11th Annual Watch That Movie Night is January 25!

[s.w.a.c.]

Turns out I'm attending a local music festival Friday night, but hopefully Watch That Movie Afternoon is deemed OK.

[tthacker]

This year, I let my wife decide on what movie to watch and she chose Pharaoh(1966), a nearly 3 hour Polish epic. Should be interesting.

[Zepfanman]

I will also watch something from the Women Film Pioneers.

LOL... I am also going to watch something from the boxset. I bought the bluray set with the extras on it and haven't watched any of it yet, except what aired on TCM. Has anyone noticed that some of Women Film Pioneers is on Netflix? Also some of the Pioneers of African American Cinema is on Netflix as well.

Thanks for mentioning that some of the titles are on Netflix! Limited listings of "Pioneers" sets available on Netflix:
Women: https://instantwatcher.com/title/81030762
African American: https://instantwatcher.com/title/80162174

I'll go with Broadway Love as I've been wanting to see an Ida May Park film for quite some time.

[Rick Lanham]

I've had the Image DVD of two DeMille films; Old Wives For New and The Whispering Chorus for many years. I've never seen either.

http://www.silentera.com/video/oldWivesForNewHV.html

I'll watch one or both of them.

Rick

[Agnes]

I had seen some "Cohen's & Kelly's" films at festivals, so when I saw a copy of "The Shamrock & The Rose" (1927) , I bought it a few years ago. Then. it was on my to-watch list, but I never got to it.
So, I am going to make time for it now.

Agnes

[Salty Dog]

I'll watch 40 Guns by Sam Fuller, which has just been reissued in a spiffy new Blu Ray by Criterion if that's acceptable.

[Daveismyhero]

I'll be watching Adam's Rib for a little Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn combo platter.

No idea what it is about, but I hope it's good!

[Mike Gebert]

31 pledges! That might be the record, or really close, anyway. But there's still time to pledge—name your movie, watch it Friday night (or sometime) and post by Monday night to be eligible for the drawing.

[NotSoSilent]

I will watch SOFT SHOES (1925) on the National Film Preservation Foundation's website.

[RuralReel]

I will be watching The Vagabond Lover (1929 - RKO). I see that there's a copy on-line at YT and I don't think that this is available on DVD but it may have been on VHS at some time. Thanks! I'll be looking forward to the group's replies . . . tomorrow?

[Mike Gebert]

There might be some tomorrow night, certainly by Saturday morning!

[cuzzoni]

I plan to watch the Thunderbean blu-ray of Gulliver's travels (only seen it on yucky PD discs before)

[T0m M]

I 'll probably watch The Covered Wagon, tonight.

[Mike Gebert]

There is no Dietrich, there is no Brooks, there is only Ita Rina!

I had never seen a Czech silent before the first one I watched for Watch That Movie Night, Tonka of the Gallows (1930). (It's also the first Czech sound film, but only in the sense that it has a synchronized score and two relatively brief songs; it is otherwise a pantomime film and there is no spoken dialogue.) As it happens, both of the films I chose star Slovenian-born Ita Rina, who is the—Louise Brooks? Janet Gaynor? Barbara Stanwyck? some of each?—of Czech cinema.

Tonka was talked about here when Lokke Heiss saw it at MOMA almost two years ago; I also highly recommend this piece by Farran Smith Nehme, which she and I talked about on NitrateVille Radio.

Tonka is a young woman who returns to her village bearing gifts for her mother, and attracting the eye of Jan (John Mylong, who with the war would go on to a long career of bits in Hollywood, including the unforgettable Robot Monster). But she's strangely reticent when he cuddles up to her, and yes, you guessed why: her mysteriously lucrative job in the city is in a brothel. She vanishes back to the brothel, where she commits an act of mercy (crossed with self-loathing), comforting a condemned prisoner the night before his hanging. That act of charity and human feeling will prove to be her own doom.

