Film of the Year

1919: The Doctor Is In

Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) opens his cabinet to introduce Jane (Lil Dagover) to his servile somnambulist (Conrad Veidt).

Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (1919)
aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Directed by Robert Weine
71 min.; Germany; Black and White (tinted); Silent

"The frightful is always in our midst." Produced in Germany in late 1919, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is regularly cited as the great example of film's entry into Expressionism. For a cinephile a simple definition of this art movement is provided in the historical fiction flick, Max (2002): "I know what the war looked like," art dealer Max Rothman (John Cusack) says, explaining what's marketable in modern art to frustrated artist Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor). "But, what did it feel like?" The art design of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, designed and painted by Walter Reimann, Walter Rohrig, and Hermann Warm, challenges us to experience what the mind of an insane man feels like. Emotions are transformed into forms; lines are skewed, perspective distorted, doorways are trapezoidal, streets converge to a point, and shadows are painted on the floors and walls. The narrative too takes place in the troubled mind of a student named Francis (Friedrich Feher) who relates the tale of the criminally insane Dr. Caligari and his mysterious somnambulist servant, Cesare (looking somewhat like a proto-Edward Scissorhands) who join the annual fair in Holstenwall just as a series of murders occur there. Whle the authorities remain powerless to stop the killings and arrest the wrong man, Francis accuses Caligari and tracks him to a state asylum, where the doctor is the director. There Francis uncovers a strange text that reveals Caligari's irrational motivation for the deadly crimes. However, there's an unexpected twist: that story is wrapped by another that suggests Francis himself is actually a madman cared for by Dr. Caligari. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari then is the story of an insane man told by an insane man; the stylized art design is intended to imply the reality of this insane mind to a (hopefully) sane audience. This twist at the end reminds me of the latter third of Fight Club (1999) wherein the narrator (Edward Norton) confronts Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) only to discover he's a figment of his own addled mind.

Cesare attempts escape with his latest victim through a twisted mental wilderness.

So much is written about Caligari that I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about it other than "see it 'cause it's one of a kind." Then I read some of its contemporary reviews and realized that the film energized the debate about whether film is art or strictly a commercial entertainment. After seeing the film in Berlin, writer Herman George Scheffauer had high hopes that its transformation of reality, as opposed to simply a reflection of it, would spark the transcendence of movies from "a mere medium of reproduction of external lighted scenes, moving records of crass and unredeemed photography" to a "true art form" ("The Vivifying of Space," The Freeman, November 24, 1920). A few months later a version was released in the U.S. An uncredited New York Times reviewer seems almost to fear that art-films will come to prominence in the wake of Caligari: "It is not likely that it will establish a vogue of cubist films, unless, indeed, it is commercially successful...and enterprising [filmmakers] accustomed to making "mother-love," "homespun," and "religious" pictures...suddenly discover that the public wants cubist stuff and grind out terrible imitations of this original work" ("The Screen," The New York Times, April 24, 1921, 22). That review also apprised readers of a concept that still lingers among movie-goers to this day: that art-influenced films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari should be regarded as a "European," separate and distinct from American films (which, apparently, we're supposed to regard as unartistic? Hmm.). The Freeman concured, "the American development seems to be moving toward the speaking stage, the German development in the opposite direction. The German producers of 'Caligari' seem bent upon investigating the possibilites of the moving picture as a distinct art-form" (found in "Brought into Focus," The New York Times, May 22, 1921, 71). Is there such a thing as a "European" film? An "American" Film? If so what are the defining characteristics? Should we term anything avant-garde "European?" Are movies art-form or commercial entertainment? What's the difference? I tend to see all movies as parts of an ongoing developing phenomenon that continously influences and reacts to itself, and to outside forces, over time. Different styles, movements, methods—such as the Expressionist design of Caligari—seem to me to be part of a larger development and not independent of each other or of film history as a whole.

This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

1918: Chaplin Does His Bit Over There

Shoulder Arms (1918)
Written and Produced by Charles Chaplin
45 min; U.S.A.; Black and White; Silent

Charlie Chaplin plays an awkward American recruit fighting in France during World War I in Shoulder Arms (1918). Chaplin's "million dollar comedy," so called because of the deal he struck with First National the year before guaranteeing him that exorbitant sum in return for distribution rights to his next eight comedies, opened in New York on October 20, 1918, and was seen by U.S. troops while they were still in Europe.

Though the November 11, 1918 armistice stopped the fighting of World War I some seven months would pass before the Treaty of Versailles confirmed peace. While the American soldiers waited to return home they were entertained by comedy teams, minstrel shows, singers, sleight of hand artists, etc. A couple million or so guys with firearms and nothing but time on their hands really need something to do, and according to Homer Croy's July 6, 1919 artlcle in the New York Times, How Doughboy Critics Make for Better Movies, movies "were the biggest success the army had in the way of entertainment."

