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Post by Calidore on Nov 20, 2022 14:07:51 GMT -5
I’m doing the research. And I remember why I’ve never seen Spione, Judex or Fantomas. They are all so long! Each one is something of a commitment. Which certainly isn’t a dealbreaker, but none of them are something I would watch on a whim before going to bed. I am not going to try to see all of these before the end of the year. I’ll be very happy if I can sneak in Spione over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m sure it’s good! Fritz Lang is great! Have you seen Destiny? But I don’t always have the time or the energy to watch a long silent movie. I like to be sure I’m in the mood for it so I won’t be falling asleep.
I've never seen Judex or Fantomas, but Les Vampyres (which is also great), is a different style of serial from American chapterplays. These are ten standalone short movies of varying lengths, no cliffhangers. It's very easy to watch one or two at a time and pick them back up later.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 20, 2022 15:34:10 GMT -5
I’m doing the research. And I remember why I’ve never seen Spione, Judex or Fantomas. They are all so long! Each one is something of a commitment. Which certainly isn’t a dealbreaker, but none of them are something I would watch on a whim before going to bed. I am not going to try to see all of these before the end of the year. I’ll be very happy if I can sneak in Spione over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m sure it’s good! Fritz Lang is great! Have you seen Destiny? But I don’t always have the time or the energy to watch a long silent movie. I like to be sure I’m in the mood for it so I won’t be falling asleep. Judex and Fantomas are serials; so, you can watch a single chapter, in a sitting, then move on to the next, when you feel like it. generally speaking, the chapter is a mini-episode, with a longer story playing out over the course of things. You don't really have the cliffhangers of American serials, which was popularized by the Perils of Pauline. I believe Lang worked that way, too, with Spione. He did with Mabuse.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 21, 2022 16:49:16 GMT -5
By the time I went to bed last night, it was too late to watch a movie, so I decided to watch the 35-minute prologue to Judex.
The first YouTube video I checked was very blurry and I decided that would not suffice. I went to the Internet Archive and found a version that was very clear, like the master had just been filmed. It was lovely, but there was no sound.
I went back to YouTube and found a different Judex video that was quite a bit clearer than the first, and it also had the Robert Israel score.
So twenty minutes after I started trying to watch Judex, I was able to watch Judex!
I guess the average length of each episode is about 25 minutes. I’m going to be busy the next two weekends (I’m pet-sitting Thanksgiving weekend and going out of town the following weekend), but I should still probably be able to watch one or two episodes almost every day.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 21, 2022 16:54:50 GMT -5
I wanted to add that I’ve seen Les Vampyres. In the 1990s, either AMC or TCM showed Les Vampyres one episode per week on Sunday night. I taped them on VHS and usually watched them the next day when I got home from work.
I don’t remember them very well, but I do remember thinking it was a bit of a chore at times, with some very exciting segments in almost every episode.
I hadn’t realized until the last few days that Les Vampyres, Judex and Fantomas are all by the same two guys.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 21, 2022 17:21:47 GMT -5
I wanted to add that I’ve seen Les Vampyres. In the 1990s, either AMC or TCM showed Les Vampyres one episode per week on Sunday night. I taped them on VHS and usually watched them the next day when I got home from work. I don’t remember them very well, but I do remember thinking it was a bit of a chore at times, with some very exciting segments in almost every episode. I hadn’t realized until the last few days that Les Vampyres, Judex and Fantomas are all by the same two guys. Yeah, Louis Feuillade was the director and the seminal French director of the era. Musidora, the actress who played Irma Vep, in Les Vampires, is also in Judex. Fantomas was kind of slo going, in the first chapter and it wasn't until the second chapter that it moved into something more interesting than a murder and theft. Les Vampires was similarly slower, until Musidora entered the picture, as Irma Vep. Even then, you get some slow segments, as Phillipe is a bit of a dull hero, and then the more exciting caper and chase stuff. Lang is more of a stylist, but he was also working a decade later. The thing is, the Feuillade's Fantomas was very much in the style of the original Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre stories. They also matched the style of mysteries, of the era, which tended to be more of the drawing room variety. You do get a lot of people sitting around tables and desks, before the exciting parts. Perils of Pauline changed a lot of that, as it introduced the faster pace and the idea of cliffhangers, to draw people back for the next chapter. There is a Judex film, from 1964, with magician Channing Pollock as the hero. It is directed by Georges Franju, the director of the horror film Eyes Without a face. It follows the basic plot, but in a more modern pacing and sensibility, though it has a rather bizarre sequence, at a party, that was built around Pollock's stage act. Franju also directed the film Nuits rouges, aka Shadowman, which is inspired by Fantomas and similar. It features a secret society (basically, the Knights Templar), a historical artefact, and a criminal mastermind, ala Fantomas. It isn't quite up there with the Jean Marais trilogy of Fantomas films, of the 60s; but, it has its moments.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 25, 2022 23:29:27 GMT -5
I’m getting pretty close to the halfway point on Judex. I’m liking it a lot better than Les Vampyres.
The real hero is The Licorice Kid!
Judex is just a guy who wears a cape and a hat, and writes letters!