Comparisons to Sunrise are obvious—not least because both country and city seem to be abstractly unreal versions of themselves, linked by a toylike train. (Mylong's resemblance to George O'Brien seems intentional, too, though it's more like George O'Brien wearing Brian Donlevy's mustache and a middle-aged paunch; the condemned prisoner, Josef Rovensky, seems cast for his Jannings-like hulkingness.) The lyrical camerawork and editing certainly seems to draw from Murnau's masterpiece; I'd also note resemblances to Street Angel and Pandora's Box. There's even an amusement park sequence—suggesting director Karl Anton was following his models closely, and mostly very successfully. Oddly, he reportedly spent the rest of his career directing light comedies, and nothing else in his filmography compares, we are told—though his other silents, like The May Fairy, sound interesting to me, and his sound version of the real life Colonel Redl story is presumably not played for laughs.

Either way, this is genuinely one of the last great silents, and last great performances of the silent era. Maybe the difference is that here he had a really first-rate, sad short story by Egon Erwin Kirsch, well known in Czech apparently, to base it off of. I'd say it's good enough to be not just German, but Japanese—like one of those Mizoguchi or Naruse films about the self-sacrificing, ignored and despised prostitutes whose tale is one of pity for the hard lives of women. There's one moment after Mylong has learned the truth and pushed her to the floor that Rina looks up, and you see that she accepts the judgement on her, and knows that suffering is her lot—and it's as good as anything any actress did in any silent movie, ever.

The edition I bought off Amazon from the Czech Republic (ignore the kids' book cover Amazon is showing) comes from the French version, apparently the only surviving version, and it's not Criterion level, but more than good enough to show you the film. The score is the original 1930 soundtrack, and there are English titles as well as a short newsreel extra showing the burning of the studio during production.

[TinaC]

I watched the Red Kimona. I heard it was shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the end of last year. It is also in the Pionners: First Women Filmmakers box set. The story is about a woman that has some hardships in the beginning but everything starts improving for her towards the end. I don't want to summarize and spoil the movie if there are people out there who have not seen it yet, but I would recommend seeing it.

[oldposterho]

I gotta love Watch That Movie Night as it does prompt me to finally get on it and watch films I've really needed to see, tonight's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (aka Berlin: Symphony of a Great City) 1927, directed by Water Rutmann, one of Lang's cinematographers, being a fantastic example.

Basically a day-in-the-life documentary that is soaked in Russian editing theory, French avant garde mise en scene, and German precisionism, it truly does need it's own semester in film school to be able to soak it all in. It is masterful at every level. If Metropolis were a documentary instead of science fiction it would be Berlin. Honest about both the good and the bad you do feel as if you experienced the city in its entirety. What haunted me was the realization that the Berlin of 1927 was rubble just a few years later. It's a testament to how movies can preserve a moment in time.

The version I've had is a '93 Film Preservation Associates transfer. According to the always reliable IMDb there's a 74 minute restored version that I now need to track down, since this was only a little over an hour, and I'm curious what is missing. The score by Timothy Brock was spot on perfect, both dynamic and then silent as the visuals required.

A winner if you're prepared for it.

[Big Silent Fan]

First, thanks to those who posted their film plans, especially those that weren't familiar Silent films.
Because I had time, I really enjoyed watching Andrei Tarkovsky's Russian film, “Stalker” (1979) and the 1966 Polish film, “Faraon” (Pharoh) in widescreen color. Between the two, I spent more than four hours watching these fascinating stories. I'm sure I'll be finding even more usual films to look for when reading the reviews.

“Faraon (1966) - IMDB
Young Pharaoh Ramses XIII clashes with Egypt's clergy over influence on the affairs of the state and its coffers.

