BEST FILMS OF 1924
by Mike Lorefice

Entr'acte
Rene Clair

Rene Clair's directorial debut is a technical display of cinematic virtuosity. Dadaist art that features the stars of the movement such as composer Erik Satie, photographer/director Man Ray, playwright Francis Picabia, & artist Marcel Duchamp. The film isn't about anything, which is the beauty of it. It's a strange brew of absurd impossible unrelated sequences. Inanimate objects are brought to life, while people jump around at various motions, and sometimes even backwards! In a way, everything is the opposite of "the way it's supposed to be", but basically it's a satirical attack on societal convention and narrative coherence that denies interpretation at every turn. You can choose to decipher it any way you want or just enjoy for it's wild imagination. The most memorable segment has mourners in hot pursuit of a coffin pulled by a camel and disappearing after the dead man is resurrected. [12/23/06] ***

Greed
Erich von Stroheim

****

He Who Gets Slapped
Victor Sjostrom

A story of cruelty in the old style where we are asked to identify with the lesser person, not mock them like on all the superficreality shows. Chaney, in his most restrained performance, plays a brilliant scientist ripped off of his inventions and his woman by a greedy superior. His method of coping is withdrawing from the world, becoming a clown who specializes in getting slapped (as his girlfriend slapped him when she betrayed him). Chaney gives a heartbreaking naturalistic performance, it's his most toned down and believable work. This is largely due to the director, Sjostrom, who didn't believe in the over the top acting style of the age. It's not Chaney's best film, but despite being one of his oldest that's still available, it's certainly one of his most modern. Of course, his circus act is great, with the ironic climax finally turning the tables on the viewer. The film declines dramatically when Chaney isn't on screen, which unfortunately is more often than most of his films. The fact that the woman Chaney's finally able to love after all these years (Norma Shearer) winds up being pursued by the now rich skunk who stole his last love is, like many plot points in this cutely scripted work, hardly plausible though it does make for a strong tragic ending. [9/4/05] ***

The Last Laugh
F.W. Murnau

Though not as famous as Nosferatu, Last Laugh is an even more pioneering offering from Murnau. Here, he frees legendary cameraman Karl Freund from the tripod, allowing him to tell the story through inventive and expressive camera techniques that made the title cards irrelevant. Unlike a lesser director, Murnau didn't use intertitles anyway because he could or was supposed to; he really scrapped them and allowed the camera and the pantomime to fully tell the story. Where this stands as a classic and in my opinion Caligari doesn't is the technique is applied to a human story, telling it in a certain manner rather than letting the manner dictate. Emil Jannings delivers a highly memorable performance as the proud doorman who suffers mightily after a sudden uncalled for demotion robs him of his standing and importance. [9/4/05] ****

Michael
Carl Theodor Dreyer

The remarkable Carl Theodor Dreyer once again manages to be decades ahead of his time, this time delivering a homosexual film about the 19th century that's still viable and modern in the 21st. An aging master painter (Haxan director Benjamin Christensen) "adopts" Michael (Walter Slezak), the muse he's had his greatest success painting. Though purportedly a father figure, he's attracted to Michael, who willingly goes along now that the master is putting him up and funding his own attempts to be a painter. The film follows their shifting fortunes, centered around Princess Zamikoff (Nora Gregor), who the master struggles to paint (his successes were all men) and Michael falls in love with, funding her whims by stealing a lot more than her from the master. Though most of Dreyer's masterpieces focused on women, the biggest weakness here is the Princess is portrayed as little more than a distracting nuisance. With Michael growing increasingly distant, the master is back to only Switt (Rob Garrison) truly caring about him. The master not only refuses to notice his real friend, but is always at odds with him because Switt attempts to point out the ways Michael is taking advantage of him. The situation could easily lead to very negative portrayals of one, even both painters, but Dreyer instead focuses on the fact that both men get what they need out of the relationship. It's a very enigmatic film, no doubt partly due to its gay theme. Though Dreyer made it for German UFA, he managed to pull off something even the natives rarely could, simply giving Thea von Harbou screen credit without having her actually revise the script. Stylistically it's very different from the Dreyer people are familiar with. He not only has yet to adopt long takes, but actually edits constantly. Though his later style was much more impressive, the constant editing does work in silent film because it allows for far more naturalistic performances. The story is predominantly told through fairly tight shots of the actor that would be talking, seen from the waist or neck up. I say would be talking because even though they have dialogue they rarely move their mouths, instead conveying everything through a glance of an eye, tilt of a head, point of a finger. The film was shot by the brilliant duo of Karl Freund and Rudoph Mate, the former handling the bulk (interiors) and making a cameo appearance as an art dealer. Their expert lighting and framing brings forth the subtlety of the performances. [3/7/07] ***1/2

The Navigator
Buster Keaton & Eddie Cline

Setting is what set Keaton apart from Chaplin & Lloyd. While those two built their comedy around their persona, and could be funnier, their laughs didn't vary from film to film like Keaton's. The silly plot has a rich couple winding up alone on a titanic sized ship, the fact they never needed to do anything for themselves magnified thousands of times by the immensity of stage they need to learn how to on. Navigator features an underwater sequence that basically stands alone in history, as with the advent of talkies the only purpose of an underwater scene became to show someone in (or minus) their bathing suit. But since "no one" will see this in these times of corporate promoted amnesia, they'll never fathom what's been lost. Anyway, Keaton uses a swordfish to duel a second swordfish, and it's just a gem. Another scene that should be famous but isn't, amongst several, has Keaton accidentally destroying their dinner behind Kathryn McGuire's back then tries to eat what's left with serving utensils. It might not read great, but it took place before and is far funnier than Charlot eating his boot. As always with Keaton's features the first half pales in comparison to the second half (the shorts were sometimes the opposite), but once he gets going it's frantic gags. [9/4/05] ****