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looking for a room to rent. Their daughter is a model and is seeing one of the detectives assigned to the case. The detective becomes jealous of the lodger and begins to suspect he may be The Avenger.

This is the earliest film directed by Alfred Hitchcock that survives today in its entirety. The movie is based on the book of the same name. It was the first book to offer a solution to the Jack The Ripper killings.

“Stuck with The Lodger's absurd sleight-of-hand plot ... Hitchcock clearly tries to have as much fun with it as possible, pushing drama into melodrama wherever possible and inserting numerous stylistic visual flourishes ... many of them borrowed from the German expressionism of Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene.” -- Neil Young

[Spinal]

#7 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/unknown.jpg

The Unknown

Director: Tod Browning

Country: USA

Alonzo the Armless is a circus freak who uses his feet in place of arms to toss knives in a circus show. He falls for the daughter of the circus owner, but the local circus strongman is also attracted to her. She cannot stand being touched by a man, so she keeps a friendship with Alonzo, who is unable to touch her.

Browning loosely based the story on a real event from his circus days, where a man masqueraded as an acrobat to evade the police. Joan Crawford said that she learned more about acting from working with Chaney in this movie than from everything else in her long career put together

“The chess game that results, as affections, appendages, and lives are chopped down, still make one's jaw drop; not because of any physical horror, but the nasty, lingering moments of emotional sadism – deliberate, and unintentional – that heighten the tension, and build to an outrageous finale.” -- Mark R. Hasan

[Spinal]

#6

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc211/zombierouge/vlcsnap00007mr9-1.jpg

The Love of Jeanne Ney

Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Country: Germany

In the Crimea, the Reds and the Whites aren't done fighting, and Jeanne discovers that the man she loves is a Bolshevik. Penniless, she returns to Paris where the thief, traitor, and libertine, Khalibiev, wants to seduce her.

Pabst utilized a variety of cinematic styles. To appease his producers at UFA, he directed much of it in the "American Style," evocative of the Hollywood studio blockbuster. At other times, he experimented with the avant garde techniques of Soviet montage and the eerie moving camerawork and shadowy perspectives reminiscent of Murnau.

“Like its characters, who travel from Russia to France in pursuit of a happier life, the cinematic style in Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney is thoroughly international, drawing on influences of both French Impressionist cinema and Russian montage. This is not to say, however, that Pabst merely appropriated these cinematic traditions without adding anything to the advancement of the medium. It was in his synthesis of the two aesthetics, combined with his own unique visual eye for urban photography, that a new cinematic vision, one which remains at once bold, modern and adventurous, was born.” -- monolith94

[Philosophe_rouge]

I REALLY want to see The Love of Jeanne Ney. I love all the Pabst I've seen.

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/faust5.jpg

Faust

Director: F.W. Murnau

Country: Germany

During a plague, Faust despairs and burns his books after failing to stop death; Satan sends Mephisto to tempt Faust, first with insight into treating the plague and then with a day's return to youth. Mephisto is clever, timing the end of this 24 hours as Faust embraces the beautiful Duchess of Parma.

Murnau wanted Lillian Gish to play Gretchen, but she insisted that the film be shot by her favourite cinematographer Charles Rosher. After the film had already been shot and edited, UFA decided it disliked Hans Kyser's script. Over Kyser's objections, it asked German writer Gerhart Hauptmann to work on it. However, the studio decided that it disliked Hauptmann's script even more. The film was released in Kyser's original version.

“Goethe's text is sampled throughout, but for Murnau, a poetic visualist with a disdain for intertitles, the image comes first—the screen's chiaroscuro is sculpted with shadows and light, infernal beasts roam freely and the fate of the world rests on a wager between Satan and the Archangel.” -- Fernando F. Croce

[Qrazy]

I REALLY want to see The Love of Jeanne Ney. I love all the Pabst I've seen.

I've only seen Secrets of a Soul but even that I thought was pretty damn solid so yeah I'm excited to look into his major work.

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/Nap3.jpg

Napoléon

Director: Abel Gance

Country: France

A massive six-hour biopic of Napoléon, tracing his career from his schooldays, his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797

'Polyvision' was the name given to a specialized widescreen film format devised exclusively for the filming and projection of this film. It involved the simultaneous projection of three reels of silent film arrayed in a horizontal row, making for a total aspect ratio of 4.00:1 (1.33:1 x 3). This configuration is considered a largely similar precursor to Cinerama, which would debut a quarter of a century later; however, it is uncertain whether or not it was a direct inspiration, as the Polyvision sequence of Napoleon was cut from the film by its distributors after only a few screenings and was not restored again until Kevin Brownlow compiled his restorations in the 70s.

