Breaking Home Ties (1922) NYJFF 2025

Made in Pennsylvania in the hope of countering the rise of antisemitism being spread by the KKK and Henry Ford, BREAKING HOME TIES is one film that was set up to both entertain and inform people that there was nothing evil about Jewish people.

The film is the story of a good man in Russia. He lives with his family and is studying American Law. He comes to the aid of a wandering violinist who takes refuge with his family. However when argument turns heated he strikes the violinist and ends up fleeing, thinking he killed him. He then flees to America where he becomes an attorney in New York. Years pass and he tries to contact his family in Russia, unaware that they have come to America.

The film is pure melodrama and very much of it’s time, but at the same time it’s compelling and you will want to see how it all comes out.

From a historical point of view the film is interesting because the whole story is so matter of fact. Even by the standards of the time things are not typically movie heightened, as a result the normalcy of the Jewish elements of the film are nothing out of the ordinary. I can see why this approach was used since the film was supposed to counter the hatred, and it works.

One quick note, the film was believed lost for decades and then a copy was found and it was restored on film and later digitally restored. While the film is now perfectly watchable (and has a great score), there are a couple of moments were there is some picture issues due to the deterioration on the original. I mention this because some people are more concerned with picture than with the fact the film is historically important.

Recommended.

Brief thoughts on Ryusuke Hamaguchi's GIFTwith live performance by Eiko Ishibachi

I went with Ed Douglas tonight to see  GIFT  at Lincoln Center. 

The film is silent  recut version of Hamaguchi's EVIL DOES NOT EXIST. It runs about 75 minutes and contains a lot of alternate or extended takes. The film is designed so that Eiko Ishibashi can play a live score to it (her set up is in the lower right of the picture above).

While the film essentially tells the same story, things play out differently. In this film titles spell out a bit more of the plot at times. At other times we are left to figure things out for ourselves. The film is not really designed as a narrative but as something Ishibashi's score can play off of.

As a concert it's very good.  Several passages were hypnotic with the music. It was so good that I really wish that all notion of a narrative was thrown out and we could have just had random sequences with the score.

If you are looking for a narrative or new great film from Hamaguchi you are going to be disappointed. Too much is missing. Having seen EVIL... at last year's New York Film Festival  I think GIFT is a pale imitation...but then again it was never supposed to be a "film" like EVIL

I enjoyed myself and consider the screening more a concert. It is not anything I would watch again- though I would listen to the score. If you can see it live do so.

On the other hand if you want a solid narrative see EVIL DOES NOT EXIST.

Abel Gance's LA ROUE At NYFF 2023

This is the post I published at IMDB in 2008

Abel Gance's monstrously long tale of a train engineer. his son and the girl he takes in and raises as his own. Clocking in at four and a half hours this is still only a fraction of the the three part close to eight hour version that Gance originally created. I won't go into the story of the three years of filming and the tragedies that struck during the filming of the movie, which would make a wonderful film unto itself.

The story begins when Sisif returns to work one day just as a train wrecks in the yard. He pulls a young girl, Norma, from the wreckage and adopts her as his own, bringing her home to live with him and his son. The children are small enough that they simply assume that they are brother and sister. Later as time goes on the children grow, but the family remains in poverty thanks in part to Sisif's drinking and gambling. He is secretly in love with his "daughter" as his his son who makes a living making violins. Also in love with Norma is a well placed engineer who is helping to keep Sisif safe and out of trouble so that he might wed her. As the wheel of life turns and crushes those in its way the lives of everyone take unexpected and not very happy turns.

I'm at sixes and sevens about the film. Certainly its dated badly in some regards. the actor playing Sisif often looks into the camera and plays directly to the audience in a style thats at best over done. Some sequences are clearly unreal. Many interiors were filmed outside since you can see the shifting sun lighting them. And the film is simply put way way way too long at four and a half hours (I can not imagine what the full cut was like).

