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1911 - Cucks of the Old West
16 Plays4 years ago
Lots of movies this time! Also what do you think of the alternate title A Morally Bankrupt Giving Tree? D.W. Griffith creates a lot of fodder for shady episode titles. We've got our introduction of Winsor McCay, some grand scale Italian and Russian historicals and mythologicals, and some steampunk that can take the place of the lost Aerial Anarchists! Listen along!
You can watch along with our video version of the episode here on Youtube!
You can check out our Instagram, Twitter and other social media crap here: http://linktr.ee/1w1y
And you can watch and form your own opinions from our 1911 Films Discussed playlist right here!
--- A Penultimate Méliès Check-in ---
Baron Munchausen’s Dream
The Diabolical Church Window
Silent Film Party Background Playlist coming soon?
--- D.W. Griffith Does More Civil War Nonsense And Also Some Not Awful Stuff ---
The Lonedale Operator
The Battle
Swords and Hearts
His Trust/His Trust Fulfilled
The Miser’s Heart
The Last Drop of Water
--- Alice Guy returns at Solax and Louis Feuillade takes her place at Pathé ---
Parson Sue
Starting Something
The Trust, or Battles For Money
The Defect
--- The Italian Epics ---
L’Inferno
Cris’s Haw Par Villa photos
The Fall of Troy
The Defense of Sevestopol (Not Italian)
Pinocchio
--- Potpourri ---
The Pirates of 1920
The Automatic Motorist
Animated Putty
Winsor McCay: The Famous Cartoonist o
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Transcript
Introduction and Year Focus
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to One Week One Year, a podcast where we watch and discuss a year of film history every week starting from 1895, the dawn of cinema, and this week is 1911. I'm one of your hosts, Chris Ellee. I'm a film projectionist, currently unemployed, and joining me as always is... I am Glenn Covell, a filmmaker. And... Somewhat employed. Yeah, yeah.
00:00:34
Speaker
I really gotta, like, you know, get the job. I mean, you know, unemployment's nice, but gotta get back in the biz in the industry, you know? Yeah. Gotta get back into that biz. So what's up, Glenn? What's been going on? I don't know. It's been, I can feel spring creeping in. Yeah. Yeah. It's been sunny. I've been reading more. I've been writing more.
00:01:02
Speaker
That's great.
Personal Anecdotes and Film Analysis
00:01:08
Speaker
I'm pretty pleased with this week because I got my first vaccine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:01:17
Speaker
It didn't hurt, really. And I didn't really have any bad symptoms from it. Though I got like a very like, I don't know how to phrase it, like a very like rough email, like right at the same time that I was like stepping in to get the vaccine. And so like it was hard for me to tell what was like vaccine symptoms and what was me just like, ugh.
00:01:47
Speaker
But, you know, whatever. But yeah, it's very exciting. Very exciting. I hope you get your vaccine soon, Glenn. Me too. Yeah. I mean, as soon as they let me, I will. Yeah.
00:02:04
Speaker
Well, anyway, we are a film history podcast, as we spoke about in the beginning. We're talking about all these ancient movies and looking through the vast treasure troves of the early 1900s to bring to you the quality and the analysis that you deserve. So if you're watching- Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff Goldblum. Oh, my God.
00:02:31
Speaker
If you're watching on YouTube right now, stay tuned because we will be playing the movies along while we talk about them. And if you are listening on the podcast or if you would like to watch them of your own accord, we'll have to cut off a lot of the movies because they're longer than the amount of time that we're talking about them. There's a playlist that is linked in the description of both the YouTube and the podcast, and you can watch the movies
00:02:58
Speaker
Right there. Beforehand, it's often with music. So that's good. They're all very old movies. They're all in public domain.
00:03:08
Speaker
Yeah. So don't sue us. Yeah. And don't give us weird emails, YouTube, because some music video also used public domain. Oh my God. What garbage. Yeah. I forget what it was. One of the recent uploads that I did, we had a public domain movie that we
00:03:31
Speaker
can do whatever we want with, and somebody used that same public domain movie in their documentary, and so we got flagged for using their documentary footage when we just really both used the same public domain footage. Garbage.
00:03:48
Speaker
Anyway, we like to start out every episode before we get into the... Yeah, by just complaining about everything. Oh my god. By giving ourselves a little context for the era of film that we're talking about. And so we'll listen to a little bit of the news from 1911. Glenn, would you take it away?
1911 Events and Industry Shifts
00:04:07
Speaker
The news of the year, 1911. Up first, the world of aviation. Charles W. Chappelle wins a medal at the first industrial aeroplane show.
00:04:18
Speaker
The only African-American who brought his own invented aeroplane. Last year, Eugene B. Eli was the first man to launch an aircraft from a ship, and this year he becomes the first man to land on one. The dawn of aerial combat. Bombs are dropped from an aeroplane in Libya during the Italia-Turkish War. And finally, the first air-mal flights take place on February 1911.
00:04:45
Speaker
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City kills 146. The da... brrr... The fire's deadly effects were exacerbated by untrusting and unscrupulous owners who locked the workers inside. The Colt M1911 pistol becomes the standard issue sidearm of the US Army, forever making it impossible to research things from 1911 without search results getting clogged up by gun guys.
00:05:14
Speaker
The Sherman Antitrust Act breaks up the giant standard oil, ending its monopoly and breaking it into 34 separate oil companies. The first Indianapolis 500 race is held. The winner had an average speed of 74.59 miles per hour. The nuclear meteorite crash lands in Egypt. On its surface, evidence of water on Mars. The Mona Lisa has been stolen from the Louvre.
00:05:39
Speaker
The thief Vincenzo Perugia keeps it in his apartment for two years before he's caught. The race to the South Pole concludes when Roald Amundsen's expedition makes ground. The Xinhai Revolution begins in China, soon to lead to the end of the final Chinese dynasty. As the revolution comes to a close at the end of the year, Sun Yat-sen is elected the Provisional President of the New Republic of China. Mary Pickford leaves a biograph for the greener pastures of the Independent Moving Pictures Company.
00:06:10
Speaker
Thank you, Glenn. You're welcome. Mary Pickford, yeah, she was the biograph girl, but now she's the IMP girl. She's an imp girl. I think she made a few movies with IMP this year, but I think they kind of only really survive in fragments or layers like one or something. I didn't watch it. Who cares about Mary Pickford?
00:06:40
Speaker
Although you do. You just got the Mary Pickford cocktail ingredients, right? I did. I had to buy some perhaps overpriced liqueur in order to make it. But yeah, it's a good cocktail. Which was the one that was overpriced? Like what's that? Luxardo liqueur, which is a cherry flavored thing. Can't you just like get some
00:07:07
Speaker
Maraschino juice and I mean like Maras Maraschino or Maraschino liqueur is its own thing. I guess I don't really know I I learned all of my cocktail and like bartending things from like bougie YouTube sites and so
00:07:25
Speaker
If I learn how to do anything, I learn to do it the most exacting way possible. Fair enough. Although there's plenty of times where it's like, you got to make this with this one brand of fry or something like that. I'm like, I want to use bourbon because I don't care. But when I hear talk about alcohol, we can talk about old, old movies.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah. Soon, alcohol will be banished. So we're not going to be able to do anything about that. We'll be banished and more popular than ever before. So after a terrible week last week where we couldn't start with our guy, and we had to start with the monster, DW Griffith, we can start with our guy again.
Georges Méliès' 1911 Films
00:08:16
Speaker
It's Georges Melies. Our boy Melies.
00:08:20
Speaker
This will be his penultimate year of films, which is sad. It is very sad. It's going to say bittersweet, but there's not even a lot of sweetness to it. No, especially because these are kind of just OK. I'm looking forward to it. I think some of the stuff next year will be a little more impressive and interesting. But the two that he made this year, or at least the two that survived, are Baron Munchausen's Dream and the Diabolical Church Window.
00:08:49
Speaker
Indeed. Not top tier malaise. Kind of, I would say middle of the road to lower tier malaise. Yeah. But it's nice to have his weirdness back in our lives. Absolutely. Movies are getting so serious these days. They really are. The more popular films from the 1910s seem like they're
00:09:18
Speaker
very dour, very serious. Yeah. And yeah, I appreciated Méliès' just like fast-paced, manic, weird kind of supernatural vibes that he always brings. Yeah. Yeah. He made both of these movies for Pate. This is, at this point, he has sold his star films and all of his assets to Pate, which will be his undoing, really.
00:09:46
Speaker
Uh, these types of movies that, you know, these kind of fairy movies that Melies was making, uh, kind of were just not popular at all by this point. And, uh, you know, Pate hired him for his clout, basically, but he's like, just nobody wanted his stuff anymore. Um, and, uh, I guess the one that we could talk about, or first is, um, Baron Munchausen's dream, which, uh,
00:10:17
Speaker
It's definitely, you know, it's definitely a Melies joint, but there are some supposed pâté corruptive influences on this one. So it's basically like a bunch of fun vignettes one after another. It's a classic Melies setup of somebody dreaming and weird stuff happening. Yeah, it's a nightmare film of like
00:10:46
Speaker
I mean, it's very, I think there's a couple of different titles of it. I mean, there's Baron Munchausen's Dream, The Hallucinations of Baron Munchausen, Monsieur Le Baron, Dying Too Well, which I think is my favorite one that he... Oh, I didn't see that one. He ate too much at dinner and now he's having a bad dream.
00:11:04
Speaker
Well, the reason there are so many different titles in English is because this one and no Méliès movies past this point were ever released in the US. Or were never released outside of France, so they never had official English translations. I think some of the vignettes have some cool things in them.
00:11:30
Speaker
the sort of corrupting influence, if I remember incorrectly, is when is the run time? It runs a little long for Meliese, maybe. It lags. I mean, I think Meliese like to keep the pace up and keep showing you new stuff. But this movie is basically like one dream vignette and then another one and then another one and then another one for like 10 minutes. And it gets a little stale.