“All of the brilliant experiments with film language remain potent, from the montages of flash-frames to the bombastic poetry of the triptych finale; even the gags are still funny. The many highpoints include the hour-long siege of Toulon in torrential rain, won by strategies prefigured in the opening snowball fight, and Gance's own patrician performance as the cold-blooded Saint-Just.” -- Time Out Film Guide

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/sjff_01_img0193.jpg

The General

Director: Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton

Country: USA

Union solders have stolen The General, a train manned by Johnnie Gray, who was unable to enlist in the Confederate army because he is needed as an engineer. The Union plans to use the train to supply its soldiers in a sneak attack. But now it's up to Gray to reclaim The General, recross enemy lines, and warn the Confederates.

The scene in which The Texas crashes through the bridge was the single most expensive shot of the entire silent movie era. The Texas itself remained in the river until WWII, when it was salvaged for scrap iron. In the scene where Johnnie and Annabelle refill the water reservoir of the train, Marion Mack said in an interview many years later that she had no idea that she was going to get drenched.

“Through much of the film, we view Keaton’s character in an extreme long shot, giving the impression that the chaotic environment around him dwarfs him ... The spatial relations here are incredibly complex, and because they cast the protagonist as such a tiny element in the world around him, his triumphs are that much more impressive.” -- Jeremy Heilman

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/murnau-sunrise.jpg

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

Director: F.W. Murnau

Country: USA

A city woman bewitches a farmer and urges him to murder his neglected wife. They decide he should take her out on a boat trip, commit the crime, and say it was an accident.

Won three Oscars including Best Actress (Janet Gaynor), Best Cinematography and Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production (this was the only time that this award was given out). Also nominated for Best Art Direction. The original negatives of the film were destroyed in a fire in 1937.

“Murnau, raised in the dark shadows of expressionism, pushed his images as far as he could, forced them upon us, haunted us with them. The more you consider Sunrise the deeper it becomes -- not because the story grows any more subtle, but because you realize the real subject is the horror beneath the surface.” -- Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/metropolis_drones.jpg

Metropolis

Director: Fritz Lang

Country: Germany

In the future, humans are divided into two groups: the thinkers, who make plans, and the workers, who achieve goals. Kept separate, neither group is complete, but together they make a whole. One man from the thinkers dares visit the underground where the workers toil, and is astonished by what he sees.

Around one quarter of the original film has been lost. An original version, according to Fritz Lang himself, has not existed since the middle of 1927. The multiple-exposed sequences were not created in a lab but during filming. The film was rewound in the camera and then exposed again right away.

“Since its premiere, the movie's unsettling vision has been open to a variety of interpretations. It can be seen as a warning against fascist tyranny, communist oppression or capitalism run amok. Yet, in a way, the most rewarding way to see it is not as a prescient work, but as a film very much of its time, a missive from an age of anxiety.” -- Mick LaSalle

[Spinal]

1. Metropolis (72.5)
2. Sunrise (59)
3. The General (52.5)
4. Napoleon (30.5)
5. Faust (27.5)
6. The Love of Jeanne Ney (12.5)
7t. The Unknown (11.5)
7t. The Lodger (11.5)
9. The Kid Brother (9)

Next tier:
By the Law (6.5)
October (6.5)
Ménilmontant (6.5)

[dreamdead]

Yeah, I can live with that 1-2 punch. Lovely choice for the screenshot to Lang's film, by the way. Just a captivating visual.

And these two years look stacked with quality filmmakers, so I think it'll be time to investigate these years more over summer so that I don't only have two films that I've seen...

[Spinal]

There is virtually nothing on-line about Jeanne Ney. It's so weird. No trivia or external reviews on IMDb. No Wikipedia entry. I couldn't even find Raiders' write-up at the old site because it was in the part of that thread that got lost. I had to create the screen shot myself by doing a screen capture from a Youtube video. The Unknown sounds awesome. I queued that sucker up.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Screencaps from The Love of Jeanne Ney... just to help out :)

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc211/zombierouge/vlcsnap00001wi5-1.jpg

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc211/zombierouge/vlcsnap00005oz0-1.jpg

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc211/zombierouge/vlcsnap00006rm4-1.jpg

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc211/zombierouge/vlcsnap00007mr9-1.jpg

[Spinal]

Screencaps from The Love of Jeanne Ney... just to help out :)

Where were you a couple hours ago?