And yet the film has power at times that is undeniable. The film has a sense of place that can not be matched. Its clear that this was filmed in and around the train yards where it all takes place. The sense of reality is probably is almost unmatched in any film. The photography and montage is among the finest I've ever seen. There are shots of trains running on the rails that need to be hung on walls. Additionally the way the film is cut together is unlike any other film. No one manages to cut like this, I can't imagine what this was like in 1923. The images in images (The scenes of Norma in the train smoke for example) are haunting- more so when you think of how Gance had to put together pretty much in camera. From a technical stand point the quote about the film that's in the publicity for the DVD restoration about how the movie changed after this film is probably dead on. Technically this is like watching lightning. The story is, while melodramatic and potboiler like, affecting and had the film not dragged on as long as it did I would have probably loved the film instead of liked it.

Is it worth seeing? If you're a cinema nut absolutely. Its amazing at times. If you're not a fan of film and really don't like silent film stay away from it because it will probably overwhelm you in the wrong way.

Between 6 and 7 out of 10- with moments that are off the scale.

Hundreds of Beavers (2023) Fantasia 2023

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS is the sort of film that Hollywood would never make. A black and white live action silent cartoon with synchronized sound and people in animal suits is not anything that any rational person in Hollywood would touch. Never mind that that THE ARTIST won, Hollywood doesn’t want to see this sort of thing.

On the other had  fans of Looney Tunes, Tex Avery, Bill Plympton, the Umbilical Brothers and other deranged animators and comedians are going to eat this up.

The plot of the film has a man named Jean --- who grows apples having his livelihood destroyed by beavers. Seeking revenge he decides them hunt them down for their fur. There is more to it of course, but it’s all told with a cartoon dream logic that is only possible in the movies.

This film is a blast.

This is the sort of hidden gem of a film that true film lovers search out. This is one of those films that end up being whispered about during it’s festival run as people stumble in and stagger out gob smacked at the marvelous thing they have just seen. They then go out and start telling anyone who will listen about this wondrous thing. In the old days this was the sort of thing that you’d have to hope a repertory theater would run, now we wait for the VOD drop. Though frankly you’ll want to catch this in a theater because… well trust me you will understand why when you see it.

What I love about the film is that it leans hard into everything, jokes, plot, men in beaver suits. It is a film that is full of joy, not to mention love of cinema and a good time. It is as if the filmmakers had the attitude that if they were going to do it they would do it big.

And they did.

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS is an unclassifiable cinematic joy bomb. It’s a film that explodes on the screen and makes you laugh and smile in ways that major Hollywood films can only dream. It is brilliantly smart in it’s low brow humor.

I can not explain what a magical experience this film is.

I highly recommend it

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule # 34 The Wind [1928] ★★★★

Victor Sjöström’s The Wind marked the end of not one but several eras. It was the last major silent film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios. It was the last silent film starring Lillian Gish, one of the first actual movie stars who also helped invent a distinctly cinematic style of acting in opposition to the overly theatrical mode that dominated film’s earliest years. Finally, it was the last silent film directed by Sjöström, one of the great filmmakers of the silent era both in his native Sweden and in America where he made films under the anglicized name “Victor Seastrom.”

 It follows the fate of Letty Mason, an ingenue of the mold Gish herself helped popularize, moving to rural Texas to live with her cousin Beverly (Edward Earle). Before she even leaves the train station she’s beset by the affections of not one but three potential suitors, the most alluring being Wirt Roddy (Montagu Love), an overly friendly cattle buyer. After she’s bullied by Beverly’s jealous wife who suspects her of loving her husband, she runs away to marry Wirt only to learn he’s a scoundrel who only wants her for a mistress. Reeling from shock, she allows herself to be wooed and married by one of her original suitors, Beverly’s neighbor Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson). Their marriage quickly dries up as Letty’s coldness drives Lige to bitter resentment. And all the while the screaming Texas wind howls and bangs at the windowpane of Letty’s mind.