The film I watched with my friend during our weekly Thursday visit was Greta Garbo in, “Love” (1927). Filmed a year after Garbo and Gilbert were first together in, “Flesh and the Devil” (where supposedly the romance began). Garbo was so young in all her Silent films. Born September 18,1905, Greta had to have been just 21 when “Love” was filmed.
Robert Osborne's introduction left no doubt the Studio was capitalizing on the rumored romance between the two stars. What followed was a powerfully told story about a woman, being pursued by a Russian officer (Gilbert), determined to win her love at all costs. It made no difference that she was both married and had a small son, he was determined to have her to himself. He plays a really despicable self centered character in this film, concerned only with his own enjoyment, at the expense of others.
In Garbo's earlier domestic films (“Love” was her forth), she was typically cast as a vamp or woman seeking revenge against a former lover. In this story, it's Gilbert who forces himself on her, even approaching her at the very door of her son's bedroom unannounced.
Having just watched “Flesh and the Devil," I noticed how much more handsome John Gilbert was in the close-ups compared to only a year earlier, his face more full and alive. Garbo looked absolutely regal in appearance. There seemed to be real passion in this story.
Perhaps the first film with her playing a mother and the chemistry between Greta and Anna's Child, Serezha (Philippe de Lacy), was stunning. You could feel the love. I now have a new favorite Garbo film.

My TCM copy was a recording from the University of California, Los Angeles, with music composed and performed by Arnold Brostoff. The live audience was a little disconcerting at first since they seemed to be laughing before there was something to laugh at. “Love” is a modern telling of the Anna Karenina story in just 82 minutes.
On my recording, I had both endings, one where Anna jumps in front of a train, and the Hollywood ending, where she and Vronsky are reunited at the very end.

 
Next up was Clara Bow in "Get Your Man" (1927) with Charles 'Buddy' Rogers.  A delightful comedy running 65 minutes I've just discovered on YouTube.  It had no music, so I again used the score from DeMIlle's "Affairs of Anatol" and it fit just fine. The mood of that music is constantly changing, making it a perfect selection for supporting most any film.
Clara was at her very best, acting in this story. None of her normal silliness, but very animated and usually dressed in a 'teddy' with lots of look at her shapely legs.
There were many shaky titles and some deterioration, with obviously missing parts, but there were many crystal clear images of the two stars. Perhaps an added feature was the creative titling and the dissolving first letter on many of the intertitles.
Frances Marion did the continuity and likely contributed to the fun titles we read throughout the hour long film.
!927 was a big year for both Clara and Buddy Rogers since both “Wings” and “Mary Pickford's “My Best Girl” were both released that year.
. Photoplay gave Get Your Man a positive review in its February 1928 issue:

“Charles Rogers has a boyish appeal that is winning him many friends. This story may be fragile but the photography is beautiful and Clara continues to charm and fascinate." It was rated as one of the best pictures of the month.

I would love to find a reasonably good copy of this classic Clara Bow film.

[NotSoSilent]

I watched SOFT SHOES (1925) this morning. The film stars Harry Carey as a small town sheriff who goes to San Francisco to collect an inheritance. Let’s just say he has a busy visit: A woman appears to make eyes at him in a bar, something that irritates her husband who is seated right next to her; he catches a cat burglar in his hotel room; he breaks into another hotel room to return a stolen brooch; he’s involved in a police chase; he gets caught-up in a criminal gang, and then, of course, he gets the girl in the end. All in about 45-minutes! Due to the short running time there is very little story and character development – everything just happens. For example, when Carey catches the cat burglar in his room he instantly wants to save her and take her back to his ranch. The entire story happens this quickly. However, it actually works. It is a light and breezy film; something that would have been a perfect vehicle for Keaton. Don’t get me wrong, Carey was great, but there were a few scenes where I could almost see Keaton in the role.

The print and tinting were beautiful and the score by Donald Sosin fit the film perfectly. Thank you to NFPF for preserving this film!

[Jim Roots]

I watched Tarkovsky's Stalker. The plot, as usual with Tarky, is a wire hanger for his meticulous, paced, and deeply-felt probing of life's grand questions. Set in some dystopian future, it has been described as "a two-hours-and-forty-minute journey to a room" -- so, as I said, a wire hanger.