00:11:54
Speaker
But I liked sort of the way that it introduces his dream world is that there's like a mirror in the – like a giant mirror behind his bed. And so initially, the dreams are kind of being presented from within the mirror. But it's not actually like a double exposure effect. It's like a stage that's behind the mirror because Baron Moonshine is
00:12:18
Speaker
I don't know what that was. Baron Muchausen is able to walk through the mirror into the dreams, which is so fun. Well, and also there's the bit where he gets up from his bed and he's looking at himself in the mirror. And so there's two actors who are playing the Baron, mirroring each other's movements, which is very cool. That's something that is still
00:12:45
Speaker
The effect of having a mirror on film with two actors on either side is still something that is occasionally used today.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah. Like in Magic Mike XXL, where they do that fake mirror routine at the very end of the film. Have you seen it? I haven't. I still haven't. I got to get to it. I was thinking of the deleted scene in Terminator 2, which is not a recent movie, but not as recent as Magic Mike XXL. No. We'll get to both of them, though. We will.
00:13:20
Speaker
This also, one of the vignettes is, I mean, we can't say this for sure until we watch next week's movies, but maybe his final moon face. There's a face in the moon with a gross long tongue that's like a tentacle that comes out of the nose. He had to step it up, you know? He had to escalate his moon face effects.
00:13:45
Speaker
And then it's kind of a fun effect. A tentacle just kind of bursts out of the nose of the moon and kind of swipes around and everything. And then it kind of fades into a trunk of an elephant for the next vignette. An elephant with reading glasses.
00:14:06
Speaker
It doesn't really have I think I think it's kind of interesting that it's called Baron Munchausen's dream because it doesn't as far as I can tell doesn't really have anything to do with the The stories associated with the Baron Munchausen character slash historical figure, right? It's kind of just they're just slapping that IP on there to get the
00:14:28
Speaker
to draw the crowd, I think. Which we've seen some of that kind of stuff before, like with Sherlock Holmes and I don't know. We've seen it, definitely. Have you seen the Terry Gilliam Baron Munchausen movie? A long time ago, yeah. I love it. I love it. It's so fun and wild. I mean, it would be, right? It's one of the most Terry Gilliam-esque Terry Gilliam movies. Yeah.
00:14:56
Speaker
Then the other one that he made this year was the Diabolical Church window, which was, I think, rediscovered pretty recently. This wasn't on the original Flicker Alley, Melea's box set. It was on the second one that they had to release with the newer discoveries a couple of years later.
00:15:20
Speaker
And this one is basically like the devil puts a wizard to sleep. And then he just plays pranks because it's a Melies movie. Classic George Melies setup. I think the devil puts the wizard puts a wizard to sleep and then plays pranks. Yeah, I mean, I read that this is a an incomplete version of it. But it felt
00:15:50
Speaker
Fairly complete. You know, it didn't feel like there were any glaring things where it's like, oh, that's something's missing here. Right. Yeah. You know, there's not much of a narrative to it. So it's nothing would really be missing from a narrative perspective. It's mostly like some some camera tricks, a lot of pyrotechnics.
00:16:12
Speaker
The classic Melies thing also of someone trying to grab or hug a pretty lady and then she disappears when he does it and then he grasps the air. Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot to say about these. They're not really narratives necessarily. They're just sort of setups for some fun and games.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, they're pretty simple, but you know, if you're putting on some goofy Melies, then they fit the goof quotient, you know? Once parties are a thing that happen again, I do feel like Melies trick films are a good thing to put on in the background. Oh yeah, oh yeah. We need to make like a great, like a great, like silent movie. Yeah. Yeah, background playlist. Oh my god. Yes.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, oh man that is that's something I miss of like going to someone's party and there's There's just a movie playing low in the background. Oh, yeah Yeah, so you don't if you don't want to talk to anyone you can just sit and watch the movie for a little while
00:17:27
Speaker
We all have – we all thought about parties so deeply in this time of no parties that we know now how to put together the greatest party. We have to have certain atmospheres here and there, a snack table. People don't think about – no, they always think about the snack table. Anyway. The great innovation we've come up with from a year of no parties is snacks on a table.
00:17:54
Speaker
I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm kind of the guy that sticks to the snack table. It's one of the safest places to be at a party. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Some movies that would not be good to play at parties are DW Griffith movies. Great transition and true words have never been said. This guy makes some
00:18:20
Speaker
I call this 1911 the year that DW graphics just doubles down.
00:18:26
Speaker
Yeah. On everything. Yeah. There's no turning back with him anymore. No. There's no more fun house robbery movies. There's no eagles picking up babies. He no longer has plausible deniability about his bigotry. Yeah. I mean, really the only deniability he has is that he made one movie that was about the union and not about the Confederate speaking.
00:18:57
Speaker
Uh, yeah. I have, uh, this week while, like, going through, well, Wikipedia to find movies, I have been waging a one-man war against dumb, incorrect, uh, ZW Griffith facts. Um.
00:19:16
Speaker
like things that he invented close-ups or continuity editing or cross-cutting or any of those things. It's, you know. DW Griffith has made some good movies, but I think that we owe it to film history to take away the warship of DW Griffith as this innovator and the man who invented cinema. I mean, I do think he has like innovative
00:19:46
Speaker
Filmmaking techniques that he's using but it's he didn't invent them like it's not yeah They're they're less groundbreaking more than it is just sort of like he's using them He's refining things and yeah, and yeah using more advanced techniques as more than just a parlor trick And he has much more of an interest in storytelling than a lot of people did when he started off too yeah, I also I mean watching some of these and like doing research about
00:20:18
Speaker
about the stuff that he's contributed to film language. Not to diminish his influence as a director, though I do love to diminish his influence as a director. I wonder sometimes how much the competent film language stuff in his movies is Billy Bitzer.
00:20:40
Speaker
who was also a director and was the main cinematographer for I think all of his movies or all of his main ones. That wouldn't necessarily account for the sort of like the notice of better editing of them or anything. I have no idea if there's any truth to that. I just want to take some credit away from him, I think. Well, since we're talking about
00:21:10
Speaker
We can get to the gross stuff in a minute, but since we're talking about apocryphal D.W. Griffith information, we could start with The Lonedale Operator, which is thankfully not a racist movie of his.
Critique of D.W. Griffith's Works
00:21:26
Speaker
It's a neutral film.
00:21:29
Speaker
But it's listed in certain places that's what did you say that was like it was either like at the first close-up or like There was a thing on and this is Wikipedia. So obviously this is just like some some person put this there they they had the release of the lone nail operator as a significant sort of advancement in film history because it was
00:21:53
Speaker
their words. I'm paraphrasing a bit, but it was something like the first successful close-up in a film.
00:22:01
Speaker
And first of all, what does that even mean? They tried, but they failed. It's like, we had a close up. I don't know. We were too far away. And it's like, no. Nothing about that is true. I mean, I try to think about it very specifically because there is a somewhat unusual for this time punch into a close up to show what someone is holding.
00:22:31
Speaker
Um, that is sort of a big reveal in the movie that, um, we have seen that before, but it's well done here. It is. Yeah. And I think that's why it kind of sticks out as like, Ooh, this is new. Um, and who hadn't done the insane due diligence that we have been doing watching damn near everything due diligence, the podcast. Um, but yeah, I mean, I.
00:22:56
Speaker
I want to say that like, uh, what's his name? Um, God damn it. Now I'm blanking. Um, David work Griffith, uh, George Albert Smith had like punch ins to close ups to show things and to reveal things. Not often. Um, yeah. Yeah. Or probably not quite as elegant as it's used here, but it's like that.
00:23:25
Speaker
sort of mechanical function of cutting to a close-up of something to reveal more information is not a new thing. Yeah. I'll have to search through my notes from previous weeks, because I know on a few movies I wrote a punch-in with lots of all caps and lots of exclamation points. Yeah, briefly, this movie is
00:23:50
Speaker
a woman takes over. It's a loose remake of The Lonely Villa. Yeah, in some ways. In some ways. It definitely involves some robbers trying to get in a door. And then that's actually quite true. I'll say how. So there's a woman who is
00:24:16
Speaker
the daughter of an operator of a train station. And he is, I don't know, sick? Was he? Or just getting old, basically? And he hands over the operation of the train station to her.
00:24:30
Speaker
And they find out that there is a delivery on a train coming up of some payroll money for a company, big money bags. And so they're trying to make the accommodations for the delivery of the money. But there are some no good routine tutors who are trying to track down the train and steal the money.
00:24:58
Speaker
As the money is delivered, they basically hold her up inside of the train station. And she locks herself in her office. And so the similarity with the loan deal operator is that it's these guys trying to get into the office and her using a telegram instead of a telephone to send out for help.
00:25:26
Speaker
which I thought was actually kind of fun because
00:25:31
Speaker
I don't know if I've seen a telegram portrayed in movies yet, and she's really telegramming with emotion. You can see that she's like, ah, ah, ah, ah, you know, as she's telegramming. And something I was wondering was that if you could actually, it shows what she said later in a card, but I was wondering if you would actually be able to see what she's telegramming. Oh, you tried? No, no, I'm just, I'm shaking my head no, because
00:26:01
Speaker
I very much doubt that they took the time to accurately have her like, you know, telegraph out the correct Morse code in that scene. Yeah. That'd be nice though. I mean, it'd be like a good Easter egg for people that can understand Morse code. Yeah.
00:26:21
Speaker
But yeah, there's like a lot of parallel action happening in this movie. There's the people breaking in. There's her in the station. There are people on the train. There are cops in waiting. There's the person receiving the telegram. All sorts of stuff happening together that fits quite well. Apparently, there's over 100 cuts in this movie. I saw that being noted somewhere. I don't know if it's especially a lot, or I mean, it kind of seems like a lot. But they flowed so well that I actually didn't
00:26:51
Speaker
notice how many cuts there were in this movie until it was pointed out. And as the thieves break in,
00:27:01
Speaker
They hold her at gunpoint, but then she pulls a gun on them. And so there's a bit of a standoff and they are not going to fire on her, basically, because she's holding out the gun. And there is a blue tint that's indicating that the lights are out in the room. Oh, yeah. That was good. I actually noticed that in a couple movies this year that I think like a
00:27:29
Speaker
a piece of cinematic language that's developing is blue light means it's dark, like a blue tint means it's dark out like nighttime or the lights are off.