Though his visual style was nowhere near as extreme as German Expressionism, Sjöström still transformed the desolate wilderness of the Mojave Desert into a screenscape as eerie and otherworldly as anything by Murnau or Wiene. The film contains some of the most striking images of his career: a white demon horse bucking in the clouds, a tornado rushing towards a crowded barn, a psychologically shattered Gish going insane while trapped alone in her house during a wind storm.

The Wind was also notorious for a tacked on happy ending contrary to the original novel where Letty discovers married bliss after killing a violent suitor. This was one of the rare times where a superficially happy ending gave a film an unintended sinister undercurrent: did Letty actually discover happiness in the promise of domesticity, or was she so crushed by suffocating patriarchal pressures that she finally succumbed to them?

Brief thoughts on Abel Gance's Napoleon - The 2000 restoration

One of the joys of the Covid19 pandemic is it gave me time to actually watch things that I wanted to for a long time...and in the current case a really long movie. Because I had the time I actually sat down and watched the current restoration of Abel Gance's masterpiece NAPOLEON. The current BFI release version is almost 6 hours which makes it about two hours longer than that version I saw back on VHS in the 1980's.

For those playing the home game a quick back story on the various versions- The original idea was to make six films covering the entire life of Napoleon. Abel Gance secured the money and blew it all on the first film which premiered, according to the BFI commentary track,  in two versions a six hour version and a nine hour version in Paris. Over the years Gance recut the film and footage was lost.

Kevin Brownlow in the 1960's made a film about Gance and got to see sequences that had been believed to have been lost  for decades while putting the film together and decided to attempt a restoration. In 1981 a version running just under 4 hours premiered with a score by Carmine Coppola.

In 2000 Brownlow released a version running over five and a half hours which is the current cut. If you didn't know it's because Francis Ford Coppola got into a pissing match with the BFI and Brownlow when they turned to Carl Davis to score the new cut. Coppola wanted his father's score used despite the fact that he died a decade earlier and there was no one to extend the score. He tried to block a series of screenings in San Francisco but that came to naught. However since Coppola insists he owns the film and screenings in the US are blocked.  That is why I bought the BFI DVD and had it sent to me.

I'm not going to go into details about the film, I want to just keep this short. I have notes so something longer may follow.

Let me start by saying NAPOLEON is technically one of the greatest films ever made. It has things that boggle the mind. Nevermind it was made in 1927, even today we would be hard pressed to do what he did.  It has sequences of stunning power and it has images that will be burned into your brain. I was in awe when I saw it 1980 whatever and I was in awe when I saw it a couple weeks back.

However, for all it's power the film is kind of a mess at times and as a result of the current version missing a third of it's longest run time. It is dramatically all over the place. Watching it there you can sense that things are missing. Watching the film with the commentary track there are several mentions to sequences that were shot, that were in the longest version and then disappeared.  Most of the missing stuff has to do with the drama as bits with Josephine and some of the secondary characters. The result  are moments where a shot should have resonance but don't because we didn't see something. Indeed one missing sequence ends up referenced in the restoration itself via title cards because what happens in it (Napoleon makes cardboard boots) explains what happens in the next sequence(the boots are wrecked).

A further problem with the film is watching it sans the commentary track there are layers of context and details that are completely lost. When I just saw the film I didn't get the relationship of Tristan and his family to Napoleon. Never mind the planned six film arc, I didn't catch who he really was. I didn't fully know who certain important Generals and nobles were and why they were important. Clearly it helps to really know history or to know that some of the problems may have been rectified in removed sequences.

Another problem with the film, though it's only in retrospect, is that Gance is setting things up for the whole series of six films. Time and again the commentary pointed out people who the camera lingers on in what are essentially cameos in this first film but who would have been important in later films. There is so much foreshadowing I felt I should have read a bio of Napoleon before watching it.

Watching the film it's clear that Gance should have been working today and making the film for HBO or Netflix.

