Film Freak Central

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disc

THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG
***½/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras A
starring Ivor Novello, June (née June Tripp), Malcolm Keen, Marie Ault
scenario by Eliot Stannard, from the novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

DOWNHILL (1927)
When Boys Leave Home
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Ivor Novello, Robin Irvine, Isabel Jeans, Ben Webster
scenario by Eliot Stannard, based on the play by Constance Collier & David L'Estrange (née Ivor Novello)
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Alfred Hitchcock's fifth time at the plate produced his third completed picture, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (hereafter The Lodger), based on a 1913 novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes that was itself based on the 1888 Jack the Ripper murders, which still would have been in the immediate cultural memory of 1927. When first screened, distributor C.M. Woolf proclaimed it incomprehensible, jeopardizing its release until London Film Society founding member Ivor Montagu was enlisted to clear up the mess. In truth, Montagu liked what he saw, advised the reshooting of the darkest scenes, and, with Hitchcock's approval and assistance, discarded a good number of title cards to, in effect, leave the storytelling to the visuals. Producer Michael Balcon, already a supporter, called it good, and the picture allowed the British film industry to finally boast a product that could compete with not merely the artistically-dominant European cinema (France, Germany, and Russia), but also the commercially-dominant American dream factory. Just in time, as it happened. The passage of the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act stipulated that distributors would guarantee at least 7.5% of their total output be British: a number that would increase in increments until it hit 20% in 1936. The skeletal British industry boasted few stars. On the strength of The Lodger and his earlier The Pleasure Garden, Hitchcock was something of a known quantity before much of the British public had even seen any of his films.

The Circus (1928) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disc

****/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A
starring Charlie Chaplin, Allan Garvia, Merna Kennedy, Harry Crocker
written and directed by Charlie Chaplin

by Bryant Frazer It started with the tightrope. That was Charlie Chaplin's original idea as he developed his feature-length comedy The Circus--his iconic character, the Tramp, forced into a high-wire act, defying death and injury on a rope stretched taut far above the ground. It was later, shortly before production started, that the monkeys came into the picture. Those mischievous animals, those gremlins, would crawl over his arms and body, wrap themselves around his face, and pull down his pants as the Tramp struggled to maintain his balance on the wire. From what we know of his off-screen life at the time, it's easy to imagine why Chaplin felt bedevilled. His second marriage, to Lita Grey, still a teenager, was fundamentally unhappy. He spent his time away from home with divorce on his mind, and it was around this point he learned that Lita was pregnant with his second child. He also kept an eye out for the detectives he was sure had been hired to investigate his affair with Hearst's wife, Marion Davies.

The Phantom Carriage (1921) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disc

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Astrid Holm, Tore Svennberg
screenplay by Victor Sjöström, based on a novel by Selma Lagerlöf
directed by Victor Sjöström

by Bryant Frazer The Phantom Carriage, a seminal achievement in silent filmmaking from that other great Swedish auteur, Victor Sjöström, is a stern, supernatural moral drama that rails against social problems of the day by enlisting an emissary from the Great Beyond to lecture the feckless, abusive protagonist on what a rotten shit he is. Sjöström remains best known internationally for his later Hollywood films, made with the likes of Lillian Gish and Greta Garbo, but The Phantom Carriage already testified to genius behind the camera as well as in front of it. When the movie finished playing, I picked up the disc's keepcase and squinted at it, in all my ignorance, to determine who so expertly essayed the central character of the alcoholic David Holm. When I read the answer (Sjöström himself), I wanted to fling the box across the room. Show-off.

The Jazz Singer (1927) [Three-Disc Deluxe Edition] - DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Cantor Joseff Rosenblatt
screenplay by Alfred A. Cohn, based on the play by Samson Raphaelson
directed by Alan Crosland

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I'm going to dispense with standard practice for this review, because the enormity of The Jazz Singer's Three-Disc Deluxe Edition demands it. Not in terms of size (although one movie, one feature-length documentary, and about five hours of short films make for a pretty large package), but because the issues it raises are more than the main attraction itself can contain. What this DVD proposes is a glimpse into the shining moment when talkies were a novelty rather than a foregone conclusion and a whole range of culture teemed around them, unaware of its imminent demise. The Jazz Singer is no great shakes on its own; by all accounts, it's an antique of limited cinematic range and blindingly crude melodrama. Yet in placing it against the vast array of shorts that both preceded and led directly from it, one gets a sense of how truly seismic the coming of sound was. Watching the parade of performers adapt their bits to some very functional filmmaking is devastating--not only because the traditions that nourished them were wiped out, but also because a relationship with culture, with the accessibility of the performer and the non-suppression of the audience, was snuffed out for a piece of technology that liberated our dreams but left us alone in the dark.