00:27:40
Speaker
Eventually, her telegraph goes through and the cops come at just the right moment and get the bad guys. It is revealed the whole time that in the dark, she did not actually have a gun. She had a wrench that she held up and made it look like a gun. That is the punch in there, is a close-up on the wrench so you can go, oh, it was a wrench the whole time.
00:28:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I also like how once that is revealed, the lead character and the cops all just laugh at the dumb robbers as they're taken away. Yeah, I mean, I think this was better than the Lonely Villa.
00:28:34
Speaker
it feels a bit more refined. I think the editing in it is pretty, it's very good for this time period.
00:28:44
Speaker
But at the same time, it is sort of like, okay, another woman trapped in a room while cross-cutting with people coming to help her get out of it. At this point, DW is still making 50, 100 movies a year or something like that. A lot of them are the same movies. He's repeating the same plots a lot.
00:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how you could keep that up if you weren't. Yeah, turns out the reason he made so many movies is because he was making the same one a bunch of times. Including ones about the Civil War. Yeah, a lot of those. We could kind of talk about them broadly, I guess, the Civil War movies. Once again, more Civil War movies.
00:29:40
Speaker
particularly the battle swords and hearts and what you call the trust I mean the trust isn't about the war itself but no but it is yeah it involves yeah war the battle I just want to touch on really briefly because it is from the Union's perspective only which is which is unique
00:30:06
Speaker
It features a DW Griffith theme of deserters in war. Basically, it's this big battle scene. The scope of the battle is actually pretty impressive. You're seeing all of this chaos happening.
00:30:26
Speaker
It's zooming into a bunch of smaller vignettes that are happening around the battle. There's a deserter and there's features happening in houses around where that's happening. My mom actually walked in while I was watching this one and having seen a lot of the older movies and she was saying that it looked really impressive considering what she'd seen.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think it does. I think a lot of the battle stuff is well staged and it's well shot. And I think it makes the most out of how many extras they have. They can't do these enormous sweeping shots of people going over hills and things. But it's framed in such a way that it maximizes the sort of
00:31:23
Speaker
we get soldiers in the foreground and then smoke going through the middle of a shot and then people in the background. It's well- Yeah. They still have probably a couple dozen extras. Yeah.
00:31:35
Speaker
that really fills out the scenes. The basic thing of it is that there's a union group that's getting attacked and they are trying to hold off the Confederates until reinforcements can come and there's all this other stuff happening at the same time. It had opening credits also, which is not unheard of, but it's still kind of a rarity, I think.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah. I swear I can tell. It's happened on some other DW movies, but yeah. I guess it's starting to become more common, I think. And another one is Swords and Hearts, which also includes some of the themes. Another thing that he touches on a lot of
00:32:32
Speaker
a woman taking men's place in the war. The other time, it was in house with closed shutters. It was due to cowardice. But in this one, basically, there's a woman who's in love with this Confederate guy, and she sees that he's about to get ambushed by the evil unionists.
00:33:00
Speaker
So she dresses up as him and rides on his horse and rides away to pull them away from him. And yeah, this one, yeah, it was also a love triangle, which is another big DW thing. Yeah, he loves those.
00:33:20
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, like I said, with like the doubling down thing, I feel like there, I noticed so many more things where it's like, okay, like this is something he's just going to put in every movie now. Yeah. Um. Not looking forward. No. There is, uh, and I can say one nice thing about this one, there is a nice sort of reveal of
00:33:44
Speaker
someone is shot and they sort of react to it and then we there's kind of a reveal of the blood that they've been wounded but then it doesn't actually go anywhere it doesn't ever come back yeah it's yeah it's just like oh she's shot but she's okay yeah um yeah didn't didn't care for this one so much yeah um and then there was another one his trust which is a two-parter and is disgusting
00:34:13
Speaker
Absolutely revolting difficult to watch like one of the first we watched I think on the podcast where I was like I don't want to watch this like this is yeah, this is really uncomfortable and I'm just so morally opposed to pretty much everything happening on screen and Even like the way it's being it's being shown on screen. It's I hate it
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah. The full title of this is, if you want to understand why we are revolted, is His Trust, The Faithful Devotion and Self-Sacrifice of an Old Negro Servant. Servant is, uh, that's an interesting choice of words there, DW. Oh, that's true. That's some revisionist bullshit right there. Oh, man. And so it's like this classic, like, you know,
00:35:05
Speaker
this classic civil war or Confederate fiction of the slaves who, you know, were really cared about the family and they were a member of the family and they were honorable and they were like white people, but also still they sleep on the ground outside even though they sacrifice all of their money and life to the daughter of a
00:35:34
Speaker
Confederate soldier who dies is the idea. So it's just about this wonderful Negro who loves the family that he is enslaved to so much. The note I have for this movie is this is the 1911 equivalent of those news stories that are like
00:35:59
Speaker
Guy takes eighth job to pay for the orphan melting machine to be turned off. And it's like, that's not heartwarming. Yeah. Like, this isn't a heartwarming story. Like, this is just terrible. Like, nothing that's happening in the story is remotely heartwarming. Even though it is, you can tell watching it that it's intended to be that way. Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:25
Speaker
I mean, it's respecting Black people in only the barest bones way of respecting them for how good they are being slaves. What I wrote for this was the giving tree without the message.
00:36:44
Speaker
Because this whole 30 minutes is this guy sacrificing his own meager amounts of money that he has and all of his energy and time and care for this kid, who becomes sort of a surrogate kid to him, who is white.
00:37:06
Speaker
after after the Civil War and he has been freed also yeah yeah he can be free but he chooses to just give his life to his owners
00:37:19
Speaker
And at the end, it's this kind of somber thing of him kind of reflecting on his service and how good he was and then dying, possibly. Like, he just kind of lays down and maybe he just dies because he's old at that point.
00:37:38
Speaker
It's horrible. I hate it. The giving tree without the message, I think, is the most apt description of this. It's as if at the end of the giving tree, you're like, oh yeah, great. The tree is gone. Everything worked out. That was a good tree. That tree gave everything. Yeah. So good on the tree. Yeah, terrible.
00:38:03
Speaker
If you're watching every movie, don't watch those because they're bad. He did also make DW, did make one movie that I genuinely did enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. He managed it. I'm assuming you're talking about the miser's heart. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this one.
00:38:33
Speaker
I mean, it is DW once again sort of weaponizing cute children in order to get the audience on his side.
00:38:44
Speaker
Which I mean, like- That's a little, that's a little, that's a little, uh, pessimistic, maybe. I mean, that's the thing, it's like, Pixar does the same thing. It's, it works very well. Yeah. You know? Um, and, yeah, I mean, I was thinking, I was like, damn it, this one, this one is charming. Like, this one I do like. Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, there's no race stuff in this. Uh, even, even though it's about a miser, he's not, he's not coded that way, so. Right, yeah.
00:39:13
Speaker
Oh, this one, there's like a poor family, and they have a miser who lives upstairs, who has a lot of money, who takes pity on them, and it is nice to them. And there's also a parallel story of a thief named Jules who... Oh, his name is Jules! I don't know if I picked up on that.
00:39:39
Speaker
I don't think I picked up on it until I just said it now. Oh. And he fixes to... Oh, what does he do? He's just gotten out of prison, but he's kind of on the run because he's stealing food for himself. Yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
This also is the first, I think, credited film role of Lionel Barrymore. Yep. Of the Barrymore acting, I don't know, dominion. Yeah. So Jules the thief is the great uncle of Drew Barrymore. Yeah. What are they? The dynasty. That's what it is. The acting dynasty of the Barrymores. We've got the Coppolas and the Barrymores. Yeah.
00:40:34
Speaker
So that's significant. I think he also appears in the battle, but he wasn't credited in that one. Yeah, so he ends up kind of trying to sleep on the roof of the building that the other two characters live in, and the kid is, you know,
00:40:57
Speaker
kind of starving and she sees that some of the food that he stole and she kind of inches up to him and and he ends up sharing his food with her which is actually a really cute moment like I thought it was it was nice and they have they have like they have some fun little chemistry and they look very they look very nice together um
00:41:16
Speaker
The next thing that happens is some other thieves come up, some very debonair thieves who are fixing to rob the miser. They hold him up in his room as they're trying to break into his safe. A lot of this is him trying to get the safe combination out of him and him refusing to open it.
00:41:44
Speaker
And eventually they grab a hold of the kid and they start using her as a threat to tell them to open the safe. They'll drop the kid out the window. Which they threatened to do by holding the kid out of the window. And the way that they filmed this is they held a kid out of window.
00:42:08
Speaker
It was the rough and tumble days of early film. I was like, making this movie must have broken a few laws, even in 1911, I feel like. I would hope. I don't know. And a very diabolical twist, because he's still like, you're not going to drop her. It's not going to happen, whatever. I can't give away my precious money, is that she's being held out on a rope.
00:42:35
Speaker
and they put a candle under the rope and there's a close-up of the candle burning the rope. So she's getting closer and closer to falling like six stories down the building. I guess it's actually not like the roof roof. It's kind of like a platform that's below the roof that Jules is lying down on and making his camp on, basically.
00:43:03
Speaker
And so she is able to see her buddy Jules, and she throws, what is it, her shoe, or she throws something down to get his attention. He realizes that...
00:43:14
Speaker
that his little buddy is hanging from the window about to die. And so he rushes to go get the cops to go and help him. But he – the cops don't believe him because they told him to get out – yeah, he's a thief they don't like and they told him to get out of town. And now he's back here telling them tall tales, you know.
00:43:42
Speaker
They don't believe him. They try and lock him up again. Yeah. And he has to plead to the chief of police slash judge. Yeah. And then after they send him away, the people go like, what was that he was talking about? There's a child in danger. Maybe we should check that out. I guess that's our job or whatever.
00:44:08
Speaker
Yeah, and this is another instance of good use of intercutting between these parallel things happening. The cops eventually do, I don't know if they let him out first and then they all run to the... He leads them to the building. Yeah. But they're taking their sweet old time until they actually see the kid and they're like, oh, he wasn't kidding.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, and then they save the day and the end. And then the miser shares all his money with the poor family living downstairs and buys them all nice furniture and food. Yes. So some more class stuff from DW, which is nice to see because it's not race stuff. And it's a fun little movie. Yeah. It was one of his only movies that didn't feel like a – that didn't feel derivative of any of his earlier stuff.