While I can pick on the film for it's understandable flaws I am also in awe of it.  Most of what makes up the first two acts is stunning with some of the most incredible sequences I have ever seen. The snowball fight is so amazing I can't believe it was ever cut out. The storm at sea is jaw dropping and I am trying to imagine how that worked as the lost triptych. The Battle of Toulon is one of the greatest battle scenes ever put on film. It exhausted me.  Other shots and sequences, most done in camera, make me shake my head.

What could Gance have done with today's technology?

I think the second half is uneven. The second half doesn't get the balance of drama and action right, especially since the first half has so much going on that it is like slamming into a brick wall after 3 hours of slowly building momentum. Yes the courtly turns and romance or Josephine are important but it slows the pace after the storm and battle sequences.

Speaking of battles, I watched the final sequence a couple of times both in the legendary triptych and without.  I don't think the single screen version works all that well. I don't think it gets the emotion quite right.

And to be completely honest I don't think that the triptych wholly works. Yes it is viscerally over powering even on a small screen. Yes it has moments that have been rightly reproduced as stills. However as over powering the spectacle is I don't think it's as good as some of the earlier sequences. I think the problem is that Gance tried to do too much. A summation of all that went before, a further exploration of ideas and a need to make something so freaking amazing he could keep going with his baby. It certainly is amazing, but I was more moved by the Battle of Toulon.

My issues aside, this film still amazes. It is, as I said above, one of the greatest films ever made. I would love to see it projected on a big screen with a live orchestra- with the Carl Davis score which simply blends in in ways the Coppola one doesn't.

If you ever get to see this, in any form, do so.

Broken Barriers (Khavah) (1919) New York Jewish Film Festival

BROKEN BARRIERS is a long thought lost silent film based on the Sholem Aleichem stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. The focus is not so much on the Tevye character but on his daughter Khavah and her suitors.

I am not going to even attempt to compare this film to either the stories or to the show/movie of Fiddler. My working knowledge of of the stories is non-existant and my knowledge of the Fiddler allows me to sing bits of a couple of the songs and hum a few more. Instead I am going to just look at the film.

The film is very much a kin to many of the Yiddish film produced independently and released to audiences such as those in the Lower East Side of New York. Like many of the Yiddish films, it has a tactile feel and connection to the people and places it depicts,. If you didn’t catch the fact that several of the actors are speaking English you would think that this was filmed in Eastern Europe. It is an important example of the type of films that were being turned out in the silent era.

The film itself is a solid little melodrama. The plot follows the trouble caused when Khavah falls for a gentile  boy and the reverberations that ripple outward from that. I suspect that seems quaint to most people these days here in America, but not so long ago the thought of marrying outside of your religion or ethnic group was a major sin. BROKEN BARRIERS shows us what doing so could result in.

Long though lost BROKEN BARRIERS is screening January 19 with a live piano accompaniment and is recommended. For tickets and more information go here.

Nate hood on the Criterion Collection Blu-ray box set of 3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg

Before his name became synonymous with Marlene Dietrich, Josef von Sternberg was just another filmmaker toiling away in the early days of the Hollywood studio system. After doing journeyman work as an assistant director throughout the late 1910s and helming modest directorial efforts of his own in the mid 1920s, he found a niche at Paramount studios where his uniquely European blend of dreamlike expressionism and sexually-charged melodrama made him one of the most distinctive voices in late silent cinema. Three of his greatest triumphs were released by the Criterion Collection in a 2010 boxset: watershed gangster melodrama Underworld (1927), tragic historical psychodrama The Last Command (1928), and moody chiaroscuro romance The Docks of New York (1928). Now, nine years later, Criterion is re-releasing the boxset with new Blu-ray transfers, priming the pump for a new generation of filmgoers and collectors to rediscover and experience one of the true giants of silent cinema at the height of his powers. True to form, Criterion hasn’t skimped out on the special features, more than living up to its early reputation in the 1980s as being “a film school in a box”: the set boasts six scores for the three films, two supplemental video essays, a Swedish television interview with Sternberg himself, and a massive insert booklet stuffed with original writings on the trilogy alongside other goodies like a lengthy excerpt from his autobiography Fun in a Chinese Laundry.