According to Croy, the movies always had an audience among the troops though the turn-outs ranged from "an audience of four on a gun carriage" to a crowd of 7,000 in Longwy. But, with the troops always on the move securing a time and place for an exhibition wasn't always easy. Every conceivable building, from stables to hotels, served as makeshift theaters. To circumvent the lack of electricty in the remote villages of France, film companies traveled with generators and portable storage batteries mounted on trailers pulled behind their trucks. By the time the U.S. soldiers began shipping home in 1919 the problems of remote film exhibition were ironed out, and some 4,000-plus shows per week were presented for the troops.

One of the flicks Croy considers to be among the best shown to the troops was Shoulder Arms. The film comedy takes Chaplin out of the familiar baggy pants and bowler of his tramp character and into a soldier's uniform (see photo top); he swaps his limber cane for a rifle. However, still playing the same foolish imp—unsophisticated, a bit behind the running gag, awkwardly out-of-place but determined to make the best of a tough situation—he demonstrates that even the most backward recruit can be fashioned into a fighting man.

Newspaper ads for Shoulder Arms suggest that it features Chaplin's ideas about "how to kill the Huns," revealing the sort of wartime propaganda that had become commonplace by 1918. Demonizing the enemy in cinema was nothing new but, Chaplin comes off as more crafty than deadly in this film. There are some obvious gags in the movie, for instance Chaplin eats limburger cheese with a gas mask secured to his face, but most of it seems an attempt to laugh off the horrors of the war. He faces the kind of conditions that a U.S. soldier was probably very familar with in France: constant shelling, muddy trenches, drenching rainfall, little rest, and stretches of boredom broken by moments of sheer terror. The best parts come after he volunteers to sneak behind enemy lines (disguised as a tree no-less) to capture Kaiser Wilhem, the Crown Prince and Von Hindenberg. In the movies even the Tramp could become the hero of a war, and if Charlie could trump the enemy what excuse could anyone have for not doing his bit?

In 1918 newspapers were asking whether Chaplin's comedy was crude or artistic yet all agreed that it was funny. To my eyes some of the performances in Shoulder Arms are more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny; the comedy seems a bit moldy. Incidentially, I recently watched Chaplin's masterpiece Modern Times (1936) with a film class numbering about 40 students and heard very few laughs (I liked it). That, combined with Dennis Cozzalio's recent post about what makes us laugh, leaves me wondering if Chaplin's style has lost its ability to make an audience laugh out loud. He's obviously a master at his craft, but our taste in comedy seems to have moved in a different direction since Charlie made his movies.

This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

1917: The Sublime Death Imagery of Evgeni Bauer

The Dying Swan (1917)
aka Umirayushchii Lebed
Directed by Evgeni Bauer
49 min; Russia; Black and White (tinted); Silent

Researching this week's film of the year has convinced me that a complete history of early Russian cinema isn't easy to find, and I'm still looking for the definitive tome. Suggestions from my fellow well-read film bloggers are most welcome. Regardless, here's some of what I've discovered so far...

On 7 July 1896 Lumière demonstrator-publicist Alexandre Promio held a screening of the Lumière program for Tsar Nicholas II and his entourage. With the royalty duly impressed, the door was open for Ivan and Arthur Grünwald to purchase the Russian concession for use of the Cinematograph and in September they set up shop in Moscow. At first entrepreneurs would tour major population centers showing films in limited engagements, but by 1903 permanent theaters began to to open in Moscow and beyond. In 1907, Russian film production began with producer/photographer Alexander Drankov's company. A year later Pathé and Gaumont both opened studios in Moscow and soon dominated production in Russia (Pathé reportedly produced nearly half of the films made in Russia before World War I). Imported movies from Italy, France and the United States were very popular. The American Vice Consul in Odessa reported, "When one hears a motion picture praised in Russia it is almost certain to be a film of foreign manufacture. The most successful foreign films are those of a strong tragic or criminal character and classical pictures, such as Quo Vadis? (1912) and Kabiria (1914)" ("In The World of Movies," New York Times, 27 Jan 1918, 43).

The advent of World War I saw foreign distribution close down and domestic production rise. A new style of Russian cinema emerged characterized by deliberately slow pacing and tragic themes. Evgeni Bauer is recognized as one of the most skilled directors more or less dedicated to this style. Bauer studied art at the Moscow College of Painting and in 1912 began his career in film as a set designer. Soon, Bauer was directing for Drankov's company and Pathé. In 1913 he joined the Khanzhonkov company where he directed the bulk of the eighty pictures that spanned his career before his premature death from pneumonia in 1917.