00:45:10
Speaker
And I think it fits the sort of one real, roughly 15 minute running time really well. Yeah. It's paced well. It doesn't feel like it's lagging. It's moving along. It tells a good, complete story with multiple threads. Indeed.
00:45:35
Speaker
One last DW movie that we can talk about is The Last Drop of Water, which is a Western that he made. It was before the time that the words based on a true story were invented. It is suggested by the lines to Sir Philip Sidney, who upon the field of blood dying gave The Last Drop of Water for the sake of brotherhood.
00:46:04
Speaker
Never mind that, spoilers. Just right up front. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. I guess you're kind of anticipating it, the whole movie.
00:46:12
Speaker
Uh, it's another love triangle movie. It's a love triangle in the old West. And, um, it is, uh, not just a love triangle, but it's like a, a kind of like nice guy slash like a whole dynamic. Uh, yeah, time is a flat circle there. Every, every, everybody is like, so, so DW Griffith is like,
00:46:40
Speaker
I'm a nice guy." Yeah, so it opens with the nice guy trying to court a lady and then the drunkard kind of swagger guy shows up and he's scared off.
00:47:00
Speaker
And this, this is another in, uh, not just a love triangle, but also like DW's obsession with cuckoldry. Because, because this, this guy is like, he just seems very cucked, you know? Yeah. Well, it's, it's funny cause I think there is that element in a lot of his other movies of, of a love triangle and of kind of a similar dynamic to this, but this one is, is definitely the most like,
00:47:30
Speaker
Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess in a love triangle, there's often going to be a loser, but in this one, he really acts like a loser.
00:47:46
Speaker
It's called The Last Drop of Water because the drunkard and the woman end up getting married and the nice guy is just kind of sitting there waiting in the wings. They're out on stage coaches and they're running out of water and they're besieged by Native Americans. They are trying to go and find a stream to get some more water.
00:48:14
Speaker
and the drunkard and the nice guy go out together and they're kind of out in the heat and basically they're starting to die and the nice guy collapses and the drunkard has a
00:48:33
Speaker
It's a change of heart to not be a jerk, and he gives the last bit of water to the nice guy who sips it and is revived, and then the bad guy dies. Who is established is like a very bad dude. Yes, he is a very bad dude.
00:48:56
Speaker
Uh, like a kind of abusive drunk husband. There's a lot, there's so many movies about alcoholism in this time. I guess it was, you know, it was, it was on the mind, you know? Yeah. I mean, I guess I can see maybe, yeah, maybe booze was just like, yeah. Hot topic considering that prohibition was around the corner. Yeah. I mean, the, they were.
00:49:19
Speaker
It's definitely like, you know, it was in the air, I think. And you can see that in the films from this time period, for sure.
00:49:28
Speaker
One other thing about this movie is that it is a white hat and black hat in the west, except that the white hat and black hat are switched, who is the good guy and who's the bad guy. I don't know if that dynamic was simply to distinguish the two of them visually, and they hadn't come up with the whole visual language of it yet, but it was kind of interesting that we were seeing it there in a western.
00:49:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. This also is a Western that was shot. I'm not sure exactly where it shot if it was California or somewhere else, but it's it's shot in a real desert, which certainly helps a lot. Yeah, lots of extras and props, which are good. They are no longer doing the New Jersey Western as they were known. Yeah, it's got some it's got some nice kind of Western production value to it. Yeah.
00:50:26
Speaker
Well, I mean, speaking of New Jersey Westerns, Elise Guy has started Solax, her film company.
Innovative Film Companies and Directors
00:50:36
Speaker
Her American film company. Yup, yup. And she's got it outfitted in New Jersey. And one of the earlier movies that she made for that film company is Parson Sue, which was a Western.
00:50:49
Speaker
Uh, I, I really enjoyed this one. I mean, it is unfortunately the entire like climax, like third act of the movie is lost. Yeah. And so it kind of just, there's just a title card that explains like how everything is wrapped up and you're like, Oh, we don't actually get to see any of this. We don't get to see the big fight at the end. Pucci went to the moon and lived there forever. Yeah. His friends went away.
00:51:13
Speaker
It's also so, so silly. This is like, even for an Elise Gee movie, like she makes a lot of very silly movies. I feel like this one is, there's just a, like a gleeful silliness to the whole thing that I really respond to. She has a lot of fun with her movies. Yeah. This movie has a lot of like crowd scenes.
00:51:39
Speaker
And it reminded me of a thing that the video essay editor for my painting pointed out, which is when you put a bunch of people in a shot, any emotion feels really big. And I think that, I thought about that a lot watching this movie of how like, I'm thinking of a specific example now.
00:52:05
Speaker
But there's, there's, there's a lot of scenes in, in like a saloon or, or a shop where someone will react to something. Um, and rather than just having one person react to it, we get to see a whole crowd kind of react to it. Um, and as it makes, it makes everything feel very like impactful. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it, but often in the goofy way, I mean, this is like a.
00:52:30
Speaker
Like a hammy movie. It's so hammy and goofy. Yeah. I didn't know the term parson before, but it's like somebody affiliated with religion, basically. So she comes to like an outlaw town. What would you call it? A frontier town? A frontier town. Yeah. She comes to a frontier town full of
00:52:58
Speaker
gruff men as a clergy member and she tries to convert all of them. And she puts up a sign next to the water trough that says cleanliness is next to godliness. And all of these dirty Western men are like, oh man, we got to impress this lady.
00:53:23
Speaker
So they're all like getting nice and so there's just like a gaggle of dudes like trying to out Jesus each other to impress Parson Sue. And it kind of it does the thing that Aliski loves to do which is kind of to play with like gender roles a little bit and kind of like traditional
00:53:49
Speaker
ideas of like masculinity and femininity. And so, yeah, there's like a whole scene of all the very macho cowboys who are all just like bathing themselves with soap and water out in the middle of town. It's just in a very goofy way that you would not immediately think of when you're like, oh, yeah, a bunch of
00:54:16
Speaker
Root and toot and we're saying root and toot in this episode a lot. It's a good adjective. It really is. We got to bring it back. There is a specific character in this maybe that I wonder if is intended to be.
00:54:35
Speaker
like the gay cowboy or if it's just because Aliski is French. And I feel like that that has come out a lot in her movies where I can't tell if it's intentional or not. Or if it's just European. Yeah, exactly. If so, that feels significant, though. Yeah, I didn't actually notice a gay cowboy. There's one cowboy specifically that
00:55:01
Speaker
is like very clearly wearing makeup, which in 1900s and 1910s, maybe is not unusual. But just one character where he sticks out is having like very distinctive makeup, I guess. And there's a scene in the beginning where I think he might supposed to be, it might be like he's flirting with another man, but I'm not entirely sure.
00:55:32
Speaker
Um, that was, that was how I read it anyway. Yeah. I wonder if, um, homosexuality was as, um, if the, the, the hate against it was as established back then. I feel like I think in the U S it was for sure. I don't know about Europe or France specifically.
00:55:59
Speaker
This is another love triangle here because there are two primary suitors, and the one who loses is named Sleeky Sam, which I love.
00:56:15
Speaker
When he- when he- when Sleepy Sam is rejected, he swears revenge and, uh, and, you know, kidnappings and- and hijinks. Yeah, well, he swears revenge by trying to kidnap Pars and Sue, and then the other suitor, um, I think makes- I think- I'm pretty sure
00:56:37
Speaker
Most of this happens off screen, so I might be misremembering the details somewhat, because it's just a single title card that explains most of this. But the other suitor who's this main cowboy guy is set up as he's going to go rescue her, and then just immediately is shot and taken out of the picture. And so then the rest of the town has to
00:57:05
Speaker
band together to rescue Parson Sue. And that too is like a cool reversal of like, I feel like Western story tropes haven't really been as established as I would think they would be later. Like this is early enough in film history that it's like, ah, Western's gonna be whatever.
00:57:29
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose so. I know Westerns are really popular at this point, but I guess everybody's playing by their own book. But Aliski is already just being like, nah, I'm doing it my own way. Yeah. That's something great about her. She really bucks a lot of trends in ways that are interesting.
00:57:49
Speaker
And it makes her movies really, I think, really interesting and refreshing to watch because so many other movies from this time period are very samey and very kind of stick to certain traditions where she's just like, I don't give a shit, I'm doing whatever.
00:58:11
Speaker
Do you want to talk about starting something or is it too baffling? I don't know what to say, but other than I'm baffled. It's just really weird. Yeah. I think the performances in it are very funny, especially the police officer who shows up. The physical acting in it is really, really good.
00:58:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's real goofy. It's a lot of people making silly faces because they think they're hypnotized. Or no, no. They think they're poisoned. They think they're poisoned. And they have to do a conga line in order to not be poisoned anymore? I don't know. Should we talk about it? I don't know.
00:59:03
Speaker
It's set in a room where a bunch of, very inexplicably, there's a bunch of women's lib stuff, like accoutrement, hanging around. Like, suffrage signs and things. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, signs like vote for women, a woman for our new president, and a down with man.
00:59:28
Speaker
And so, like, it's completely immaterial to the story itself, but it's, like, set in, like, a suffragette's office, I guess. Yeah. And, uh, there is, uh... Oh, how does this whole thing start with the hypnotism? It's... It's so weird. It is funny, though, because, like, watching this movie, I was like, is there...
00:59:56
Speaker
some contemporary political subtext that I'm not getting? Is this a satire of something that I just don't understand? Right. A lot of this movie is really inexplicable.
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a man named Jones who walks in who has a drinking problem, and another person, she comes up with the idea to help him with his drinking problem by hypnotizing him into thinking alcohol is poison. And she puts a little poison symbol on the bottle to really sell the illusion.
01:00:37
Speaker
ends up drinking it and thinking he's poisoned after he was hypnotized and a succeeding group of people all not not being hypnotized but being being under they walk in and drink from the bottle and then Jones comes back in after he's hopping around like acting
01:01:01
Speaker
wild because he's like, oh, I'm poisoned. I'm holding my stomach. I'm jumping around. And then so they start thinking they're poison and it just begins a conga line of people who are jumping around and making silly faces because they think they're poisoned. And then they find out they're not. That's the movie. That is very strange. Yeah, it is rather baffling.