Though maybe not the most popular or well known of the three films, Underworld has a legitimate claim to being the most influential, as it’s credited with codifying and popularizing many of the visual tropes and themes we now associate with gangster cinema. Adapted from a story by legendary Hollywood scribe Ben Hecht—whose Oscar-winning story treatment is included in the essay booklet—Sternberg nixed the screenplay’s original hard-boiled grittiness in favor of a more lyrical romanticism underscored by an honor-bound machismo that’d been prevalent even in the earliest proto-gangster films like D. W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912). The film tells the story of a love triangle between gangster kingpin “Bull” Weed (George Bancroft), his girlfriend “Feathers” McCoy (Evelyn Brent), and his best friend “Rolls Royce” Wensel (Clive Brook), a lawyer-turned-alcoholic he pulled out of the gutter and helped reform. The actual romance storyline feels rushed and almost secondary to the film’s central themes of brotherhood and loyalty, both of which are tested in the third act when Rolls is forced to choose between running off with Feathers or risking his life to rescue Bull from a gun battle with the police after escaping from prison. The film is a marvel to look at, juxtaposing an almost Lubitschian obsession with mannered, manicured surfaces—these gangsters live in smartly furnished city apartments, patron lavish jewelry shops, and attend ticket tape balls where they wear suits, dance, and vote for beauty contests—and a chilling eye for expressionist shadows and darkness. Nowhere are these two tendencies better blended than in a late scene where an on-the-lam Bull feeds a helpless kitten a few drops of milk from his finger while in hiding. It’s a moment that’d make Jean Renoir green with envy. Also of note is the aforementioned gun battle which manages to excite even by today’s standards thanks to its excellent use of montage.

The boxset’s second film, The Last Command, isn’t just the best film of the trilogy in this humble writer’s opinion, it’s also one of the last true masterpieces of the silent cinema medium before it was usurped by sound. (It was released in January 1928, just a few months prior to Bryan Foy’s Lights of New York, the first all-talking full-length film.) It’s also overshadowed somewhat by its reputation as the only surviving American film starring Emil Jannings, one of the greatest performers of the silent era who nevertheless became persona non grata following World War Two thanks to his enthusiastic involvement in the Nazi cinema industry. If it helps, modern audiences can be assured that at the very least the Jannings seen here hadn’t yet become one of Hitler’s faithful. In any case, his performance here equals any he ever gave, even his career-defining turns in F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) and Sternberg’s later The Blue Angel (1930). Here he plays Sergius Alexander, cousin of the executed Russian Czar and former commander of his armies. After failing to stop the revolutionaries, Sergius fled to America where—in a post-modern twist—he gets a job in Hollywood playing himself in a role directed by Leo Andreyev (William Powell), the very Bolshevik who overthrew him.

The film’s crown jewel is the lengthy middle section comprised of a flashback to the revolution where Sternberg’s trademark expressionism transformed the revolt into a nightmare complete with ghoulish crowd scenes, shocking carnage, and Sergius’s acutely sadistic public humiliation. It’s here where the film’s central themes of pageantry and performance fully coalesce. Indeed, it’s not the tenacity of the revolutionaries that ultimately wins the day, it’s the Czar’s foolish insistence on staging an unnecessary offensive for his viewing pleasure that gives the Bolsheviks the opportunity to turn the tide of the war. By playing at war instead of actually fighting one, the Czar doomed himself, Sergius, and Russia. This thematic preoccupation with performance comes full circle at the end where Sergius has a mental breakdown, hallucinates he’s reliving an imaginary final battle, and dies while onset Andreyev’s film. Only the film’s Hollywood-mandated conservatism in depicting the Bolsheviks as rabid monsters and the Royalists as righteous, benevolent depots tempers its greatness as it results in a politically confused climax where Andreyev the Bolshevik eulogizes Sergius the Czarist as a “great man” who “truly loves Russia” despite being surely responsible for countless untold pogroms and purges.