There’s always a scene where somebody is at a desk and getting a letter and opening it with a letter opener! It’s one of the weirdest tropes I ever saw.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 29, 2022 23:09:03 GMT -5
I’m getting pretty close to the halfway point on Judex. I’m liking it a lot better than Les Vampyres. The real hero is The Licorice Kid! Judex is just a guy who wears a cape and a hat, and writes letters! There’s always a scene where somebody is at a desk and getting a letter and opening it with a letter opener! It’s one of the weirdest tropes I ever saw. Happened a lot in Feiullade's other films, too. I think it was to have some action for the actor, since they had minimal staging and often had characters seated at tables. Probably a theatrical trope that carried over to early film.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 30, 2022 0:11:31 GMT -5
I thought for sure that one of the letter openers was going to be used to stab somebody at some point.
But I’ve only got two episodes to go and it hasn’t happened yet!
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 1, 2022 0:19:08 GMT -5
I finished Judex just a little bit ago.
Very impressive for 1916. Watchable, entertaining and fun.
I liked it quite a bit better than The Vampires.
But I don’t think I would quite say that I love it, and I’ll probably not ever watch it again.
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Post by berkley on Dec 1, 2022 1:40:11 GMT -5
Looking back over classic movies I've watched this past month, these are my favourites:
at the movie theatre:
Easy Street (1917) - Charlie Chaplin: - short (20-min) comedy with Chaplin's tramp persona getting hired as a policeman in to patrol a tough neighbourhood the cops are afraid of; so many funny moments it would be pointless to list them all; just one laugh after another.
The Scarecrow (1920) - Buster Keaton: - another short, mostly an extended chase-scene plus an inventive, gadget-filled dining scene early on. You can't beat these two-reel comedies for pacing and high concentration of memorable bits.
Safety Last (1922) - Harold Lloyd: - full-length silent comedy; my first time seeing it and there is lots more to enjoy besides the famous skyscraper-climbing sequence that its mostly famous for.
at home:
Nothing But the Truth (1941) - Elliott Nugent: - the third and last movie Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard made together and I probably would rate it a little lower than the other two, if only because the supernatural/thriller elements in the other two give them an added appeal for me. This one has a simple gimmick premise: To win a bet and save Goddard's charity money, Hope has to speak nothing but the truth for 24 hours. Funny, but slight.
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) - Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger: - note-perfect romantic drama, one of the best of its kind I've ever seen. Straightforward story-premise, but executed so flawlessly, with a well-written script and a set of appealing, likable characters, from the two leads down to the supporting players. Great use of setting as well, an isolated island off the coast of Scotland, photographed to telling effect.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 1, 2022 12:26:41 GMT -5
Here’s an old French film about a little boy who steals an elephant.
The actor is René Poyen, who would later play the Licorice Kid in Judex.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 1, 2022 12:37:15 GMT -5
Safety Last (1922) - Harold Lloyd: - full-length silent comedy; my first time seeing it and there is lots more to enjoy besides the famous skyscraper-climbing sequence that its mostly famous for. I love this movie! For a while, about 2010 to 2015, I was watching it every six months or so. I haven’t seen it for a while because I was watching some of the Lloyd movies I haven’t seen as often. Like The Freshman, Hot Water, The Kid Brother and some of the short films. I was kind of obsessed with Girl Shy for a time, so I saw that several times in the last few years. As much I love Hot Water and (especially) Girl Shy, I think Safety Last is not only his best movie, it’s one of the highlights of the silent era.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 1, 2022 12:54:54 GMT -5
Looking back over classic movies I've watched this past month, these are my favourites: at the movie theatre: Easy Street (1917) - Charlie Chaplin: - short (20-min) comedy with Chaplin's tramp persona getting hired as a policeman in to patrol a tough neighbourhood the cops are afraid of; so many funny moments it would be pointless to list them all; just one laugh after another. The Scarecrow (1920) - Buster Keaton: - another short, mostly an extended chase-scene plus an inventive, gadget-filled dining scene early on. You can't beat these two-reel comedies for pacing and high concentration of memorable bits. Safety Last (1922) - Harold Lloyd: - full-length silent comedy; my first time seeing it and there is lots more to enjoy besides the famous skyscraper-climbing sequence that its mostly famous for. That sounds super fun. One of the things I miss about not living in a city (one of many) is the opportunity to see old movies in a theater.
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Post by berkley on Dec 1, 2022 18:32:13 GMT -5
Looking back over classic movies I've watched this past month, these are my favourites: at the movie theatre: Easy Street (1917) - Charlie Chaplin: - short (20-min) comedy with Chaplin's tramp persona getting hired as a policeman in to patrol a tough neighbourhood the cops are afraid of; so many funny moments it would be pointless to list them all; just one laugh after another. The Scarecrow (1920) - Buster Keaton: - another short, mostly an extended chase-scene plus an inventive, gadget-filled dining scene early on. You can't beat these two-reel comedies for pacing and high concentration of memorable bits. Safety Last (1922) - Harold Lloyd: - full-length silent comedy; my first time seeing it and there is lots more to enjoy besides the famous skyscraper-climbing sequence that its mostly famous for. That sounds super fun. One of the things I miss about not living in a city (one of many) is the opportunity to see old movies in a theater.
It was a lot of fun. It was a Sunday afternoon and there were lots of families with small kids in the audience - which I had not been expecting but I suppose it makes sense. There were two women sitting right in front of me with a little girl, probably around 4 years old at a guess, all French-speaking, and she seemed to enjoy the short films especially.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 7, 2022 10:44:29 GMT -5
I watched a lot of Japanese movies over the last week or so.
The Sword of the Beast (1965) Zatoichi’s Cane Sword (1967) Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974) The Great Passage (2013) The Hungry Lion (2017)
I started to watch Shin Godzilla last night but I was dozing off because I was just too tired, so I turned it off and I’m going to finish it tonight.
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