01:01:30
Speaker
I definitely got the impression from it that there is some sort of greater sort of subtext to it that I'm just not picking up on. But what that is, I don't know. There were a couple of other movies that survived from Elise Guy at this time, but they were only just restored recently.
01:01:53
Speaker
They're on this pioneers of women filmmakers box set and I was not able to grab them in time so we weren't able to watch them. They are not available online anywhere. As far as I can tell you can only watch them in a box set. But it looks like a good box set. It comes with some essays and stuff.
01:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, it comes with a lot of stuff. Yeah. We could move on to... Our sponsor for the episode. Aquino Lorber. I mean, honestly, that would make a lot of sense if Aquino were to sponsor us, for any sponsor. Yeah.
01:02:33
Speaker
talk about and link to a lot of uploaded on YouTube, Keynote property. Anyway. With all of the getting sent into a mattress film, we could, you know, Casper Mattresses, something like that. Oh, true. That would be funny. I feel like we've made that joke already.
01:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, we have such a short memory for this podcast. Okay. Why don't you pronounce it for me? Her understudies name, because we just, Louis Fusillage. Louis? Fuyade. Fuyade. Yeah. All of this Fuyade. We really need to learn French. Honestly, if I'm really trying to go hard for this podcast, I should just learn French.
01:03:20
Speaker
Yeah. Louis Fouyard made a couple of films this year, but my favorite was The Trust or Battles for Money. This might be my favorite of the year. I'm not sure. Even though it is French, it does feel like it's also pretty relevant to the time in the US in 1911.
01:03:45
Speaker
Well, I mean, I would make a lot of comparisons to A Corner in Wheat. It's A Corner in Rubber, it's this movie, with more, like, intrigue. It's that, I think, with a little bit of... What was it, like, the white slave trade? How so? Just with the, like, the kidnappings and the... Like you said, there's a lot of intrigue. There's a lot of... Yeah.
01:04:13
Speaker
like backstabbing and and sneaking around and like plots and yeah yeah it's pretty plot heavy it's only 25 minutes long and a lot a lot happens in it um it uh i yeah it makes sense that you would be into this one glenn because it does seem like a kind of proto noir crime film in some ways yeah yeah it definitely feels that way um it also just has some um
01:04:42
Speaker
some fun language in it, at least in the translation of the intertitles. There are some dastardly businessmen who are the villains who are referred to as businessmen without scruple, which is great. I'm going to have to start using that as an insult. You are without scruples, sir. No scruples found.
01:05:12
Speaker
um and they they hire well there's there's a uh i guess sort of a scientist who discovers a way a formula for artificial rubber yep um and he is returning from abroad to um
01:05:31
Speaker
on his rubber fact-finding mission. Yes. And the rubber barons find out about this and want to put a stop to it because it's going to put them into business. And so they hire a private detective.
01:05:47
Speaker
to do their dirty work. Yep. And I mean, I don't know if I want to go through like all, there's a lot of plot to get through. So I don't know if we necessarily need to go through the entire thing. But I mean, the important part is that the movie ends up with
01:06:10
Speaker
The good business people who want to make the artificial rubber and the bad business people, the rubber barons, both end up hiring the same private detective. One to kidnap the scientist, one to protect him. And so the private detective being a capitalist ends up kidnapping him and bringing him to the caverns beneath the rubber baron's cliff house.
01:06:39
Speaker
which, ah, what a lovely sentence that is. I mean, if you're gonna own a cliff house, you gotta get one with a cavern underneath. Oh, absolutely. That's 100% true. It's the villainous bat cave, basically. Yeah.
01:06:58
Speaker
My favorite part of the scene actually is how the rubber barons – not robber barons, by the way, rubber barons – they're wearing their tuxes and top hats inside of this cave. And as the guy comes in to disguise their identities, they put on these big
01:07:20
Speaker
these big kind of, I don't know, the masks. It's a black mask that you put over your eyes. And so it's like such a look, you know? They look ridiculous.
01:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking that like the PI, so what ends up happening is they're trying to like kidnap this guy and extort him to give them the recipe for the artificial rubber. The formula. Yeah, the formula. If this movie was made today, it would 100% be an algorithm. Oh my god. Gross.
01:08:09
Speaker
you know, they say, like, we're not trying to hurt you, we're, like, offer it, even though we're holding you at gunpoint, we're going to give you 50,000 francs if you give us the recipe, the formula for the artificial rubber. And he's like, well, I guess I have no choice. And so he, they offer him a pen, and he goes like, oh, no, no, I've got one. And so he writes it down on the paper, and they're like, you know what?
01:08:33
Speaker
Thanks a lot. Here's your check. See you later, guy." And so they put a blindfold back on the scientist and walk him out of the cave. And as soon as he's made his exit, they realized that the pen was disappearing ink. And so they thought they had the formula, but it is gone. He's swindled them. Yeah. I love, too, when that happens, the private detective, he's been sort of like,
01:09:02
Speaker
One of the main villains from this whole thing, you know, like the businessmen are all freaking out and his response is kind of like, if there was dialogue, it'd be like, all right, that was pretty cool. Like, I'll give you that. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. I don't know if this was textual, but because the PI got hired by both parties, right, my thought was that maybe he was doing a Yojimbo kind of thing.
01:09:32
Speaker
where he was playing them against each other. And this was never shown in the movie, but what if he gave the scientist the disappearing ink pen, right? So he was able to bring the scientist to one party, but then also fulfill his obligation to the other party and get paid by both, right? That would make the movie even better if that had been... After the reveal of the disappearing ink, we found out that that was what had happened. Yeah.
01:10:01
Speaker
Man. I want to believe that. This movie is ripe for a remake, I think. Yeah, yeah, it'd be fun. Once we can get together, I think it would be a lot of fun if we, like, did some... Some modern retellings of these?
01:10:15
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be so fun. Especially the ones that wouldn't require Legend of a Ghost levels of money. This one could be pretty cheap to make. We could just throw some sheets on some cars and make Legend of a Ghost light some fires in a cave. Fuyad made, or we watched two other Fuyad movies from this year, which are, I don't know if we have as much to say about those. Not really.
01:10:44
Speaker
He also made a movie called The Defect, which has some good messaging to it, I think. But it is way too long. Yeah. If only it were shorter. I think it would have been really, really strong if it had been cut down and it had been more concise. Yeah. But yeah, it just it drags a lot.
01:11:10
Speaker
But it does reveal the sort of contemporary, I guess, prejudice against people who work in dance halls. Yeah, I don't know what that implies exactly. I mean, I get the impression it's sort of like a loosely veiled
01:11:35
Speaker
You know, euphemism for, um, like prostitution, if not prostitution, then like, um, what's the word I'm thinking of? The like old timey stripping burlesque. Yeah. Yeah. I know that's not really what burlesque is, but, um,
01:11:54
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, it does contextualize that in that way. It's about a, quote, waitress in a brasserie, which is a French restaurant, which I didn't know, in the Latin Quarter, where loose women congregate, unquote. And, yeah, so briefly, it's about a customer sitting down, seeing her, seeing promise in her, and
01:12:22
Speaker
giving her a job to leave this place that she works and she ends up kind of working as this she ends up taking over the position from him at this like kind of charity basically and she becomes this like a saint that as they're called like she's called a saint because she does all this wonderful charity and then her her ex comes into the picture and
01:12:52
Speaker
and tries to get hired at her charity or like work for her or something or just reconnect with her in some way and she rejects him and so he writes an angry letter that
01:13:08
Speaker
tells the world that she used to work in a dance hall. And this is so shameful that she's kicked out. No one respects her anymore. And she loses her job. She's laughed out of any new job that she tries to get. And she considers jumping out of a window. And then in a title card in the end, she goes like, it explains that she
01:13:31
Speaker
found some new opportunities for doing the same kind of charity work in the Far East, and she goes there instead. It's got stuff to say about sexism and the way that women are treated in their lines of work.
01:13:50
Speaker
you know, garbage-y men blackmailing people. In ways that, sadly, still feel somewhat relevant. Sure, yeah. But imagine how tight and great that would have been in a one real film instead of like a three or four real film. Yeah, yeah. But still, like, I do appreciate Fuyad, you know, injecting his, his,
01:14:16
Speaker
social commentary into these kind of more pulpy, lurid stories. This one's much less lurid than the trust is. Which, again, is also another thing that makes it less entertaining to watch. What's next?
01:14:44
Speaker
Well, speaking of long movies, we could talk about the Italian epics as they're beginning to spring up this year. Yeah, I mean, we have the first Italian feature film. Yeah, and the earliest surviving intact feature film. Yeah, very significant, I guess.
01:15:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it is inferno. Yeah. Or an adaptation of Dante's inferno. Yeah. Um, yeah, I didn't, I didn't love it. Um, I don't, I don't necessarily think it needs to need needed to be a feature. Um,
01:15:33
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, you can tell a lot of a lot of work went into this one and it it it does feel I think it took two years to shoot this movie. Yeah. And it feels it feels big, you know, like it feels. The scale of it definitely does feel on
01:15:56
Speaker
on a, not necessarily bigger than other movies that we've seen, but I think the length combined with just what they're putting on screen does give it this, the feeling of an epic, which is cool. Yeah. Yeah. Um, this is, I mean, this is based on Dante's Inferno. I haven't read the book, but- Neither have I. Basically, um, the reason why Glendon love it
01:16:20
Speaker
is because this is pretty weak from like a structure and storytelling perspective, even though I think visually and vibe-wise it's really cool. Because it's how long? It's an hour and 10 minutes long. And the movie is basically
01:16:40
Speaker
Virgil takes Dante into the Inferno, shows him one thing, shows him another thing, and another thing, and then repeat for an hour and ten minutes.
01:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's very light on structure and it's not like super challenging in any or adventurous in any way on that front. But I actually I think if it weren't this movie, I would be incredibly bored by it. But the fact that it is so like spooky and and like dark and grim.