The final film, The Docks of New York, is the most famous of the three and the most blatant triumph of form over function, of style over substance. The film is a love story whose machinations are as ham-fisted and blunt as those in Underworld: a brusque tramp steamer sailor named Bill (played by a returning George Bancroft) falls in love with a suicidal prostitute named Mae (Betty Compson) after saving her from drowning. The two commiserate on their equally desperate and destitute lives, their extensive sexual pasts, and their loneliness before deciding to get married the same night they meet at the saloon near where Bill’s ship is anchored. In the meantime Mae fights off the advances of Bill’s tyrannical superior Andy (Mitchell Lewis), finally shooting him in an act of self-defense. From here the film deteriorates via forced melodrama—one of Mae’s fellow prostitutes takes the blame for the killing (and gets promptly forgotten by the film), Bill ships out only to change his mind at the last minute and return, and Mae swears to wait for him to complete a 60-day jail sentence for an unrelated crime. In any case, the film provides some of the most alluring and hypnotic surfaces of Sternberg’s entire oeuvre, whether it be solemn figures scuttling through pea soup fog or a solemn wedding taking place in the middle of a drunken Dionysian revel. The story may be weak, but the images—oh, the images—are as powerful and unforgettable as ever.

A restored version of Filibus (1915) plays Anthology Film Archives Thursday10/24

I was intending on running a capsule review of FILIBUS in a couple of weeks with several other films but with a restored version playing Thursday in NYC I have decided to run it as a stand alone piece now. 

Italian serial about a  female super villain operating from a dirigible who takes on a  detective who is out to get her. She has multiple personalities and in one she courts the detectives sister. Grand adventure serial is more fluid and more action packed than many other films of the period. While there are moments that are patently odd the film still holds our attention with its wonderful sense that anything  is possible,

For tickets to the screening Thursday at the Anthology Film Archives go here

The Unholy Three (1925) at Town Hall

The original silent version of The Unholy Three played a couple of weeks back at New York City’s Town Hall. Normally that wouldn’t have been any big deal but the music was by Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields with assists by Daniel (Lemony Snickett) Handler and Pinkie Weitzman. It was a wonderful score that mixed ukulele, viola, and accordion with synthesizer and plastic pigs.

The night began awkwardly as the fact that Daniel Handler’s monitor went down so that time had to be filled while they got it up and running. Pinkie told some jokes, Daniel kibitzed and Stephin sang an unreleased Magnetic Fields song.

The film began with the audience participation short SISSY-BOY SLAP PARTY by Guy Maddin which requires the audiences to clap whenever anyone is slapped. This resulted in lots of laughs and what sounded like thunderous applause.

The Unholy Three is a trip. I haven’t seen this version in years and it was cool to see it scored live.

The plot has three side show performers Tweedledee a midget (Harry Earles), Hercules a strong man (Victor McLaughlin) and Echo, A Ventriloquist (Lon Chaney) setting up a pet store where they sold parrots to the rich. When the birds failed to speak they would go to the homes and case them for later burglary. Tensions within the group begin to grow as their accomplice Rosie (Mae Busch) falls for their store clerk Hector. When an act of kindness prevents the Echo from going out on a robbery Tweedledee and Hercules go by themselves. A man is killed and little girl hurt. Suspicion falls on the group because they were in the house seeing about a non-talking parrot a day or so before the killing.

A lurid melodrama that is both funny on purpose and because time has marched on since it was made, The Unholy Three is wild ride. I mean there is a killer ape in the film just because Tod Browning wanted to have a killer ape in it. There is a real sense of sleaze to some of what happens…but more importantly there is a real sense of emotion to what happens. You genuinely feel for the characters on screen. Sure Hector is nebbish, but you understand that he genuinely loves Rosie. We also bleed for Echo and his unrequited love for her as well. We know he will do anything to make sure she gets her heart’s desire, which is the love of the guy who loves the goodness he sees in her. I may have been chuckling at some of what goes on but when Echo release her from her promise at the end I got misty because Chaney was such a good actor that you could see all of the pain underneath the brave face.

