by
Laura Lai/ Review
The silent film is a story, but
the beginning of the cinematography is itself a fascinated story. I do not find
the silent movie as ‘primitive’ or ‘hard to watch’ by the great sound and
visual effects or elaborate screenwriting of the modern cinema standards. Not
at all! Neither Hitchcock, nor Tarantino, Scorsese, Zeffirelli, Copolla,
Spielberg, Cameron, etc. would not have got to this level of film (or filming)
art, unless somebody at some point pioneered.
The
reason why pioneers like Charlie Chaplin started – meaning their motivation is
theirs alone. The way they started, meaning looking at the beginning of the
cinema though the modern lenses, is fascinating to me. And even more
fascinating is the way modern film directors still find ways to push the boundaries
of the modern film even further.
The
film pioneers must have been of strong characters, because … from my
observation (for writing purposes) of the way people talk and interact with
each other … I nurture this feeling that every generation has its … people that
would ask: ‘What?! Are you nuts?! How are you going to do that? You can’t do
it! Nobody did that before, and you think that you are going to make it?!’ – a
line usually meant to cultivate a seed of doubt in the pioneer’s heart and
eventually to demotivate him/her.
Due to the fact that some actors
pioneered this film industry, we enjoy nowadays 3D movies and in HD. It is said
that from the silent films three-thirds are lost either because they were not
properly stored or because the material they were done of was flammable.
Anyway, the viewers can still have a good image of people’s life at the
beginning the of the 20th century.
For
example, in ‘The Easy Street’ (1916) we have the image of those times’
street violence. The film is following the rise of a vagabond (Charlie Chaplin)
going to a ‘Hope Mission’ to becoming a policeman (following a posted
announcement) that brings peace on the street. The film ends with a long shot
on the Easy Street’s ‘New Mission’ of peace.
‘The Immigrant’ (1917) is the story of all immigrants taking the boat to
America. Nowadays, we take the bus or the plane, depending on how far we are
going. Both then and now, the immigrant reaches destination ‘broke and hungry’.
He finds a lucky coin with which he wants to buy lunch, but in the restaurant
he meets again an immigrant woman who was on the boat with him (with her sick
mother) and whom he helped before. In the end, they both leave the restaurant
with a job offer from an artist they happened to meet there and wanted to
employ them. I think a more appropriate title for this film would have been
‘The Lucky Immigrant’. Passing by an office releasing marriage certificates,
the immigrant decides to marry the woman he met. This is an interesting scene,
because the woman hesitates.
In 1917, when there
most probably was a huge pressure from both family and society to be married,
for a woman to have such a personality and hesitate … I found the scene
memorable. Nowadays, things are different: there is no shame to be unmarried,
there is not pressure (depending on culture and on families) to get married,
and if women hesitate, each of them have their reasons. It usually starts with
‘I like(d) him’ and the reasons are different: ‘he’s funny’, ‘cute’, ‘great
kisser/lover’, ‘nice’, ‘he’s rich’, etc. – as you can assume, for writing
purposes, I asked around. What makes this scene memorable is that he also breaks
all clichés in 1917 by not sitting in knees – a hypocritical scene, if you ask
me, that impresses many women but me, because I’m convinced that all divorces,
domestic violence and murder started with a he in knees in front of her. The
modern typical such scene shows how he opens a box (or he asks the question
with the box opened, as if the box is meant to help him or as if she needs to
be bribed to say ‘yes’) – and somehow she is always happy about what she sees
inside. I’m personally looking for the best friend – and so far people have
been tremendously disappointing – and when I see the knee/ ring scene I always
wonder: ‘What if I like him, but I don’t like what I find in the box, how is he
going to react?’ – I’m problem solver: If he also leaves there the receipt I
may change it with something else of the same genre, but that I may like more. Lucky
me that I live in the 21st century – no shame and no pressure to get
married! J
In
‘The Cure’ (1917) I loved also the music. I think in modern times that
would be called the ‘soundtrack’. Lovely, isn’t it? The violin soundtrack
engaged me as a viewer in the plot of this silent film. The story is that an
alcoholic (Charlie Chaplin) gets to a health spring to get cured of this vice
by drinking a spring water. He refuses as he came with a huge suitcase – his
wardrobe – actually full of alcohol. This liquor somehow gets thrown in the
spring and when the alcoholic finally gets convinced by a woman (Edna
Purviance) to drink from the spring water and get cured for her sake, the
spring waters are full of liquor. This short movie surprised me with many elements
of comics that usually take time to think of before the script is written. For
a silent movie with a simple plot the script must be relatively short. Then,
the elements of comics must be abundant.
And
speaking of scenes that are memorable for a reason or another in silent films,
I would not want to miss a sensational great one in ‘A Dog’s Life’
(1918). In this silent film, written and produced by Charlie Chaplin, the
viewers have a parallel between dogs fighting for survival and people fighting
for survival; then is a saved dog that helps the vagabond to dig out a wallet
with dollars and they moved forward, made a family and the dog had puppies. By
minute 30 in the movie, the money is lost and the vagabond tries to recuperate
them. And the way Charlie Chaplin succeeds in manipulating one of the two
drinkers from behind a curtain is amazing. Truly amazing! The kind of talent
the silent film needed so that it can pass the test of time.
In a month of February with BAFTA
Ceremony Awards, Oscar Ceremony Awards, and during Berlin Film Festival I
continued to look at the beginning of the cinematography in order to better
understand the way we’ve got to 3D and to HD, how people and society changed …
if they ever changed a bit. (the end)
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