01:17:15
Speaker
Uh, I mean, it is based on Dante's Inferno. I, I enjoyed it a lot. It's like, it's a, it's a vibe watching this movie. This would be one that would be good to have on the background of a party. Yeah, that is true. Um, it, yeah, it's, it's, it's mostly vibe and it does, it does create some really wild imagery and just put some stuff on screen that you're like, Oh, damn, I didn't expect this. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a lot of darkness for.
01:17:46
Speaker
Something of this era too like like grim dark theming and everything yeah, like a lot of He's a lot of he uses both Actual locations and some some sets and sort of some combinations of the two and some of the set work is really elaborate and Yeah, and cool. It's full of smoke and and like
01:18:14
Speaker
Spooky like rock formations and things. Yeah, I mean it's trying to like it does a good job creating an image of hell in front of you Yeah And nothing at towards the beginning You know, it's it's less surreal and it's less sort of hellish and it's a bit more just sort of like I was just some people out in a field like this isn't that this isn't that crazy and then as he as he descends the you know the layers and
01:18:44
Speaker
Um, it, it gets like more and more, you're like, Oh, okay. I see where this movie is going now. Yeah. Yeah. Um, this, I mean, I know this is, this isn't super relevant, relevant, but I went to this, um, last year, just before the shutdown, I went to Singapore and there is this place in Singapore called the Hawpar Villa, which is a theme park that was, do you know the like tiger bomb ointment?
01:19:13
Speaker
Um, it's like, uh, it's like this kind of just ointment that you could put on and like basically the made from real tigers. Uh, yes, sure. Uh, but the family that, um, that put it together or, or, or that invented it, they're like super Buddhist, right? And so they made this, um, this like Chinese mythology and history slash like Buddhism education theme park and the most famous section of their theme park.
01:19:42
Speaker
is called The Ten Circles of Hell, which is apparently like basically every kid in Singapore has a memory of being scarred by going to this exhibit at some point in their childhood. Because it's describing just all of the various tortures that you'll go through for different reasons in Buddhist hell. Oh, I remember I believe I've seen pictures that you've shown me.
01:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's so cool, but it's like very elaborate. It's like, oh, for lying, you'll get sawed in half. And they have a diorama of somebody getting sawed in half. And they talk about Dante's Inferno in the exhibit of just other depictions of hell in a sort of educational way, which I thought was really interesting. And this is the same sort of thing, because each of the different vignettes in this movie are
01:20:39
Speaker
different types of sinners and depicting the ways that they're being tortured. Such as carnal sinners who are in a tornado flying through the air of human naked bodies. There are gluttons who lie naked on the ground getting rained on. They're in the mud or whatever.
01:21:07
Speaker
And then there are suicides which become tree people in hell. And when their branches are cut, blood spews out. Very dark. I love the imagery in this movie. With all of those vignettes, too, I think it's like you get through the obvious crimes.
01:21:35
Speaker
people would do and then it starts getting this stuff that is so specific and so like almost just like petty crimes that I'm like are these I haven't read Dante's Inferno but it does seem like some of the crimes people are getting like eaten in hell for are just like it's just Dante airing his personal grievances
01:22:01
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. That's something that I've heard about Dante. Like, one of the one things that I know about Dante's Inferno is that, yes, he was trying to scare people away from sinning and because they'll go to hell. But also, there were, like, just all of these notable figures from Italy at that time that he just didn't like. And he just said, oh, they're in hell, you know? Like, he was just being extremely messy with this book. Well, it's almost like
01:22:30
Speaker
The sins that people are getting punished for are so hyper specific that it's like, okay, like who did that that annoyed you? You know, it's like those, you know, all the people who borrowed money from their brother-in-law and then didn't didn't want to give it back, but then did give it back, but were like a dick about it. And then they went to the opera and they didn't invite their brother-in-law. I mean, they knew it was their favorite composer. Those, all those people, they get fed to the fire snake.
01:22:58
Speaker
And that's like, okay Dante, I think I know where you're going with this. Yeah. Um, do you have anything else on this one? Um, not really. I did the Rick Dalton thing and pointed at the screen when it says, abandon all hope, yee-hoo enter here. Indeed. I was like, ah, it said the thing.
01:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, another Italian epic is the Fall of Troy. Yep. You know, based on the Iliad. I like this one quite a bit more, I think. It's shorter. It's not quite feature length. 35 minutes, I think. Yeah. But the scale of it is kind of insane.
01:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, very, very big sets, huge crowds. Like, I didn't think that they were full sets at first. I was like, oh, there's like a backdrop. But then there'd be actors interacting with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh my god, they built this whole thing.
01:24:06
Speaker
And this one also, I think The Inferno, it's all meant to be played as one movie, but The Fall of Troy likes some of those two real D.W. Griffith movies. It's split into two parts, two 15-minute parts that are demarcated from each other. Oh, I don't know if I realized that.
01:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, there was a part that was like end of part one, beginning of part two, you know? So I doubt they were meant to be played separately, but at least like the reels themselves were delineated. There's also there's some cool like, this doesn't necessarily have like effects in it, per se.
01:24:48
Speaker
The Inferno definitely does. It has a lot of effects in it. But this has some really cool, almost like forced perspective miniatures incorporated into the set. So there's a really cool shot where Paris is on his balcony looking out over Troy as it's burning.
01:25:11
Speaker
And we see like a miniature city that's on fire, that's sort of off the edge of this balcony. I was very impressed with that shot. One of the directors of this movie, Giovanni Pastrone,
01:25:31
Speaker
I'm probably butchering his name. Giovanni. I'm just going to call him Giovanni. My close personal friend. Oh, yeah. I saw that name, and I called him Giovanni Pastrami. And my Italian girlfriend said that I was racist. Spaghetti Bolognese. Anyway, Giovanni will go on to direct
01:26:00
Speaker
Kiberia in 1914, which is one of... It's not one of the first feature films, but it's a significant one. It's a very notable one, yeah. Another notable feature film that I watched was the Defense of Sevastopol, which is the first Russian feature film. It is probably about four to five times longer than it needs to be. You did not watch this one, correct?
01:26:41
Speaker
movie I've ever seen. Oh my god. Thankfully, I had some fun Russian classical music that I was listening to, which was the most enjoyable part of it. The scope of it is impressive. It's about an hour long, but it could easily be like 20 minutes long.
01:26:48
Speaker
I was scared off of it.
01:27:05
Speaker
Um, just cause like there's a really cool shots in it, but then those shots last for like a full four minutes and it's like, yeah, we get it. We see it. Yep. Okay. Mm hmm. Yep. Still still going, huh? Um, but Amy there, there are definitely moments that kind of.
01:27:28
Speaker
through that are pretty good. It's shot on the real locations where the historical event that they're recreating actually happened, which is kind of cool. There's a bit right at the beginning where they're introducing some of the major players, the sort of generals and admirals and things that were involved, and they get their own sort of
01:27:54
Speaker
moving picture portraits sort of like they're kind of sitting like they're in a portrait but they're kind of looking around all moody um and like their name is at the bottom i thought that was kind of cool oh kind of like the introduction to the girl who didn't believe in santa claus uh yeah yeah um but we get like we get a bunch of them yeah um
01:28:16
Speaker
So yeah, not one that I think is really necessary to watch all the way through, but another significant sort of landmark film. Yeah. The piece of trivia that I know about this is that it is the first film ever to use two cameras, is at least according to what Wikipedia says. Right, yeah. I tried to verify that, and I think that's true.
01:28:45
Speaker
Although I find anything that is like definitively I couldn't find any like good source for it though. Yeah So that's true. We don't know how much we can trust that stuff. I mean that Max Linder movie where he was Or those Lumiere movies where you saw another camera on film technically two cameras Yeah, and like I don't really know what the details delineating that are but if true if true then cool
01:29:14
Speaker
Yeah. Cool if true. Yeah. Um, and then, I mean, we've got some, some, you know, the usual potpourri of, of other films that were released this year. Yeah. Although, um, I guess I wouldn't call it an epic so much, but, uh, uh, Pinocchio.
Exploration of 'Pinocchio' Film
01:29:37
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Pinocchio is Italian. This is true. Yeah. First Pinocchio movie. That's also a significant landmark, I think. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, oh my God, this movie. This movie's wild. It is pretty wild. It's not, I wouldn't call it the traditional Pinocchio story.
01:30:03
Speaker
Well, so here's the thing, like this movie inspired me to go like, okay, like, is this just going way off script with Pinocchio or, or, or what, you know? And I've, I'm not aware of the original Pinocchio story. I only know the Disney one, you know? And the one with, uh, uh, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, is that his name?
01:30:24
Speaker
What? It's a terrible joke, I'm sorry. Someone listening will get that joke. If I said the name right. So this movie is kind of a more faithful adaptation of Pinocchio than the Disney movie is.
01:30:48
Speaker
You know, it's funny, there are all of these movies that we're getting surprised at, like how dark they are, that are especially fairy tale adaptations. And what I'm realizing is that maybe a lot of these things, we're used to the sanitized versions of these fairy tales, that these early films are showing us the true thing, right? So the original Pinocchio book,
01:31:14
Speaker
Apologies to anyone who's familiar with this, but the original Pinocchio book, Pinocchio's not supposed to be a good guy in any way or likable in any way. It's this cautionary tale of just like, don't be like Pinocchio because he sucks.
01:31:39
Speaker
For example, we all know Jiminy Cricket. We all know Jiminy Cricket from the Disney movie. He's conscious. Yeah. So Jiminy Cricket is not in this, but I was looking into some of the scene to be played by Joseph Gordon Levitt in the upcoming live action Disney remake. Well, so that that movie, I don't think it's Disney. I think it's going to be on Netflix and like it's going to be co-directed by Guillermo del Toro. And it's supposed to be. Yeah.
01:32:10
Speaker
I mean, oh wait, you're talking about there's a live-action Disney movie? Yeah. Oh, wait, Quiero del Toro, coming out later this year or next year, is making a stop-motion animated Pinocchio movie that is supposed to be a more faithful adaptation of the original darkness of Pinocchio. Incredible.