It is interesting to note that McLaughlin said that he truly learned how to act from talking to and working with Chaney because he was simply that good.

The Unholy Three is a great deal of fun, more so when seen on the big screen with a killer score….

The End Of The World (1916)

Danish film about the end of the world is probably the first post apocalyptic film ever made. It is also a messy duck of a film with way too much going on for a 77 minute film.

The film begins as we watch people from various walks of life going through their daily routines. Wen word reaches the population that a comet will touch the earth chaos reigns. Then the comet comes and wipes out pretty much everyone.

Long meaningful sequences fill much of the first hour as director August Blom goes about setting up stories lines with very clear moral implications. He is making a film with a point and not just something with a spectacular ending.  This makes for slow going as we are given probably way too much to chew on before the comet comes.

Once the comet comes and the world deals with the effects of the comet the film becomes haunting as actual locations of destroyed homes and landscapes are used to reflect the destruction. There is a realness to the end of the world that I don't think any other similar film has ever had- we feel that this is the end. It makes for one hell of a pay off.

While far from perfect THE END OF THE WORLD is a real curio and recommended to anyone who wants to see the first end of the world film or just an intriguing  footnote with the warning that this can be a slow go for a chunk of it.

The restored Shiraz: A Romance of India (1928) opens in New York Friday at the Metrograph

Based on a play by Niranjan Pal Shiraz tells the story of Shiraz and the love his life the princess Selima. The two had met when Selima was found by Shiraz’s father as a small child, after her caravan was attacked by bandits and she was left for dead. The pair were raised as brother and sister, however after a turn of events Selima ends up sold as a slave to the royal court. She then catches the eye of the prince, later emperor and intrigue occurs.

Shiraz: A Romance From India is probably a film unlike any other you’ve ever seen. Shot on location in India, with an all Indian cast by a German director and a crew that was a mix of Indian and European filmmakers the film it is full of images that put us right in the middle of the action in ways that other films simply can’t. It’s clear we are in real places and seeing real people and not the typical dress up of the filmmakers of Europe or Hollywood. Watching the film I found myself going back through the film a second time, not to watch the drama but simply look at the settings and the faces and the world the film creates.

A soapy melodrama that ends in melancholy, it is not giving anything away to say the film has to do with the building of the Taj Mahal, the story is a tear jerking tale of love that crosses classes. We know this isn’t going to end well for the lovers, though I’m guessing that you won’t see how it’s going to play out. I know I didn’t.

Personally I like the film, but I am not madly passionate about it. I like it more for the technical aspects of the film than the film itself.  Before you close your mind and instantly decide that this means the film isn’t good, understand that in this case it is purely a matter of personal taste. I am not a fan of love stories of this sort (I’m not a fan of say the works of Nicholas Spars for example). Sad love stories don’t speak to me as they do to others. I'm not high on the film because the story is the sort that isn’t my cup of tea.

The love story not being my cup of tea aside, you really should go see this film when it plays on a big screen. The images, mixed with Grammy Award-nominated Anoushka Shankar‘s score make this film that is why we go to the movies- a glorious trip to another world and time.

Shiraz: A Romance of India opens Friday at New York’s Metrograph and is recommended.

GENUINE A TALE OF A VAMPIRE (aka Tragedy of a Vampire aka Tragedy of a Room aka...) (1920)

Robert Wiene's follow up to THE CABINET OF DR CALAGARI was GENUINE A TALE OF A VAMPIRE it was and is one of the most god awful messes I've run across.

The plot of the film has something about Genuine coming to life out of a book or painting (depending on the version) and running off . She then becomes a high priestess somewhere, is taken prisoner by a rival tribe who sells her into slavery. She is then bought by an old man who keeps her locked up. Various people fall under her spell. The old man is killed, Genuine treats everyone badly and then the towns people all come in and kill her.

WTF doesn't begin to describe it. I was watching the version put out by Alpha Video but was so confused I started doing research only to find that what I thought was the plot was more or less the plot give or take some details.