In 1916 Bauer was working on one of his last films, a morbid melodrama titled The Dying Swan (1917). Zoia Barantsevich's script, based on the author's own novella, tells the tale of Count Valerian Sergeevich Glinskii (Vitol'd Polonskii), an artist obsessed with capturing the essence of death with his brush. "Where can I find death?" he asks a grinning human skeleton serving as a grisly model. "Real death?" The artist's desperate search for inspiration leads him to the ballet to see famous lithesome ballerina Gizella Raccio (Vera Karalli) perform The Dying Swan. Fascinated by the performance, and the dancer, Glinskii entreats her to model for him. Raccio agrees, but things get complicated when she falls in love with an old suitor. "Her eyes blaze with a different flame" that threatens to destroy the artist's chance to finally capture death on his canvas and he is forced to take desperate measures.

Gizella Raccio's (Vera Karalli) premonition of death in The Dying Swan.

The Dying Swan benefits from Bauer's art background, especially when cinematographer Boris Zavelev uses deep focus to place the characters in the rich mise-en-scéne, particularly in the artist's studio. By contrast the stage on which Raccio performs The Dying Swan dance is kept completely bare which compels us to focus our attention on her interpretation of death. Bauer uses tracking shots to expand on-screen space and lighting effects to suggest the turmoil of a nightmare. His mastery of such tecniques is not as developed as D.W. Griffith's in the contemporary masterwork Intolerance (1916), but nevertheless give us some notion of Bauer's exploration of cinema as a visual language. Bauer's famous preoccupation with dream imagery in films like After Death (1915) and Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913) is used sparingly here yet still produces some of the most memorable moments in the film. The avant-garde shot of death reaching for Raccio in the dream sequence (photo left) is sublime.

But why all of this preoccupation with death in Russian cinema of this period? Perhaps the reality of World War I, in its third year when the film was being made, was driving the obsession. Despite some gains made by Russian forces in 1916, any romantic notions about adventure in the War had sunk into a grim realization that misery is all that war will produce—particularly for the ill-led Russian soldiers, some of whom were sent to the front without weapons and expected to pick up the guns of the fallen men in front of them and continue fighting. Furthermore things weren't much better at home either with widespread unemployment, starvation, vastly uneven distributions of wealth, and a Tsarist government unable or even unwilling to make the changes necessary to correct the situation. Perhaps it was these realities--or perhaps it was something more personal--that fueled the ghastly stand-out line of the film, "the most sublime thing in the world is peace, and the most sublime peace is death."

The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution saw motion picture production in Russia all but cease temporarily before being re-invented as means to spread political ideas. In the meantime, the morbid melodramas of Bauer's era were deemed out-of-touch with the changes sweeping the country and hidden away in state archives where they were re-discovered in 1989.

This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

1916: When Intolerance Becomes Intolerable

Intolerance, Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
Produced, Directed and Written by David Wark Griffith
178 min; U.S.A.; Black and White (tinted); Silent

The story of the making of Intolerance, Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) is often told in terms of its place in D.W. Griffith's trajectory from silent shorts like A Corner in Wheat (1909) and The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) to full length feature films; how his first two reeler, Enoch Arden (1911) was released in two parts which infuriated him so much that he considered working as an independent, how the stylistic and extended lengths of the French film d'art and Italian epics propelled him to make Judith of Bethulia (1913), how he combined all he had learned from his career into The Birth of a Nation (1915), and how Intolerance is the most ambitous response to critics ever filmed. However, as Arthur Lennig notes in his excellent article "The Mother and the Law", Griffith's Intolerance "has generally been viewed by cinema historians as a brilliantly edited melodrama but it has seldom been seen as an audacious social protest" (Film History, 17: 404-430). The director's previous socially conscious films are exactly what crossed my mind when I screened the movie today. As much as we understand Intolerance to be an answer to the critics of racism in The Birth of a Nation we also recognize a connection to Griffith's earlier progressive crusades like A Corner in Wheat and The Reformers or The Lost Art of Minding One's Own Business (1913).

According to the information on the Image Entertainment DVD version of the film, Intolerance began as a crime melodrama titled The Mother and the Law in 1914, but, as the June 30, 1915 New York Dramatic Mirror reported, "Griffith...has decided to make it a ten or twelve-reel feature." Griffith's enthusiasm was apparently influenced by newspaper stories about the Ludlow Massacre, and in fact, some shots from the modern sequence of Intolerance mirror actual photographs of the Ludlow Massacre and Bayonne Strike. Meanwhile, the epic scale of the film is influenced by the success of Italian silent extravaganzas. While making Birth of a Nation, Griffith screened Cabiria (1914), which had recreated Rome, Carthage, Egypt and Troy, featured thousands of extras, life sized ships, armies, elephants and battles. Griffith knew that in order for his picture to make the impression he intended he would have to improve upon the accomplishments with this greatest of all Italian silent spectacles. With these ideas in mind I put the DVD in the player, dimmed the lights and prepared myself for something grandiose.

A page is overcome by boredom at the court of Charles IX.