01:32:28
Speaker
It's also going to have Patrick McHale writing from Over the Garden Wall. It's going to be sick. I'm so excited for it. But, oh my god, what was I talking about? Pinocchio. Pinocchio is a big old jerk.
01:32:43
Speaker
Okay, Jiminy Cricket, right? We know Jiminy Cricket. He's not in this version of Pinocchio, but we know him from the Disney version. In the original Pinocchio, he's not named. He's just a talking cricket. But Jiminy Cricket's in the entire Disney movie. In the original Pinocchio, Pinocchio throws a hammer at this cricket and kills him.
01:33:11
Speaker
He doesn't mean to kill the cricket, but he's like, oh, oops, you know? And so the cricket continues to be the conscience or whatever, but he's a ghost. Like, it's a ghost cricket. Oh, my God. It's the American werewolf in London. I never realized that the American werewolf in London is actually Pinocchio. That's insane.
01:33:34
Speaker
I mean, this is faithful, although I will say this is a Pinocchio movie where he doesn't lie. There's no lying and his nose gets bigger in this movie. He just has big nose and he is just an asshole and he just goes around causing trouble. Where do I even begin with this? It felt very vaudevillian to me.
01:34:02
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah, I think just in the way that it's sort of staged and I guess the sort of like, uh, the kind of physical comedy aspect of it, the slapstickiness. Mm-hmm. Um, although it does, it uses real outdoor locations, which is, it's definitely, um, much more of a thing now in 1911, but it still feels, I don't know, it still feels a little bit novel just to have a movie
01:34:32
Speaker
shot in real places. Yeah, I mean, this is like, this is real big budget. This is an hour long. It goes over a lot. Wait, it's an hour long? Yeah. I didn't watch the whole thing then, I don't think. Oh, yeah. I think I missed out on some of this. This isn't an epic then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were some, there were some shorter versions, but at least like the most
01:35:00
Speaker
you know, the most fully released version, it's an hour long. Oh man, I got duped. I thought it was short. So much stuff happens in this movie. Oh man. And again, a lot of the stuff that happens, I thought was like, oh my God, what are they doing in this? It turns out that it was in the original Pinocchio. So for example, so the second that Pinocchio awakens,
01:35:27
Speaker
He runs wild through the streets like Frankenstein's monster. That part I've seen. Yeah, and a bunch of Javert-looking guys grab him. And Geppetto gets arrested because they feel like they think he's mistreating Pinocchio, which is in the original. There's a part where
01:35:55
Speaker
Pinocchio accidentally lights his feet on fire, and there's a cool scene where Geppetto's helping him fix his feet because he just kind of saws off his foot and then puts a new one on. He's like, oh yeah, don't do that again.
01:36:16
Speaker
Pinocchio is playing with some kids outside and he steps in a bear trap and his leg gets stuck in the bear trap. The guy who owns the bear trap grabs him and then locks him up like a dog and puts a collar and leash on him.
01:36:37
Speaker
He gets out and then some random people just grab him and then try to lynch him. They hang him from a tree. So you see Pinocchio hanging from a noose.
01:36:53
Speaker
Uh, it didn't see that part. No. Yeah. In the original Pinocchio book, uh, he, or the original ending of Pinocchio that I don't think was in the book, but it was the original intended ending is Pinocchio just getting executed in this fashion. Um, and the quote from the book, a tempestuous northerly wind began to blow and roar angrily.
01:37:34
Speaker
Damn. Um...
01:37:44
Speaker
Then, the blue fairy saves Pinocchio, some random blue fairy saves Pinocchio, gives him four golden coins to take back to Geppetto. While he's on his way back to Geppetto, a cat and a fox come up to him and say, hey kid, bury these coins.
01:38:03
Speaker
they'll turn into a tree that grows coins. And so he's like, oh, hot dog. I'm going to do that. And so the fox and the cat come back and they steal the money that he buried. And then Pinocchio, on his way back to check on the tree the next morning, he sees the fox and the cat living it up in a bar. And he's like, they stole my money.
01:38:31
Speaker
A fox and a cat walking to a bar.
01:38:35
Speaker
And I don't even know how this happens, but apparently it also happens in the book, but they put Pinocchio in prison for the crime of being robbed. This movie's wild. He escapes from prison, and then he swims for 99 days, and then he gets swallowed by the whale, which is one of the things that I remember from the Disney movie. He meets Geppetto in the whale's stomach, and then
01:39:02
Speaker
the whale takes them to Canada and they get involved in a war between Canadians and Native Americans. And so all of that happens. Then the Canadians put him in a cannon and then launch him all the way back to Italy.
01:39:28
Speaker
Yeah. And then he goes to an animal world and gets turned into a donkey. Okay. So that happens after the whale? Yes.
01:39:46
Speaker
There's actually a really cool shot while he's getting turned into a donkey where you see him looking into his reflection in the water. So the reflection is looking straight at the camera and the camera is right above his head. I couldn't tell actually if it was an actual reflection or if it was some kind of post effect of double exposure.
01:40:09
Speaker
But like basically he's like turning into a donkey and he gets these giant donkey ears and And so he's like seeing his ears being revealed and like looking at himself in the mirror. It's a pretty well well done shot And he makes a friend in this animal world who also ends up getting turned into a donkey that same random blue fairy Saves him again, but doesn't save his friend. So his friend stays as a donkey and then
01:40:37
Speaker
And then Pinocchio goes back and then he just turns into a real boy and that's the end of the movie. It's insane. This movie's nuts. I feel so cheated that I looked this movie up and I found a, I don't know, like 10 minute version of it. Oh man. Yeah, I'm glad. I didn't notice this movie until you said like, oh, like check out Pinocchio and
01:41:04
Speaker
I didn't even know what I was talking about, apparently. Boy, did I check it out. Yeah, this movie was wild. Damn. Well, I'll have to watch that now, in addition to movies for next episode. Yeah, that's nuts.
Early Sci-Fi and Animation Innovations
01:41:26
Speaker
Another kind of crazy movie, I guess, is The Pirates of 1920.
01:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, which is another sky pirate movie, which is another another prime candidate for a Glenn favorite. Yeah. I do love how like the sky pirate movie is kind of becoming a sub genre.
01:41:48
Speaker
That's so fun. Yeah. Anyway, it's very reminiscent of Walter R. Ruth's sort of airship films, airship heist movies. And like those, it's very big and ambitious and pretty well made. Yeah. It is sort of structurally, I guess, is sort of a like
01:42:16
Speaker
A woman is kidnapped while a man comes to try to save her. But unlike all of the DW Griffith movies like that, this one has sky pirates, so it is automatically better. Also, the male lead of this movie is named Jack Manley. Oh my God. Which is the most on the nose name for a hero.
01:42:42
Speaker
ever. It's great. But much like parts ensue, the ending is missing, which is gross. I mean, I think I can figure out what happens based on how it leads up. Yeah, me too. But it's still, it's frustrating.
01:43:02
Speaker
Like, it ends with a point of her, she's kidnapped on the ship and she gets a hold of a bomb and she says, like, I'll blow this all up if you don't land the Zeppelin. So they do. Then they chase after her. But it's in parallel action. You see that the cops are arriving and then that's when the movie ends. So you don't see the kind of rescue and confrontation.
01:43:26
Speaker
But I had that thing that was like, oh, I want to see the end. Yeah. And this one's only available on the BFI player. So, uh, I'm glad that I was able to figure out how to make that work. Uh, I'll upload it so that on YouTube so that we can, we can watch it so that we restfully Americans can see it. Yeah.
01:43:50
Speaker
I love also that this is set only nine years in the future. It's imagining sky pirates and steampunk marvels, but it's 1920. I mean, on one hand, a lot of that stuff, airship technology did advance quite a bit by 1920.
01:44:18
Speaker
Um, you know, by 1916 or whenever, like they were using airships in, in war to bomb cities and things. So, you mean by 1911, because that was in the, uh, no, but I mean, I mean, in real life though. Yeah.
01:44:39
Speaker
in the intros in the Italian, the Italo-Turkish War. That was an airplane, not a Zeppelin. Oh, not a Zeppelin. Oh, okay. I got you. Yeah.
01:44:49
Speaker
Well, um, Walter R. Booth did make some movies this year though. Um, we don't get to see aerial anarchists, which is a lost film, which was the sort of capper of his trilogy of, of sky pirate movies. So sad. Um, but we get to see the automatic motorist, which is very similar to the motorist.
01:45:17
Speaker
Yeah, kind of a remake. Kind of a loose remake. But this one follows a couple on, I guess, their wedding day, who decide to go driving with a mad scientist and his robot driver. Classic wedding activity. And then they get stopped by a cop and decide to tie him up to the back of their car.
01:45:41
Speaker
And the dog bites the cop on the butt, and then the dog's tailing behind the car as well. And then, much like the motorist, the car ends up driving up the sides of buildings and into outer space, this time to Saturn, which in this movie is full of goblin kids.
01:46:09
Speaker
Um, yeah, this is a pretty, pretty wild one. Yeah. Yeah. And I like, um, like in the motorist, like the, the car drives around on the rings of Saturn, but in this one, it kind of
01:46:24
Speaker
goes onto the planet and the way they depict that is the car just smashing through the image of Saturn. It's a piece of paper that tears away. And then you see it a lot more close up when they're leaving Saturn. People are kind of climbing out of this hole in the planet.
01:46:44
Speaker
onto the ring itself. It's very kind of non-literal. Walther Arbuth also made a significant animated film called Animated Putty, which I don't know if this is the first movie to use clay or putty for a stop motion.
01:47:11
Speaker
It's a little difficult to tell, just based on some of those older ones. But this is the first one to really significantly use it, or entirely. Yeah, and to really kind of draw attention to it, that within the film it is meant to be clay, kind of. Yeah. And this movie did kind of send me down a rabbit hole over the actual word claymation.
01:47:40
Speaker
which I always thought was coined by Aardman, which is the company that made Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. But it was actually trademarked by Will Vinton Studios, which was the precursor to Leica. And Will Vinton was a huge stop-motion innovator, although a lot of his stuff is commercial work.