It's mysterious and illuminating at the same time. Tarkovsky is the true son of Dostoevsky, in my opinion, so if you don't like Dos, you won't like Tark. He is very demanding of your patience. I would never show a Tarky film to anyone under the age of, maybe, forty, unless that person read Schopenhauer for pleasure.

Besides being slow and very long, all of Tarky's films share another characteristic: this filmmaker is totally sincere. I can understand that many people find his films pretentious, simply because they are filled with philosophy and spiritual questions; but the man's sincerity is irreproachable and consistent.

Afterwards, I dug out my old Kino VHS of The Mirror, about which I remembered absolutely nothing. It's extremely elliptical and elusive, which is fitting because it's about memory and history. I found it less compelling than any of his other films, but still head and shoulders creatively and intellectually above most other movies.

The poor man made only seven films before dying prematurely of cancer. There's more thought and mesmerizing images in those seven films than in the oeuvres of almost any other filmmaker you'd care to name.

Jim

[Jim Roots]

I would love to find a reasonably good copy of this classic Clara Bow film.

I would love to find a reasonably good copy of Clara Bow!

Jim

[Brooksie]

After putting an ill child to bed, finding the DVD, locating the right remote control (under the couch) and replenishing its pilfered batteries, navigating the complexities of switching regions for the British-released The Ware Case (1938) on our new Blu Ray player was a bridge too far. Instead, I dusted off the next disc on my tottering pile - The Cheat (1931), from Universal’s rather nice boxed set of Pre-Codes from a few years ago.

It wasn’t long before I realised this was a remake of DeMille’s The Cheat (1915), which it follows fairly closely. Investor Jeffrey (Harvey Stephens) is married to flighty Elsa (Tallulah Bankhead), an inveterate gambler. After incurring a hefty gambling debt at the worst possible moment and digging herself in further by embezzling a charity event to pay it off, she turns to Hardy Livingstone (Irving Pichel), an obsessive millionaire with a taste for the exotic, who has a unique way of making his mark on his lovers. When Elsa shoots and wounds Livingstone, the redoubtable Jeffrey attempts to take the rap.

The story seems a natural for the Pre-Code era, and yet this version straightens out nearly all of the kinks that make DeMille’s version so luridly watchable. Pichel, playing the Sessue Hayakawa role with all the élan of a length of plywood, is merely a wealthy creep rather than a Japanese (or Burmese) tycoon, but gone with the problematic racial element is the seductive menace that made Hayakawa’s interpretation so compelling. In the 1915 version, Fannie Ward is repulsed and yet perversely attracted; her 1931 equivalent grits her teeth and gets on with it, which is far less interesting. The famous branding sequence, genuinely shocking in the original, comes across as a damp squib here. The ending is just as limp, further exposing the shortcomings of the source material.

Some diverting Long Island location sequences are all too brief, and the remainder of the budget seems to have gone on Ms Bankhead’s fee and her wardrobe (I can’t fault that, it is gorgeous). You can see why Hollywood briefly considered her a credible rival to Ruth Chatterton, but equally, why she returned to Broadway so swiftly. You can sense her basic disinterest in the whole affair; it doesn’t help that fellow Broadway refugee Harvey Stephens, making his screen debut as her anodyne true love, barely registers.

All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening, but the original remains the superior version.

[Brooksie]

I would love to find a reasonably good copy of this classic Clara Bow film.

One exists - a new restoration was made by the Library of Congress only a few years ago and screened at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2017. A very fun film. It's only a shame that the waxwork museum sequence is lost.

[Big Silent Fan]

I would love to find a reasonably good copy of this classic Clara Bow film.

One exists - a new restoration was made by the Library of Congress only a few years ago and screened at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2017. A very fun film. It's only a shame that the waxwork museum sequence is lost.