According to the program given out at the movie's 1916 New York premiere "the purpose of the production is to trace a universal theme through various periods of history...to parallel the life of the different ages." And, boy, does the film achieves these goals. In the process, however, the viewing experience is fatiguing, to say the least. In both the story of the French court and in the story of Babylon we see someone yawn (photo left). However Griffith intended us to interpret this action in the story, I understand perfectly why they yawned 'cause I was yawing too. This flick spends three backbreaking hours belaboring the point that intolerance has been evident throughout history. Unfortunately Griffith's working method is redundancy. Watching this film is more like a test of will power, concentration and stamina than anything else. I echo the sentiments of Philip Lopate, writing in Cineaste, "I cannot help but think that Intolerance works better on DVD, in some ways, than it does in the theater. For one thing you can portion it out over several viewings." When the "magnificence" of the film becomes exhausting, Lopate suggests, "just hit the Pause button, gratefully saving its conclusion for the next night" ("D.W. Griffith Masterworks." Cineaste 28, no 3 (Summer 2003): 50). Lopate's observations are insightful (though I'll wager he enjoyed the viewing experience only because he was able to get a full night's sleep between sessions), yet I can't help but question who wants to sits through a film that is "exhausting" not once but twice?

What makes the experience so trying is that the theme is told through a fully developed narrative not once but four times. In Intolerance four separate stories from four different periods of history, "show how hatred and intolerance, through the ages, have battled against love and charity." Titles cards explain that "our play turns from one of the four stories to another, as the common theme unfolds," as though the audience might not comprehend the sudden leaps in time and space. The first story tells of intolerant progressive reformers "banded together for the 'uplift' of humanity." The second story, set in ancient Jerusalem, tells of "an ancient people, whose lives, though far away from ours, run parallel in their hopes and perplexities." The third story takes place in 1572 in Paris, "a hotbed of intolerance." The fourth story unfolds in ancient Babylon of 539 B.C.E., the time of Belshazzar.

The "Virgins of the sacred fire of life" recline in the "Love Temple."

Griffith is an acknowledged master filmmaker and so the viewing experience need not be so trying. Griffith doesn't need four full stories to preach his message. He doesn't need to painfully reuse the image of the rocking cradle of civilization over and over and over and over and...by the time we get to the story of Jesus we've surely gotten Griffith's message yet that's when we realize that the picture is only half over and this grueling sermonizing is only going to continue. I don't care how many gratuitous shots of partially nude virgins (photo right) he places in the middle of his lecture, it still gets boring. Epics are long, and I expected Intolerance to be the longest, but it doesn't have to feel long. By contrast, Cabira compels us to take pleasure in an unfolding epic as tales of the title character's rescue and the various subplots are subsumed into the larger tale of history. Meanwhile, Intolerance invites us to watch some of the most compelling images yet photographed while beating us over the head with the same message the whole time. I can't help but notice the similarity between this experience and the working methods of the progressive reformers that Griffith protested in his previous filmThe Reformers or The Lost Art of Minding One's Own Business.

Still, I'm in awe of the visual triumphs of Griffith and cinematographer G.W. Bitzer as well as the extraordinary achievements in set design (Set Designer R. Ellis Wales collected a wealth of books about the ancient Near East to ensure the most accurate representation of the past reached the screen. However, Griffith would allow his own vision to supersede such research when the two disagreed, as in the case of elephant sculptures which didn't exist in the sources but he put them in anyway) and costuming of the picture. If only Griffith would relax and let us enjoy the show. I'm in agreement with a reviewer who wrote about the epic picture in the September 6, 1916 issue of the New York Times:

It is the Babylonian portion of the film that will commend it to the great public. These pictures of the walls of Babylon...the great gates throned with picturesque canvases, the myriad slaves and dancing girls, and the siege and fall of the city are indeed masterpieces of the cinema. They are so splendid that it seems a pity the story was not deleted!

The prisoners of the fires of intolerance appeal for peace forevermore.

The visual language Griffith uses in the picture...the controlled use of close-up for maximum impact, limiting of our visual range through the narrow iris, the exploration of screen depth with tracking and dolly shots, intuitive editing, cross-cutting through both time and space, tinting for specific effects, tightly filmed quiet moments juxtaposed with wide shot battle sequences that explode into flaming destruction, the use of montage in the final sequence...is nearly beyond reproach. What's more, the size and scale of the production still maintain the power to marvel a modern viewer. Taken separately, the individual tales of the four time periods are interesting and enjoyable. But, it's Griffith's inability to relax his grip on his overarching theme of this picture even after it has been established and his inability to allow us to breathe in the cinematic delights and just enjoy this magnificient feature that finally becomes intolerable. I don't deny the author his social protest, A Corner in Wheat is an early silent short favorite of mine. But here the warning and lesson is so repetitious and overbearing that the result is an exhausting viewing experience. We get your point already, Mr. Griffith, intolerance has been with us throughout the ages but we can overcome it with perfect love. Now let us up we've had enough.