01:48:14
Speaker
Yeah, this movie definitely made me... It's the movie that every kid makes when they discover that stop motion is a thing. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot of just messing around with it. But it's pretty well done. I think that the... It's basically just all of these sculptures and faces being made out of the clay and it's like you're seeing them forming.
01:48:34
Speaker
uh... as opposed to like narrative film stuff
01:48:39
Speaker
Uh, and the final product is like a very well done clay sculpture. Um, uh, so well done that it almost made me feel like, like, is this being done in reverse? And they like have like a nice thing that they're taking part, you know? Uh, I couldn't really quite tell because like,
01:48:57
Speaker
the way that it comes together is so, uh, clean and masterful in a way, uh, that it seems like it would be more intuitive that they're, they have like nice clay things that they're like mushing and taking apart, but I don't, I don't really know. Yeah, that's, you might be right. I mean, it's either that or there's very good at, you know, very quickly doing some very intricate clay, clay sculpting. Yeah.
01:49:28
Speaker
Reversing something is always, I feel like, such a simple effect that people don't always notice. There's a lot of times, even in movies now, where it's like, how'd they do that? And then it's just like, oh, we just reversed it. And it's like, oh, of course. Really?
01:49:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I didn't notice it in Frankenstein last year, so. Yeah. I could rather just, I guess, things that are worth mentioning. Yeah, I mean, there's another cartoon. Yeah. Which is Windsor McKay, the famous cartoonist of the New York Herald in his moving comics, also known as Little Nemo. Yeah.
01:50:11
Speaker
less form or less accurate title, but much easier to use. And this
Color Process and Film Techniques
01:50:18
Speaker
is, I mean, this is kind of a live action short with animation incorporated into it.
01:50:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the whole live-action framing device is sort of a justification for showing you the animation, where Windsor McKay is basically the famous cartoonist. Of the New York Herald.
01:50:42
Speaker
And it's being challenged to make moving comics. So some big, I don't know, big wigs or whatever. Just like, hey, Winsor and McKay, make 4,000 drawings in one month. And we'll make a cartoon. And so there's some good comedy of him rolling giant barrels of ink and big pallets of paper.
01:51:11
Speaker
into, uh, into his, uh, uh, room. You know, so it's depicting the process of him spending the month like drawing all of the, um, the 4,000 frames, 4,000 frames. Yeah. And then it plays the movie itself. Um, and it's very, very well done. The, the, I mean, you know, he is a, he is a talented artist and he's already been making comic strips like little Nemo and slumberland, which is what this is based on.
01:51:43
Speaker
And There's a lot of Very like very smooth motion. There's there are things of rotating in 3d space that stuff which Yeah, which it's very it takes a lot of like artistic prowess. I think to do that in animation Especially so early on yeah, they use squash and stretch. Mm-hmm which
01:52:09
Speaker
feels like the right way to do it, people are already figuring out that that's what you need to be doing to make animation look good. Something I was wondering was whether this is, whether there's any rotoscoping in this, because some of it looks like weirdly smooth in the way that a lot of rotoscoping looks, but it could just be that that's just the way that he did it. Yeah, I get the impression that it's
01:52:38
Speaker
It's it's more that just a lot of work went into it, you know, it's yeah And that winter McKay's is good at drawing. Yeah Although this is also maybe that it's like why do the olden times got to be racist? Oh, there's some of the characters. Yeah, there's some some very racist stereotypical like
01:53:06
Speaker
what, caricature in this. Which is like, damn it, olden times. Why can't you be more like Dr. Seuss? Oh my god. Topical. Topical.
01:53:21
Speaker
We're dating our podcast, although a year from now, no one will remember that everybody just lost their minds over Dr. Seuss. Well, a couple people lost their minds over Dr. Seuss. Right. A couple of very silly people decided to get very angry about Dr. Seuss. Yeah, not silly in a good way, silly in a dumb way. Yeah.
01:53:43
Speaker
I will just also highlight that there's a dragon in this, and the animation on a dragon is so cool. The dragon looks amazing. I think these are all characters from Little Nemo and Slumberland, which I haven't really read much of. I've seen a couple strips, but I've never really looked into it. I think the dragon is from the comic strip, and Little Nemo is also in it.
01:54:11
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, it's also like, in addition to being, the animation itself was really good. It's very, um, I think the level of detail in the drawings is, is pretty elaborate. Um, it's almost, I kind of get the sense that like, as animation developed, they learned to kind of streamline things and simplify things. And this is like.
01:54:34
Speaker
Yeah. It would probably be done. Labor intensive. Yeah, I can feel the labor coming off the screen. It's like, this was so much work. I mean, probably why they made a whole framing device showing you how much work it was. Yeah, that's a good point. But yeah, I think this is definitely the most elaborate hand-drawn animation that we've seen, that has probably been done at this point.
01:55:03
Speaker
Most impressive, too. Yeah. There was another Charles Urban documentary film that was shot in color. Kim, what color? Yeah. Which, did we explain what that was last time? Yes. Yeah. The two-color process that made funky-looking colors. Also, very labor-intensive.
01:55:31
Speaker
Thanks to the Nile is this film. It's not really that different from the other Kinema color films that we've watched, but there were some cool moments in it where
01:55:43
Speaker
sort of fast movement because of the way that the color process works, sort of creates like a rainbow trail effect almost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was super cool. Another just very weird thing that I had to write down about this movie is looking it up on Letterboxd, the top review for Banks of the Nile is apparently actually referring to a 1981 three-hour TV movie called Artemis 81.
01:56:13
Speaker
starring Sting from the police. Because I was like, this is not describing this movie at all. And it's talking about Sting. And so I had to look up character names and try to figure out what it was. And I was like, oh my god. It's a three hour TV movie. Don't know why they got their wires crossed and just posted this review. That's funny. Under Banks of the Nile. So I got a chuckle out of that.
01:56:43
Speaker
I think it's interesting how they've got this new natural color process, quote unquote, natural color process. And because showing something in color, in true color, is kind of new, they're kind of reverting to a previous style of films, because this is basically an actuality. Yeah, pretty much. And so was the beach one from the other year.
01:57:09
Speaker
This is basically like a Lumiere style go to a place and point some camera, point a camera at like a culture and see what they look like, you know, but this time in color. And so, you know, it's in Egypt. And one of the things that I thought was actually kind of interesting was, you know, Kinema color has a lot of flaws, as you were describing.
01:57:32
Speaker
but it actually doesn't show white skin super well. It shows it okay, but white skin sometimes looks a little overexposed and a little just kind of weird. And this is showing dark skinned black people in Egypt. And I think their skin actually looks a lot better
01:57:56
Speaker
on the Kenema color than white people. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does. I hadn't really picked up on that, and that's super interesting.
01:58:05
Speaker
Um, because it's, there are still like, I still hear about problems of like, cinematographers that only know how to light, uh, white people. Yeah. Um, and yeah, it seems like this, this like super early color film was like, yeah, if you're, if you're too light skinned, you just look blown out like a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. Probably just by accident that it happened to look better for black people.
01:58:33
Speaker
but kinemacolor, come back. Teach white cinematography is how it works. Yeah, they all have to learn on kinemacolor now.
Conclusion and Future Episodes
01:58:44
Speaker
Well, let me just run through. There was this one Max Linder movie that we can wrap up with, which is called Max's Tragedy, which isn't actually that, I think most of the movie is not actually that good.
01:58:59
Speaker
it's just like some kind of broad commie that's okay. It's about like two people who are
01:59:07
Speaker
in sort of an arranged marriage and they're trying to gross each other out so that the other person will refuse them. And one of the gross out ways is I believe like somebody putting on blackface in a sense, which is not good. But it's mostly kind of a light comedy movie, but both of them end up
01:59:31
Speaker
becoming actors, which is sort of both of their dreams. And when they realize that they both want to be actors, they get together and they fall in love and everything. And toward the end of the movie, or like once they've gotten together, there's a title card that says like a couple years later.
01:59:50
Speaker
and then it portrays them like with a baby and Max is like an alcoholic and like everything like they're living a terrible life they all like they hate everything and everything's terrible and they're like on the verge of death and you're like oh my god it's like weirdly dark for a Max Linder movie and then they die and you're like Jesus Christ like what is happening this supposed to be a comedy movie and just as they die the camera
02:00:18
Speaker
like pulls back and you see that they're on a stage and you see the audience come up. The audience clapping. Yeah. The curtain falls. The curtain falls and they get up and take a bow and you find out they're like the actors, right? But this wild metatextual thing happens where they're giving the audience this like they're tricking the audience basically and then they pull out and reveal that it was all on stage.
02:00:47
Speaker
is really amazing. Yeah. And it's a physical camera move, like the camera is actually moving back, which feels very different for this time period. There's not a lot of camera movement happening, at least not besides like
02:01:08
Speaker
some pans and some tilts on a fixed tripod or something, or on a train. But yeah, it's such a good reveal. And it's also the kind of reveal that probably wouldn't work as well in a modern movie because the sort of stage-iness of the last scene of them, of their life in shambles. Yeah.
02:01:35
Speaker
You know, it is believable as a stage once the reveal is made, but before that, you're totally into it of like, oh, it's just a simple, straight, locked off shot of their living room. Oh, that's funny, yeah. Like most other movies. And then we get this wild camera move back to reveal the audience that's in front of them. It was amazing. I was so impressed with that. Yeah, yeah.
02:02:03
Speaker
So yeah, that was super cool. Very adventurous formal stuff from Max Linder.
02:02:12
Speaker
I guess that'll about wrap it up. Another year in the books. Another year in the books. Moving on to 1912 soon. If you would like to keep up with some behind-the-scenes stuff or, I don't know, look at images that we post, we have an Instagram, which is linked in the description, and it's Instagram
02:02:38
Speaker
It's at one week, one year, I think spelled out. But why did I pick a podcast that could be numerals or could be spelled? Bad choice.
02:02:49
Speaker
And you can follow us on Twitter, where we post about our new episodes when they come out. Or you can subscribe to us on YouTube, which I'm looking at you, YouTube, hello. Or on your podcast, which you probably are already, but unless you're listening to Spotify or whatever, subscribe to us. And I guess that's about it.
02:03:15
Speaker
On to 1912, moving through the 1910s decade. Glenn, I'll see you next year. See you next year.