[Philosophe_rouge]

Where were you a couple hours ago?
At school or eating. Maybe eating at school, maybe I was here and just didn't read the thread.

[Yxklyx]

Need a shot of the bride looking out the window.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Need a shot of the bride looking out the window.
I can't do that, I can get one of Brooks looking out of a window from Diary of a Lost Girl though.

[monolith94]

Nooooo! So close, By the Law – so close!

[Raiders]

BAH.

[monolith94]

There is virtually nothing on-line about Jeanne Ney.

Have you seen Jeanne Ney, Spinal? I wrote an essay on it. Reprinted for kicks:

The Love of Jeanne Ney: An International Romance

The German film industry in the year 1927 can best be described as an institution in the midst of transition. The excesses of large expressionist epics such Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or F. W. Murnau’s Faust had damaged studio finances to such an extent that such immense spectacles simply could not continue to be produced. Although the artistic influence of German expressionism would continue to be felt in a great number of films to come, as a full-fledged movement its time had passed. If the elaborate psychological sets and bold lighting of Expressionist films were not to be the style of cinema, then to what aesthetic should a German director apply himself to? For G. W. Pabst, the answer came from understanding that no one method or film ideology would provide the solution for creating a compelling cinematic experience. Like its characters, who travel from Russia to France in pursuit of a happier life, the cinematic style in Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney is thoroughly international, drawing on influences of both French Impressionist cinema and Russian montage. This is not to say, however, that Pabst merely appropriated these cinematic traditions without adding anything to the advancement of the medium. It was in his synthesis of the two aesthetics, combined with his own unique visual eye for urban photography, that a new cinematic vision, one which remains at once bold, modern and adventurous, was born.

In order to determine how Pabst drew inspiration from these two aesthetic theories, it seems necessary to determine their important characteristics. In Film Art, David Bordwell describes the style of the Impressionist movement of the 1920s as having two defining qualities: “To intensify the subjectivity… cinematography and editing present characters’ perceptual experience, their optical impressions” and to use “pronounced rhythmic editing to suggest the pace of an experience as a character feels it.” (Bordwell, 476) Although these two statements are certainly accurate, they do not fully express the whole of Impressionism’s goals. It seems necessary to broaden the Impressionist demands of film style - not just that a film must provide its audience with cinematography and editing that will give the viewer the impression that the main character has, but more that the director can use cinematography and editing to give the audience the impression of what a situation or event really is. For example, in Abel Gance’s Napoleon, a textbook example of Impressionist style and perhaps the most famous Impressionist film, there are some scenes that use a great deal of flamboyant and informative style that do not comment on the psychology of the protagonist at all. For example, we see a dance in the second half of the film, and Gance films the dancing in such a way as to demonstrate to the audience the fundamental vitality and eroticism of movement present within the event. Another example can be found in Gance’s legendary “triptych” style, in which the audience views three film frames at once, side by side. The triptych allowed Gance to show multiple scenes of battlefield gore and brutality at once, enabling him to make the audience as overwhelmed and as visually confused as any soldier on the battlefield itself. The sequence has very little to say about the psychology and attitude of Napoleon, but its inclusion is just as important for it fully creates the situation which gives context (and thus meaning) to Napoleon’s actions.

The other deeply influential cinema movement of the time was Soviet Montage, and as it developed, two methods of visual montage emerged: synthetic montage, in which the joined visual images work in conjunction together, adding and building to create a scene, and oppositional montage, where the visual image and movements within the frame can be unrelated and juxtapositional. Of these two possibilities, the editing in The Love Of Jeanne Ney tends toward the synthetic. A good example of what is meant by the term synthetic montage can be found in Lev Kuleshov’s By the Law. In this gold-rush story Michael Dennin, wielding a shotgun, calmly enters the cabin where is peers are having dinner. Then, in an extremely descriptive montage sequence, logically related images present us with the action of his murders: we see him shoot, we see men shot, we see the face of Edith, horrified, a tea kettle spills, the liquid pouring onto the floor and reminding us of the blood which has now been spilt. The images do not juxtapose, as in Eisensteinian montage, but rather fit together, creating a complete effect within the audiences mind while only providing pieces on the screen. Formal construction of this sort would almost certainly have influenced ambitious European filmmakers such as Pabst.