This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

1915: That's Why The Lady Is A Vamp

A Fool There Was (1915)
Directed by Frank Powell
67 min.; U.S.A.; Black and White (tinted); Silent

V is for Vampire, but not for the vampire you might expect. Those blood-sucking freaks fearlessly explored in today’s delicious Vampire Blog-a-Thon demand investigation, especially around Hallowe’en, and you can drink your fill on the links below but, sneak a quick peak at your dictionary and you’ll uncover a second definition for vampire, one that is tied directly to the world of motion pictures as we shall see:

vam·pire n. 2. A person who preys upon others, as: b. A woman who uses sexual attraction to exploit men.

Though the blood-hungry vampire myth is ancient, this other type of vampire famously prowled through on-screen features years before Nosferatu (1922)’s Count Orlok, or Bela Lugosi’s caped count in Dracula (1931). And just because she doesn’t sport fangs please don’t make the mistake of thinking that this vampire isn’t deadly. Just like those reanimated corpses roaming the night to feed upon the living, the earlier cinematic vampire leaves behind a string of victims drained of their power, their fortunes and finally their will to live. Eve Golden’s 1996 book Vamp helps us delve into the convoluted origins that raised this other type of vampire into the light of the silver screen.

On April 24, 1896 a painting by Philip Burne-Jones entitled The Vampire was exhibited by the New Gallery in London. In the picture a woman wearing a vicious smile leans over an unconscious man lying on a bed. The picture was said to be a representation of the outcome of Burne-Jones’ tragic affair with stage actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell who loved then left him. But, the only explanation came in the form of a poem written that same year by Burne-Jones’ cousin, Rudyard Kipling, also entitled The Vampire.

The fool was stripped to his foolish hide,
(Even as you or I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside--
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died--
(Even as you or I!)
Rudyard Kipling, "The Vampire"

Kipling’s poem inspired Porter Emerson Browne to craft a stage play under the title A Fool There Was. The March 29, 1909 New York Times review notes, "This one may be a bit raw and rough at times, but there is no denying its moral—beware of sirens who wait on ocean liners to sprinkle rose leaves in your path." The play, in turn, inspired William Fox Vaudeville Company to produce a motion picture that made the second denotative definition of the word vampire, a woman who uses sexual attraction to exploit men, common knowledge on screen. But, none of these disparate threads gathered together this alternative form of vampire in the minds of America—it was an invention of a film studio publicity machine: a mysterious new actress named Theda Bara.

As the story goes, Bara, the only child of an Italian painter and a French actress, was raised in the shadows of the Pyramids and learned the mystical ways of her homeland before relocating to Paris where she dominated French theater. Later discovered in France by director Frank Powell, she returned with him to the United States to escape the ravages of World War I and bring the secrets of Continental theater to American cinema. This story was an invention of the Fox's publicity machine. Theodosia Goodman was really a mid-30s also-ran stage actress from Cincinnati. Canny journalists knew that the origin tale was false, but many played along knowing that it was all part of show business. By the time the public was apprised of Theda’s true background they had already fallen under her cinematic spell and ate it up. After her successful turn as The Vampire in A Fool There Was (1915) the fictitious tales of her origin only served to increase her popularity. Like professional wrestling or reality TV making the audience privy to the scam only served to fuel their enjoyment and desire to see more.

The Fool (Edward José) registers horror at being torn between his family and The Vampire (Theda Bara).

A Fool There Was, directed by Frank Powell (formerly with Biograph), follows Browne's drama closely, and Kipling's poem dominates the intertitles too, so it retains some flavor of its inspiration. In the film we witness The Vampire (Theda Bara)'s seduction of U.S. diplomat John Schuyler (Edward Jose) with tragic consequences for himself and his family. He sails for Europe on a mission for the State Department leaving his wife and daughter behind to care for an injured sister-in-law. Early in the journey he encounters The Vampire and quickly falls under her spell. She's had her sights on him since reading about his assignment in the newspaper. Before the seduction of Schuyler, however, we see the fates of some of her previous victims. She shrugs off a string of weak, emaciated men; one tries to shoot her for revenge but after tasting her kisses again (during which she delivers the famous line, “kiss me, my fool,”) he commits suicide instead. Schuyler, now her latest fool, becomes tragically addicted to her for the rest of the picture. Not even an emotional reunion with his family can break the fiendish grip she has on him even as guilt and shame slowly drain away his vitality. The Vampire, meanwhile, revels in her power to destroy men and live a completely decadent lifestyle (unconvincingly shown through brief flashes of her drinking, smoking and enjoying wild parties). Bara makes the most of her penetrating kohl-rimmed eyes and cruel thin lips in the vampire role, but the attraction that once made her the first true sex symbol of American cinema—The New York Dramatic Mirror January 20, 1915 review of the film claims that she ”has enough sex appeal to supply a town full of normally pleasing women,”— is lost on these jaded eyes. And though the film isn’t a great work of art it was a box office hit, largely because of the aforementioned publicity campaign Fox built around Bara. She went on to star in some forty-plus films—all but three are unfortunately now lost—including a reputedly fantastic version of Cleopatra (1917) (also now lost), while Fox enjoyed the profits.