Film Freak Central does "The Art of Silent Film" series

by Walter Chaw Denver Art Museum curator Tom Delapa is a one-man production. He books the prints, rents the space, does the research, and twice annually puts on a show consisting of possibly the most historically vital revivals in the Mile High City. Past years have seen screenings of pictures as varied as The Fountainhead and It Came From Outer Space in its original 3-D form--and now, over the course of seven consecutive Tuesdays at Denver's Starz Filmcenter beginning April 5, Mr. Delapa brings us "The Art of Silent Film." It's an ambitious program consisting of lesser-known pieces or rare prints from well-regarded artists of the silent era, giving cineastes the opportunity to see King Vidor's The Crowd (as yet unreleased on DVD) in 16mm with live accompaniment from pianist Hank Troy, as well as 35mm prints of both Buster Keaton's The Navigator and Charlie Chaplin's defiant Modern Times. These share the bill with 16mm presentations of Sergei Eisenstein's Strike, F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh, Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives, and G.W. Pabst's bleak, profound Diary of a Lost Girl. While the audience has grown for the Denver Art Museum film series, the truism remains that for as much lip service as is paid to the dearth of quality cinema in the heartland, if you don't get out and support essential institutions like this one, then they'll just go away.

The Marx Brothers: Silver Screen Collection - DVD

THE COCOANUTS (1929)
**½/**** Image C- Sound C-
with Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton
screenplay by Morrie Riskind, based on the play by George S. Kaufman
directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley

ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)
***/**** Image C Sound C
with Lillian Roth and Margaret Dumont
screenplay by Morrie Ryskind
directed by Victor Heerman

MONKEY BUSINESS (1931)
***½/**** Image B+ Sound C+
with Rockliffe Fellowes and Harry Woods
screenplay by S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone
directed by Norman McLeod

HORSE FEATHERS (1932)
****/**** Image C+ Sound B
with Thelma Todd and David Landau
screenplay by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby and S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone
directed by Norman McLeod

DUCK SOUP (1933)
****/**** Image B+ Sound B
with Margaret Dumont and Raquel Torres
screenplay by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby and Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin
directed by Leo McCarey

by Walter Chaw Popular wisdom holds that the Marx Brothers were best at Paramount, before the public disapproval of their satirical masterpiece Duck Soup sent them fleeing with proverbial tails between their legs to MGM and an ignoble end in a series of progressively worse, studio-sterilized soft-shoe routines. But the truth is that the Marxes didn't hit their stride until at least their third picture for Paramount, Monkey Business: the first couple of flicks (The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers) are laden by the team's dependence on played-out stage productions and the "oh my god" quality of the early talkie, in which actors played to microphones hidden in flower pots, extras stared straight at the camera, and the florid gestures of the theatre were adhered to with pathological devotion.

Vintage Mickey - DVD

Image B Sound B
Steamboat Willie (1928), Plane Crazy (1928), The Karnival Kid (1929), The Birthday Party (1931), The Castaway (1931), Mickey's Orphans (1931), Mickey's Revue (1932), Building a Building (1933), Mickey's Steam-Roller (1934)

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The difference between Disney and Warner Bros. animation isn't exactly the standard business vs. art dichotomy--it's about the smoothing over of rough spots vs. the celebration of their interruptions. Where the whole point of Looney Tunes was to affirm the thing that caused the chaos, Disney either healed that thing or pretended like it didn't really matter. But before the battle of the trademarks began in earnest, there were only the shorts, and Disney's M.O. was simply to provide a salve--not through the personality cult of its sadly conservative mastermind, but through the reduction of things that can hurt. The new compilation "Vintage Mickey" is thus bittersweet occasion to look through the prism of the company's semi-fascistic present at the apparent innocence of the beginning and wonder where it all went wrong.

Metropolis - 2002 Restoration (1927)

**½/****
starring Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Brigitte Helm, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
screenplay by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou, based on her novel
directed by Fritz Lang

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Now it can be told: Despite its status as a cinema landmark, I've never been particularly enamoured with Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Like its immediate descendant Blade Runner, it's a film better designed than directed and better staged than thought through--a gorgeous white elephant that's all dressed up with no place to go. Granted, that design and staging are hugely influential, making it essential viewing for students of the cinema, and on a level of simple eye candy it has few peers in all of cinema. But while the current restoration shows us a fuller and more substantial narrative, that doesn't mean that it is, in fact, full or substantial, and Lang's rigid camera set-ups lack the fluidity and lightness to truly make the film more than a notable museum piece.