The whole museum sequence or the latter part where they're lost in the museum when it closes (according to a review I read)?
The titles were often laugh out loud funny. Right from the beginning, just before we first see Clara the title read:

In Paris -- just around the corner from the Woman's Exchange, or Divorce Court.

There's hope then I might one day see more.

If I had a DVD copy from YouTube, I'd be able to fix most shaky titles and even some of the image deterioration. Might even be able to show two hand written messages that don't appear long enough to be read.

A fun film indeed, Clara is often seen very clearly in the film.

[Brooksie]

I do recall that some of the museum sequence was intact, but I don't recall exactly how much or where the intact pieces began and ended. There were a lot of stills of Clara and Buddy chasing one another around the statues, I remember that much. Twenty minutes, or around two reels, remain missing even in the restoration. We can only hope they turn up one day.

[Wm. Charles Morrow]

G.W. Pabst’s Die Dreigroschenoper (1931) has long been a favorite of mine. Back in the VHS era I acquired it on tape, and watched that version at least twice. Later on I read Bertolt Brecht’s 3-Penny Opera stage play, and learned that this screen adaptation is quite different in plot and lacks several of the musical numbers, although “The Ballad of Mack the Knife” and “The Cannon Song” remain. When Criterion released it on DVD I snapped up a copy and revisited the movie, and appreciated the job that the restoration folk did on the image and the newly recreated subtitles. This edition also includes some interesting extras, including info about the original stage production, a documentary on the making of the film, and Pabst’s French version L’opera de quat’sous, which—like Universal’s Spanish language Dracula, and certain other films of the period—was produced simultaneously with the more familiar version. But I didn’t get around to watching the French language adaptation until just this weekend. By the way, if you know even a little French you’ll spot one change already, in the title: this a 4-Nickel Opera.

This version stars Albert Préjean (familiar from several Rene Clair films) as Mackie, and the actress known as Florelle (who was in Fritz Lang’s Liliom) as Polly. They’re quite different from their German counterparts, both in appearance and in acting style. They’re looser, and more casual. They smile more often. In short, they’re more Gallic and less Germanic, as you’d expect. In one of the documentaries included with the DVD there are side-by-side comparisons of scenes from the two versions, and while they were filmed on the same sets back-to-back, the French scenes were more brightly lit, so visually the film has a rather different look in a subtle, barely discernible way. (Incidentally Pabst directed both, which suggests that the guy got very little sleep while this project was in production.) One major distinction between the two can be found in the opening credits: the German version features stark white lettering on a black background, while L’opera de quat’sous superimposes its credits over a miniature carousel, which is bedecked with puppets who resemble the central characters.

I enjoyed seeing this offbeat version of the familiar story, and hearing the songs with new lyrics, but I’d have to say I prefer the familiar version. Its generally darker look, and the more stylized performances of the German players, best suits the material. Plus, those lyrics sound right precisely as Brecht wrote them. For that matter, none of the English translations I’ve heard sound quite as good, either.

[Peg of the PreCodes]

People don't talk much about The World Moves On (Ford, 1934), and I assume it's a case of "if you can't say something nice...." It is a handsomely mounted epic, reminiscent of the 1970s TV miniseries period, and I was surprised to discover it was NOT based on a critically panned, commercially successful novel. In 1825 a New Orleans cotton tycoon's will directs his sons and partner to emigrate to establish branches of the family firm in England, France, and Prussia. Flash forward to 1914, when a marriage of a great-granddaughter of the French line to a great-grandson of the German line brings together all the family branches, expecting August to only bring another wedding.

The guns start firing, and a generous helping of the cliches of the Great War picture ensue (the American scion immediately enlists in the Foreign Legion; one of the German relatives commands a U-boat that sinks a civilian liner on which two of his American and English connexions were sailing; extensive trench warfare sequences; the oldest son of the French branch goes into the priesthood because of his disillusionment with the world; the German relatives are starving). All of this, plus sequences following the family into the Jazz Age (the American heir speculates madly to build an international business combine) and the Great Depression (the combine collapses and the American heir retreats, sadder but wiser, to the New Orleans family house) contribute to that sense of a miniseries adaptation of a middlebrow epic novel.