While Bara was perfecting and popularizing the role of the vampire in many of her films, a less-threatening sounding version of the word vampire itself came into being to describe her work at Fox: vamp. Again, a glance at Webster:

vamp Informal. —n. An unscrupulous woman who seduces or exploits men with her charms.

"Kiss me, my fool," one of The Vampire's victims (Victor Benoit) makes a vain threat.

Vamp, the seemingly gentler diminutive of vampire has come to describe not only the screen roles of Theda Bara but also a host of filmdom’s most viciously irresistible and inscrutable characters. What forces drive us to want to watch these depraved characters on screen (interesting to note that when Bara played good girl roles Fox would get letters demanding a return to vampire form)? Sad to say, I haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer to that question yet. But perhaps there is an association with the fascination we have with watching cinema's undead vampires, the evil creatures lurking in the shadows to prey on the living. Suffice it say that we love watching this stuff!

Though Bara was one of silent film's most popular actresses, and owed her success to her portrayal of some of the most despicable women on film, she's somehow not as well remembered as many other silent-era stars who enjoyed similar popularity in their time. As Golden notes “by 1918, Theda Bara was one of the top three stars in movies, ranking behind only Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin...but, by the time talking pictures became popular, she was all but forgotten.” Maybe the reason for the relative lack of interest in Theda Bara is a lack of Bara? Most of her work (and all of her best work) is lost, crumbled to nitrate dust. Still, thanks to her we know on-screen vamping (like the all best jargon it quickly became a verb) when we see it: Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (1931), Barbara Stanwick in Double Indemnity (1944), Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992), Linda Fiorentino (1994) in The Last Seduction, etc, etc. A whole lotta vamping goes on in Hollywood, and we couldn’t enjoy such nasty nonsense without the progenitor of the form, Theda Bara—a true Queen of the Vampires.

This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

Now go feast on more of the Film Experience's Vampire Blog-a-Thon


Some of my favorites:

Flickhead has capsules on five favored vampire flicks Certifiably Creative offers up Theater Des Vampires No More Marriages on Pittsburgh as the star of Innocent Blood Silly Hats Only on George Romero's Martin goatdog on the dwindling House of Dracula at Universal Richard Gibson goes contemporary: Martin and The Addiction Pfangirl on a "bloody awesome trio" of lady bloodsuckers zoom-in requests a DVD fix of The Addiction Way of Words on women: from victims to vampire slayers Tuwa's Shanty on Martin & Nosferatu

Catherine Cantieri the giant sucking sound of 1992's Dracula European Films on Frostbite, a Swedish horror comedy popbytes recommends Christopher Lee in Hammer's Dracula series 100 Films the monster mashup: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein Peter Nellhaus on Brides of Dracula Bright Lights After Dark 'Browning and the Slow Club' (Dracula) Tim Lucas declares his half dozen favorite vampire flicks Film Vituperatum Ninjas and Vampires --uncanny similarities! Cinevistaramascope finds Herzog's Nosferatu superior to Murnau's Cutting Room remembers his first time...w/ Bram Stokers Dracula

1914: The Rise and Fall of Italy's Silent Spectacles

Cabiria (1914)
Directed by Giovanni Pastrone
123 minutes; Italy; Black and White; Silent

In 1914 Italy was the world's third largest exporter of movies. The films fueling Italy's drive toward the top of the international film markets at that time were historical epics: grand spectacles of Rome's glorious past portrayed by a cast of thousands on massive sets. Italian cinema's predilection for historical films had been apparent since nearly the advent of cinema production in Italy. Early productions like La presa di Roma (1905), Gli Ultimi giorni di Pompeii (1908), and La Caduta di Troia (1910) led the way. As the scope of historical narratives broadened so the length and scale of the pictures increased as well. Costume pictures like L'Inferno (1911) were also steps on the path toward feature length historical superproductions. Finally, in 1913, Italy's feature length historical epic was truly realized with Quo Vadis?. That film was enormously successful at home and captured the attention of world markets generating interest for something more grandiose and spectacular. A year later even Quo Vadis? was overshadowed by an even more ambitious picture: the crowning achievement of Italian historical extravanganzas, Cabiria (1914).

Produced by Italia Film over the course of two years with locations in Italy, Sicily, Spain, Switzerland and Egypt, and featuring some 6,000 extras, Cabiria reportedly cost $250,000 to make (an extravagant sum in those days). The film premiered in Turin, Italy on April 18, 1914 to great success, and the news of the cinematic masterpiece spread across Europe and the United States. Cabiria was the greatest spectacle anyone had ever seen, and Italian cinema was poised to dominate anything else being produced around the world. Only a world war would get in the way and prevent Italian cinema from realizing this potential.