So there are these two distinct styles, and how exactly do they connect to the artistry of The Love of Jeanne Ney? Within the first ten minutes of the film, not only does Pabst set up the principle elements of plot for the narrative to come, but there are three examples of impressionist and montage influence which help him in developing the story. In the very first shot (after an intertitle which tells us of ‘unscrupulous men’) the image fades in to a close up of shoes pressed against a wall. The camera then pans down to the legs connected to these feet, traveling down to the table where we find unorganized papers, a clumsy erotic drawing, an ash tray, cigarettes... The camera pauses for a second, and a hand reaches onto the table to grab a cigarette, and then returns, to grope for a match. Finally the camera pans upward to reveal the face of this mysterious bohemian, and we see him light, and begin to smoke. This approximately minute long shot is Impressionist in the way that it uses the visual image to reveal the psychology of the character it is presenting: we never see this man’s whole body, but rather scattered bits and pieces. He is a fragmented man: flawed, poor, vulgar and clearly one of the ‘unscrupulous men’ the first intertitle refers to. The method of presenting his actions indicates a haziness of thought and complete lack of propriety. Not long after, we see the first shot of our hero: a medium shot which reveals him in the process of smoking a cigarette. Whereas the body and setting of the villain, Khalibiev, was fractured and discordant, our hero fills up the screen, unpeturbed by the disturbance of the saloon. The camera is still, allowing the audience to study his face and pose, although with various extras coming into and out of the scene, the image can hardly be said to be static. Although Khalibiev and Andreas (our Communist hero of the story) both share the action of smoking a cigarette, the disparate styles tell us what we need to know about their personalities: one is a hedonistic ne'er-do-well, the other a self-aware and powerful soldier.

Although Pabst drew on Impressionism to more fully illustrate his characters, as in the above example, his application of the aesthetic was not narrow. Indeed, before we are introduced to Andreas, after a cut from Khalibiev smoking his cigarette, Pabst presents us with another roaming vision, which shows us the dance-hall floor from the perspective of a person looking from left to right. The first shot is a medium close-up of an anonymous balding soldier (also smoking). As the camera continues to both track and pan right, this becomes a medium shot of various bourgeoisie - well-dressed women, officers, and a smiling old man. The camera then comes upon two legs dancing upon a table which is to the right and creating a medium close-up of them; we realize what the well-dressed characters were smiling at. Moving further to the right we enter deeper space and it becomes a medium shot again: we see more officers, and more female companions, one jauntily wearing an officer’s cap. Smoke rises from the table. A man stands and dances while holding a drink in his right hand, a broad smile on his face. Finally, we encounter three White army officers, huddled around a table, that seem to be studying tactics or strategy.

Like the dance party in Napoleon, the goal is not simply to convey the sensation of the psychological experience of our protagonist, but rather for the viewer to have a more tangible impression of entering the same world of our hero. The jostling, hand-held motion of the camera contributes to the chaotic and energetic setting we are asked to enter. After this very modern camera movement, we see a waiter looking down from a staircase above, which then cuts to his perspective of the party, and we see the same characters from a view directly opposite of that previous shot of the saloon floor: where previously we saw only parts of the gathering, the distance of the waiter allows us to see it in its entirety; where previously we saw the scene from the level of the eyes of a participant, now we see the scene from a very high angle; most provocatively, this is almost precisely 180º from the position where we first saw the dancing scene. When we look at where the camera was, we see Andreas, and we realize that for a brief moment, we were in his place. Although the minutes that Pabst spends in this environment are not as excessive or wild as Gance’s treatment of a dance hall, (Gance’s style is rather like a blitzkrieg to the soul) his film is not the lesser for it. For rather than methodically reconstructing the sensual power of Impressionist film making, he is adapting the ideas behind Impressionism to his own directorial eye.

[monolith94]

cont.