I know Franchot Tone was married for a while to Joan Crawford, but did he do anything else in his later career to distinguish himself? I'd be hard-pressed to tell him apart from certain other young male leads of the pre-1935 period (Robert Young? Robert Montgomery?) with tall, lanky bodies and vaguely weaselish faces.

This movie's primary distinction is to have earned Motion Picture Production Code certificate number 1; evidently then as now the Hollywood watchdogs weren't as strict on violence as they were on "perversion."

[Big Silent Fan]

I do recall that some of the museum sequence was intact, but I don't recall exactly how much or where the intact pieces began and ended. There were a lot of stills of Clara and Buddy chasing one another around the statues, I remember that much. Twenty minutes, or around two reels, remain missing even in the restoration. We can only hope they turn up one day.

Frankly, what remains of the museum in the YouTube version is probably an improvement over any longer sequence.
Buster Keaton taught that even if it's funny, you shouldn't repeat gags.
As I recall, after seeing several confused patrons with the automated statues, Clara says, "You Can fool me. I know a dummy when I see one and hits the woman standing by her. It was priceless, watching the woman turn and glare at her but enough was enough.

[Mike Gebert]

I know Franchot Tone was married for a while to Joan Crawford, but did he do anything else in his later career to distinguish himself?

Well, Robert Siodmak's noir Phantom Lady is a favorite, and Three Comrades is fine, but like a lot of MGM male stars, he made a lot of glossy movies supporting better-known female stars that no one watches much any more. Very late in life he was in Mickey One, with Warren Beatty.

Sounds like The World Moves On was a blatant attempt at another Cavalcade, down to the heavy-handed citation of historical events (in Cavalcade a couple happily on a honeymoon cruise walk away after their bit of dialogue, revealing "Titanic" on the life preserver).

[FrankFay]

Got around to watching SHERLOCK HOLMES1916. I'm glad it survives but I'm not likely to watch it frequently.
The restoration looks fine and the print is full of sharp detail- on occasion this detail is distracting as it is obvious that the interiors are painted flats- lines and seams are visible and some pictures wobble on walls when doors are opened. I suspect the printing and projection techniques of the era might have softened the look a bit- and they might have taken a decade or so off Gillette's appearance (He's supposed to be in his 30's, he looks at least in his 50's and was in his 60's).

The cast is in general fine, in a stagy way, and William Postance as a gang member stands out as a fully realized lightly comic character. Gillette is fine and sometimes dynamic- he must have commanded the stage, though the lack of dialogue leaves him a bit inert. Ernest Maupain as Moriarty pours on the melodrama as if from a firehose. He's effective in this unsubtle way, but his last words- which are some of the best in the play- don't even get a title card.

The direction- Meh. Typical of the times, maybe even a bit behind them. The camera does pan about now and then, and there are a couple of functional close-ups, but Berthelet links almost all cuts within a location during a scene with dissolves and they get tiresome quickly. He manages a couple of good camera angles that break away from the stage setup.
Moriarty's lair has real rats!

[Zepfanman]

Broadway Love (1918, Ida May Park) from the new Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers collection that came out in 2018. This was likely a new 2K scan and it had computer-generated intertitles. The print is in decent condition. I watched this as one of the streaming Netflix "episodes" of Pioneers, so I don't have any further restoration information.

As for the filmmaking quality, the actors were engaging, but it was a little hard to follow the motivations of the characters. It was a soap-opera storyline about Broadway chorus girls and the men who pursued them. This does pass the Bechdel Test (at least two named women talk to each other about something other than a man). There are two maids in blackface. Lon Chaney has a large role, with Dorothy Phillips starring. Also featuring Juanita Hansen, William Stowell, and Harry von Meter.