In the film a Sicilian girl named Cabiria (Carolina Catena) is separated from her parents when Mount Etna erupts and causes widespread destruction. She and her servant are kidnapped and sold as slaves in Carthage where a horrible fate awaits Cabiria: she is to be burned alive as a sacrifice to Moloch, god of bronze. A brave young Roman named Fulvio (Umberto Mozzato) and his herculean slave Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano) race to her rescue. Maciste is the standout role of film; he's brave, heroic, and adds some refreshing comedy when he uses his strength to convince others to do the right thing (Pagano became a star in his own right, a sort of proto-Schwarzenegger, in Italian strongman films like Marvelous Maciste (1915) and Maciste Alpino (1916)). The story of Cabiria's rescue, and the picture's many subplots, are less woven than absorbed into a larger historical narrative of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. Though maybe that's just the history buff in me focusing on what interests me most.

Cabiria (1914) was written, produced and directed by Giovanni Pastrone. However, a 1914 review in the New York Times is confusingly titled "D'Annunzio's Photoplay Cabiria." Gabriele D'Annunzio was an esteemed poet in Italy at the time and was hired to write the film's title cards. Pastrone seems to have preferred to remain in the background and let the famous writer take the credit for his film. But why? If Pastrone envisioned his film as the culmination of Italian cinema's rise from mere amusement to serious artform perhaps he wanted audiences to connect it with a well-known author. The association with a respected poet would have contributed to the legitimization of the film as a serious work comparable to the finest theatre production. Exaggerating D'Annunzio's contribution then appears to have been a means to effectively promote the film to its intended audience.

These lofty ideas about Cabiria's status as a serious work of art were carried across the Atlantic where the film opened the Spring season (and was screened twice a day all summer for a dollar a ticket) at a legitimate theatre, the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York, on June 2, 1914. A fifty piece symphony orchestra and a chorus of forty voices performed an accompaniment especially prepared for the film. The New York premiere was presented by Ernesto Nathan, former Mayor of Rome. After some 200 performances it moved on from the Knickerbocker to other legitimate theatres like the Globe and Weber's. The New York Times estimated that by October 18, 1914 half a million people had seen the film.

True believers file into the yawning mouth of Moloch to watch a hundred children be sacrficed to the god.

Unlike the personal dramas in Traffic in Souls (1913) or The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), which are tightly focused on individual characters, Cabiria is all about scale - the devastation wrought by the eruption of Mount Etna, a ritual sacrifice attended by hundreds of fanatical worshippers in a massive temple complex, a battle-royale between whole squadrons of ships on the sea, hundreds of troops and elephants crossing the Alps with Hannibal to invade Rome, etc. I notice that in this superspectacle the individual characters are swallowed up in the wide sweeping perspective of the narrative which encompasses competing groups (Romans vs. Carthaginians, etc.) and larger events. The story of Cabiria's kidnapping, near-sacrifice to Moloch, and final fate is incidental to the extra-personal forces driving the broader historical narrative of the film.

If we assume massive sets, thousands of extras, and a grand sweeping narrative are inherent to almost any spectacle film then the most outstanding technical achievement of Cabiria is Pastrone's deft use of tracking shots. Though moving the camera was tried as far back as the Lumiere scenic films when in Panorama du Grand Canal vu d'un bateau (1896) Eugéne Promio put a Cinematograph on a boat and cranked away while the craft moved downstream, a static camera is quite characteristic of early silent cinema. But, Pastrone and cinematographer Segundo de Chomon aren't merely following motion in Cabiria's tracking shots; they create the motion. The lateral tracking of the camera in Cabiria catches us off guard—we expect to see static images in early silent films—and engages our unconscious expectations about moving through space. Pastrone is inviting us into the picture to explore the depth of the image on-screen instead of passively viewing it. Cabiria's tracking shots, which reestablish cinema as separate and distinct from still photography and stage productions wherein such movements are impossible, influenced filmmakers over the following few years, and in fact these tracking shots became known as "Cabiria movements" for a time.

The ambitious scale, length and extravagance of Cabiria is said to have influenced D.W. Griffith to produce Intolerance (1916). In fact, a 1915 advertisement for Griffith's Birth of a Nation in the New York Times includes a quote from the New York World that says a lot about the impact of Pastrone's film, "Mr. Griffith's representation makes Cabiria insignificant by comparison." A bit of provincial ballyhoo for sure but nonetheless it reveals that Cabiria had set the highest standard by which the work of the finest filmmakers would now be measured.

In 1921, the New York Times reviewed Cabiria for a revival that year and claimed that the film had risen "like a cinematographic sun on the motion picture world." But back in 1914 the greatest historical spectacle of the early silent era was eclipsed by an even greater spectacle: World War I. Because of the war there would be no more grandiose historical epics coming out of Italy. The war robbed Italy of its lucrative export markets, drained the talent and manpower integral to the creation of such ambitious historic spectacles, and wartime restrictions caused a sharp decline in the total number of productions. In the years following the war Italy's previously successful production companies failed to recapture their former gains and faced fierce competition as American film interests flooded the markets with product and withheld raw film stock. Cabiria marks a high point for the influence of Italian cinema on the world, but The Great War blasted away Italy's attempts to regain its preeminent position in the years that followed.