An even more dramatic adaptation of the ideas of Impressionism occurs six minutes into the film, as Alfred Ney remarks that he and his daughter have had “six years in this country… and not one pleasant memory.” In a close up, we see through a fogged window Jeanne turn her head towards the camera, with only her eye remaining outside of the blur. She uses her thumb to draw a line through the word Paris, which she had written previously, and the shot dissolves into an image of the Kremlin. However, the dissolve is not yet complete - we can still see the window frame from the original shot as the image of the Kremlin dissolves into a head-on image of Bolshevik protesters marching down a street. As this image lingers, the original window frame finally disappears, and we enter another dissolve, this time to see a large automobile disrupting the path of the workers’ march. Alfred and Jeanne Ney are its passengers, and they look up and to the right, which anticipates the next dissolve, where we see Andreas standing on a lamp pole, speaking to the crowd. The next dissolve gives us a more dramatic, powerful image of Jeanne - she stands up in the car in response to his activism, dominating the screen and obscuring her father. The next dissolve is a close up on Andreas’ face, and for a brief moment, their faces are in the same place at once. Andreas’ gaze goes from one which matches Jeanne’s eye-line to the camera; he clutches his breast, and raises his arm as the camera pans away from him, dissolving into the next scene, where we see Jeanne standing before the stairs of a building, addressing a male gentleman (obviously Andreas). The camera then rapidly tracks back to reveal other couples as Jeanne laughingly pulls him away from the stairs - she leaves the space of the frame, leaving Andreas to chase after her. As the scene dissolves into one of woods, Jeanne runs from right to left, off of a path and into nature; Andreas catches up with her, and the camera continues tracking to keep up with them. The camera actually seems to go faster than them, due to positioning, and the two characters and the camera all come to a stop at an old tree. The flashback ends as the image dissolves into a ringing bell, and the audience is returned to an identifiable location: Alfred Ney’s office. Working within this one minute of flashback, Pabst uses panning, tracking, different angles and the artistic quality of the dissolve itself to give the audience the internal psychological experience that Jeanne has after her father’s remark. This is not a flashback in the sense that the audience journeys back in time to when Jeanne and Andreas first met, but rather that we enter the space of Jeanne’s mind and witness her reconstruction of the affair. It is for this reason that the camera is so dynamic and bold - to emphasize the quick energy of memory and thought. By synchronizing camera movements from image to image Pabst forcibly pulls us through this memory, and hopes to evoke in us the romantic and nostalgic emotions that define this memory. Throughout, the visual image presents us with the foremost aspects of the two lovers’ personalities, and in the dissolve from Jeanne to Andreas, their faces become one. This moment passes so quickly, the effect is almost subconscious. Indeed, the very last shot of the film is a superimposition which informs the narrative in much the same manner - we see a diamond in Jeanne’s hand, and superimposed onto this is the image of Andreas walking free from prison. Both editing effects reinforce the main thrust of the film - that romantic love has a value much higher than material affairs, and great power as well. These are just two instances out of many where we are allowed to learn about a character intimately through Pabst’s expert camerawork and image and clearly inspired by the aesthetic goals of Impressionism.

Soviet montage as an influence can be most clearly seen in the scene where Raymond Ney, a relative of Jeanne’s and a private detective, sits at his desk, waiting for the arrival of a client, Mr. Jack. While this action does not sound particularly interesting or insightful, Pabst uses the power of editing to reveal the power and extent of this characters greed, giving inner motivations external cinematic power. The sequence proper is initiated first by an extreme close up of Raymond Ney’s hand reaching for a snail in a dish. Before he can eat, however, his thoughts turn to his money, and he opens his safe. He removes the diamond, and sits down. However, the prospect of so much money excites him, and he begins to act out the exchange of diamond for reward. Using a number of different camera positions, Pabst shows the different parts of Ney’s body as he accepts the money, finally allowing us to see him normally again as Raymond Ney begins to pathologically flip through the imaginary money. As he puts one stack of phantom money into the safe, he returns to his desk and sets to work on another. With each repetition of this action, the camera draws closer to Ney’s eyes - by the third time he is in close up. As the action progresses, montage comes into play, as Pabst divides the action into multiple shots - an extreme close up of Ney’s hands whipping through the phantom money from above, an extreme close up of Ney’s lips in profile as he quickly licks his finger, and an extreme close up of Ney’s eyes from above, as he leers down on his prized (imaginary) money. He repeats these camera positions to heighten the depth of Ney’s perverse desire. The montage concludes with images of Ney embracing the safe, stomping his feet with desire bordering on the erotic. Because all of these images follow from each other with some logic, the scene shocks the viewer through the pure clarity with which we see his bizarre behavior, rather than shock from contrasting visual elements. Again, as with Pabst’s adaptation of Impressionism, his montage is not quite as bold as the original, but it is no less powerful, for Pabst has applied his own directorial storytelling technique to the storytelling ideas which were put forth in the Soviet montage films.

If, however, we have come to understand The Love of Jeanne Ney as drawing primarily from these two artistic traditions, how are we to understand Pabst’s own visual style and strategy? Can Pabst be said to be an auteur, or are his films so dedicated to pure cinematic professionalism that Pabst’s own style and emotions are lost to the viewer? What defines Pabst as a filmmaker is not simply his recognition and appropriation of film theory, but rather in the manner in which he employs them to construct a cinematic world for the audience to enter. The world that Pabst creates is a sort of magical realism, modern romances which combine distinctly modern sensibilities with the sentimental power of old stories told well. Magical because of the fantastic and extraordinary events that happen, and realist in the at time documentary like style Pabst brings to the film. This is not a film bound strictly to studio sets, but rather goes out into the world, and this resulted in some remarkable footage of urban life in Europe during the roaring twenties. When our two lovers reunite in Paris, Andreas stands on one bridge, and Jeanne enters the scene on a nearby bridge. The two wave to each other, and eventually come together, but in the interim we see the city of Paris through highly energetic tracking shots - the pictorial power of the industrial elements of the city are combined with the pictorial power of the cities gardens, as iron fence and garden trees form a twin barrier between our two protagonists. And it is not always a purely romanticized image of the world that we are presented with - in one scene, Jeanne and Andreas stand on a bridge in a typical lovers position, the framing perfect. However, they are overlooking a large industrial factory - hardly the picture for a lover’s tryst. When they bid each other farewell in the Crimea, the setting is similarly discordant with romantic tone of the story - during a rainstorm, Andreas stands in the middle of a muddy and barren section of town which truly looks as though it has been through war. It is directorial decisions such as these, as well as decisions within his impressionist and montage moments, that make a Pabst film unique and very much a product of a distinct aesthetic sense.

Because of the cinematic influences present in The Love of Jeanne Ney, the film represents a key component to a critical moment in the construction of film grammar. It is, in part, an attempt to resolve the question of what, exactly, a film should be through the power of example. The technical maturity of film making certainly grew throughout the 1920s and to an even greater extent the ideology of film. In bringing together his Russian and French influences in one film (very appropriate for a film celebrating the love between a Russian man and a French woman) Pabst presented an alternative method for constructing films. In this sense, the film is not a film about film making, but rather a film about the purpose of cinema itself. Although the film is clearly of its time, it has retained a modern sensibility, and for it to have as much power on an audience in this day and age demonstrates that the alternative Pabst presented filmmakers with was a very viable one. The importance of The Love of Jeanne Ney is not so much in the story but rather in its contribution to visual film grammar - the fact that within this cinematic experimentation we have a charming and compelling melodrama as well merely proves the power of Pabst’s developing technique.

[monolith94]

some screens that I captured for the paper:

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/monolith95/tripleeyes.jpg

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/monolith95/jeanneney2.jpg

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/monolith95/jeanneney1.jpg

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/monolith95/jeanneneyrain.jpg

[Spinal]

Awesome. You have been quoted! That entry looks much better now.

[monolith94]

Woohoo! Also, that quote matches up nicely with your "utilized a variety of cinematic styles" factoid.

[Spinal]

Gotta see that film sometime soon. Definitely.

[soitgoes...]

Napoléon

Director: Abel Gance

Country: France

A massive six-hour biopic of Napoléon, tracing his career from his schooldays, his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797


God, if only this were true. Damn you Coppola.

[Ezee E]

BWAH? I figured Sunrise was one of the most loved movies around here.

I guess it's just not as widely seen.

[Raiders]

BWAH? I figured Sunrise was one of the most loved movies around here.

I guess it's just not as widely seen.

:confused:

It was second and lost to Metropolis. Not exactly chopped liver.

[Ezee E]

:confused:

It was second and lost to Metropolis. Not exactly chopped liver.
Sunrise > Metropolis

Therefore... Well, you got the idea.

[Raiders]

Sunrise > Metropolis

Therefore... Well, you got the idea.

I wholeheartedly agree (hence my emphatic "bah"), but its still not that surprising of a result.

[monolith94]

Sunrise isn't even that great. I mean, it's stifling political conservativism alone makes it not even a contender for top 10 status, in my book.