Considered a bomb when it was first released I'm absolute saddened that this piece of crap has survived the last century when other films were lost to the sands of time.

Avoid this one at all costs.

Film Diary Post:Island of the Lost (1921)

August 4- Film as Filler Part 2

As the installation of Windows dragged on and I had to just sit wait for it to do it’s magic I put on ISLAND OF THE LOST a recently rediscovered German version of the Island of Dr Moreau. The film is included as an extra on the Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau Blu-ray.

The plot has a man reading in a paper that a bottle has washed up on shore with a message that seems to be from his long lost wife. She had disappeared years before while in London and was never heard from again. He’s unhappy since he’s about to be remarried but feels he must do something. Heading off in his submarine with a friend, a quack doctor who advertises he has made synthetic people, he goes to see what has become of his ex. Once there he runs into a Dr McClelland who is up to no good.

A seemingly unending 66 minutes long the film is largely an outdated comedy. That’s a polite way of saying it’s not funny. Even allowing for the racist jokes, the humor here is just not funny. Why would a doctor have fake patients? It makes no sense. Then once the characters get to the so called desert island the film just fails to function as the actors wander around the wilderness, a Chinese doctor bemoans wanting opium and the beat men show up in the final 20 minutes. None of it makes any sense.

Its so disposable I started to watch the Windows Set up screen and was more excited when the percentage of completion went up.

If you ever wanted to know a film that I would never have mentioned on Unseen this is it. Had I not been doing this a s journal-esque entries this would never have been a blip.

Salome (1923)

Alla Nazimova stars in a an adaption of Oscar Wilde's play of the same name. It is a trip and a half.

Telling the story of Salome and her lust for John the Baptist, the film is a smoldering cauldron of lusting desires as Herod lust for Salome who becomes entranced with a jailed John the Baptist who wants none of her attention. Spurned she agrees to dance for her step father if he'll give her anything. He agrees only to be horrified that she wants the Baptists severed head to kiss.

Lets face it this is one of the most lustful, sexual films you'll ever see where everyone remains dressed. Sex oozes off the screen and on to the floor. Salome is pure sex. While she is at first seemingly unaware of her status as a lust object, she eventually full embraces it to get what she wants. She's so sexual that even the obviously gay guards want to have her.

This film will make you hot under the collar.

A decided piece of art, the film appears to be Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's play come to life.come They are beautiful, if minimal black and white sets and costumes that are worthy of being hung on your wall. However at the same time the film's one flaw is that the film can be overly arty to the point that you end up admiring what you are seeing instead of falling passionately in love with it.

Ultimately this is a must see for anyone who loves film or any sort of visual medium.  This is a true piece of art.

Now to try and track down a screening in a theater so I can see it BIG.

The Tempest (1927)

Very good romantic/political drama set in Imperial Russia reveals just how good John Barrymore really was.

The plot of the film has peasant Barrymore trying to get a commission in the army. Since the upper ranks are full of the aristocracy his ascent is unlikely. Thanks to his friendship with an influential general he gets his commission. However he runs afoul of things when he has several smoldering encounters with a princess that result in him being disciplined and tossed in prison. That doesn’t last long as Barrymore is freed in the revolution and the chance for revenge could very soon be his.

In a film full of pot boiling plot threads and smoldering looks John Barrymore makes it all real. I don’t know how he does it but he manages to make it all seem real even though it’s clearly a grand soap opera.

Watching his silent and some of his lesser known sound films I find that I’ve come to be truly amazed by his talent. How the hell did this guy do this. He never seems to be acting he just seems to be. Even watching some of his later films when he was stone drunk and reading off cue cards its clear that he was in command. I know in some of his Bulldog Drummond appearances he seems to be winking at the audience and in danger of stopping things to ask “can you believe this nonsense?” but at the same time he is very much there and in the moment.

In THE TEMPEST Barrymore was more than just there, he was invested and the result is it’s a quiet understated performance that results in a deeply touching movie.

Worth tracking down.