This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

1913: Lock Up Your Daughters

Traffic in Souls (1913)
Directed by George Loane Tucker
88 min.; U.S.A.; Black and White; Silent

I’m confident that someone could write a book, if not make a career, with a thorough social, political, and historical exploration of George Loane Tucker’s vice film, Traffic in Souls (1913). It is both a pseudo-documentary that reveals how “50,000 Girls disappear yearly” into “white slavery,” an alleged widespread network of forced prostitution, and a thriller about clerk-turned-detective Mary Barton (Jane Gail) who infiltrates a white slavery ring to rescue her sister (Ethel Grandin) from its insidious control. Though space is limitless in the blogosphere, my time is limited today (have to study about 1,123,456 pages before Tuesday) so I think I’ll restrict my comments to the striking number of cinematic strands that seem to extend from this one movie to some of the most deliciously dirty genres in cinema: film noir, suspense, crime dramas and hi-tech thrillers. I'll have to write that book some other day.

Unlike its contemporary feature length historical epics or art films, like as Queen Elizabeth (1912), Quo Vadis (1912) or Judith of Bethulia (1914), Traffic in Souls is not directly based on a production from the theater— though vice plays The Lure and The Battle were popular in 1912-13. Instead the movie tackles vital issues of the (then) present day. In the 1910s progressives and moral crusaders rallied against (among many other things) a supposedly vast network of miscreants forcing women into prostitution. A November 24, 1913 advertisement for the film in the New York Times claims that it is based on the “Rockefeller white slavery report and on the investigation under District Attorney Whitman.” Google those terms to learn more but, if we take the ad at face value then the exposé theme of Traffic in Souls connects it to social comment pictures like A Corner in Wheat (1909) or The Usurer (1910) and if we don't then perhaps it has more in common with something like Portland Exposé (1957).

The film’s revealing look at the operation of a white slavery ring—from the “look-outs” who scour the city for easy targets to the “inspirer of confidence” who lures the girls into the brothel, from the whip wielding madam who breaks their will to resist to the corrupt William Turbus (William Welsh), “a man higher up” who works within a vice trust yet ultimately profits from the prostitution—belies the difficulty that authorities had finding an actual widespread network of white slavery operating in the U.S. However, the public’s fascination with the film and its themes—some evidence of its popularity can be grasped from the fact that it cost $5,700 to make and grossed $450,000—may actually be centered around traditional fears of the modern city where individuals are imagined to be swallowed up and never heard from again; where criminals of every guise lurk about ready to spring upon the unsuspecting; where evil waits to corrupt the the morally weak. These underlying fear-based themes in Traffic in Souls predict the similar preoccupations in that most city-obsessed of genres, film noir.

Though the pacing of the film drags compared to today’s crime dramas or contemporaneous shorts like Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), the multiple reels of Tucker’s slow sin-fest allow plenty of room for narrative exploration. We’re invited to spy on the daily operations of the white slavers and also play armchair detectives as Mary Barton and her policeman fiancé (Matt Moore) solve the mystery of her sister’s disappearance and gather evidence against the kidnappers. Tucker spends too much time establishing how the crimes are committed, but the latter third of the film, split in parallel action between the younger sister’s desperate attempts escape her tormentors and Mary’s desperate crusade to get the evidence, bring in the cops and rescue her, builds some welcome suspense. Tucker’s methodical storytelling and editing style would later be greatly improved upon by filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Brian De Palma, and the producers of more recent thrillers.

"A man higher up," the corrupt Turbus monitors the progress of the white slavery trade through a Dictaphone.

Eventually Mary works undercover within the white slavery ring. She connects a phonograph recording machine invented by her father (William H. Turner) to the Dictaphone that the criminals use to record their illegal business transactions. The use of technology to gather damning evidence against the white slavers establishes this flick as the predecessor to films in which technology plays a vital role. The Conversation (1974), The Net (1995), and Minority Report (2002) spring to mind right away but there are countless others. But the fact that the same (or similar) technology is shown to both help the criminals achieve their evil ends and the detective bust them reminds me of current questions about the NSA warrant-less wiretaps to nail suspected terrorists and...oops, I told you this film could inspire a book or two.

As mentioned earlier, Traffic in Souls was widely popular at the time of its release, and enjoyed a fairly long run. According to ads in the Times it opened at Weber’s Theater on Monday November 24, 1913 and ran concurrently at a number of other theaters until March 7, 1914. Tucker went on to make the now-lost film The Miracle Man (1919) which was voted the best movie yet made in a 1921 Photoplay poll beating out stiff competition from Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith.

Note: I viewed this Film of the Year on VHS (thank you Movie Madness for having this in stock) so the images this week result from a Google search.

This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved