Month: January 2021

The Moon of Israel (1924)

THE MOON OF ISRAEL (1924)
aka Die Sklavenkonigin
Article 5362 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-3-2017
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Featuring Maria Corda, Adelqui Migliar, Arlette Marchal
Country: Austria / UK
What it is: Biblical epic

During the time of Moses, the son of the Egyptian pharaoh falls in love with a Hebrew slave girl. Complications arise.

The most recent Michael Curtiz movie before this one that I’d seen is NOAH’S ARK from 1928, and from these two movies, I get the sense that he had a penchant during the twenties of adapting Biblical stories with appended elaborate subplots and climaxes that involved lots of extras getting wet. The title refers to the title of the Hebrew slave girl, and most of the movie is concerned with the meeting between her and the pharaoh’s son, and their subsequent romance. There’s a fair amount of spectacle here; outside of the parting of the Red Sea sequence (which is very well done), there’s a scene where the Hebrew slave girl calls on Jehovah to match the power of the Egyptian gods. There are also plenty of impressive crowd scenes. It’s a decent movie, though it’s perhaps very slow to get going; it’s nearly three-quarters over before Moses really swings into action. However, one circumstance added a rather comic touch to my viewing of the movie. My print has title cards in French, but a quick check of my subtitle options indicated that an English translation existed on the print. The latter helped a lot, but it became obvious early on whoever did the translation was not an accomplished linguist; many of the translations felt like they were done on a “word by word” basis by someone who had no idea of how English sentences are structured, and many of the subtitles were comically incoherent.

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Mare Nostrum (1926)

MARE NOSTRUM (1926)
Article 5361 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-2-2017
Directed by Rex Ingram
Featuring Apollon Uni, Alex Nova, Kada-Abd-el-Kader
Country: USA
What it is: War drama

During World War I, a married sea captain from Barcelona falls in love with a beautiful woman (who resembles a picture of the sea goddess Amphitrite) while on a visit to Naples. He discovers that she is a German spy and becomes enmeshed in espionage.

The title refers to an ancient phrase for the Mediterranean Sea (where much of the action takes place) as well as the name of the ship of the sea captain. If the story sounds like a doomed romance, that’s because it is. It is, however, a very good one, and it has a number of memorable sequences. My favorites usually involve a German U-Boat prowling through the water in search of ships to sink, but there’s also a memorable chase scene through the streets of Versailles; the movie was shot in European locations. The fantastic elements aren’t a major part of the story, but they are striking and effective. There are two scenes featuring the sea goddess Amphitrite in action; her appearances bookend the movie. There’s also the momentary appearance of a ghost of a certain character (probably a hallucination of guilt), and the appearance of Death whose grotesque hand wipes a ship’s name off of a list. Despite these touches, the movie is primarily a war romance drama.

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V for Victory (1941)

V FOR VICTORY (1941)
Article 5360 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-1-2017
Directed by Norman McLaren
No cast
Country: Canada
What it is: Victory bonds commercial

Buy Victory Bonds!

This is another one of those shorts that ends up being a virtual fantasy by dint of the simple fact that it’s non-realistic. The action consists of a stick figure man marching to a rousing march; he keeps transfiguring himself into a giant V which causes the words “Victory Bonds” to appear; it’s obviously intended to help the war effort. So, basically I’m reviewing a public service commercial, but I’ve done that before. I couldn’t help but notice that the short basically uses the same animation approach to the work of Emile Cohl, albeit more focused and less given to “stream of consciousness”. It’s entertaining enough, but I’m glad it doesn’t run much longer than two minutes.

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Ugly Duckling (1939)

UGLY DUCKLING (1939)
Article 5359 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-31-2017
Directed by Jack Cutting and Clyde Geronimi
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Fairy tale adaptation

A duck couple is shocked when one of their hatchlings doesn’t look or sound like the others, and soon the little guy is abandoned and left to find his way through the world.

This is Disney plying the whimsy trade here, and though I prefer my cartoons more comical, this has a few moments. My favorites include the reaction of the father and mother ducks to the discovery of the different-looking offspring (let’s just say that domestic bliss is not attained), and the scene where the hatchling thinks he’s found companionship with a decoy duck. There are no talking animals in the usual sense here, which is not to say they don’t communicate; the ducks do have something of a “quack” language that sounds like Donald Duck without recognizable words. That does, however, leave us in a strange position as far as the fantastic content goes; though we can’t quite call them anthropomorphic, the animals are given certain recognizable human emotions, but admittedly, that’s very light as far as fantastic content goes. It’s been a while since I’ve read the original story, but I don’t think this short follows it; the ending is certainly different from how I remember it.

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Une indigestion (1902)

UNE INDIGESTION (1902)
aka Up-to-Date Surgery
Article 5358 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-30-2017
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Grotesque trick short

A man with a stomach ache goes to the doctor and gets “treated”.

This is one of the few extant Melies shorts that didn’t make it to the DVD sets. It’s also one of his most grotesque shorts; the treatment requires the removal of the arms, legs and head of the patient with a saw at one point. The patient is then cut open and all manner of paraphernalia is removed from his innards, though the doctor does remove the heart at one point as well. Granted, it’s all done in the typical Melies style, so it’s more for laughs than horror. I’m glad to say that surgery is much less invasive nowadays. And, to his credit, after the operation, the surgeon does reattach the limbs (albeit not without some difficulty).

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Topsy and Eva (1927)

TOPSY AND EVA (1927)
Article 5357 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-29-2017
Directed by Del Lord, D.W. Griffith and Lois Weber
Featuring Rosetta Duncan, Vivian Duncan, Gibson Gowland
Country: USA
What it is: Famed drama recast as slapstick comedy

The St. Claire family buys two slaves who have been auctioned off when the original owners went broke. However, when a fire destroys his cotton crop and he can’t pay for them, the evil and vicious slave seller Simon Legree seeks to recover the slaves.

For the record, I’ve already covered one version of UNCLE TOM’S CABIN for this series; the ending of the story involves a miracle of sorts. The story was so familiar that I can’t really say I’m surprised that a slapstick comic version of the tale exists; though in some ways the story here is told straight, it’s primarily a vehicle for slapstick mayhem courtesy of Rosetta Duncan (a white woman) in the role of the young slave Topsy (a black character). It’s based on a Broadway version of the show that was a musical, much of which must have been lost in a silent movie. IMDB lists Lois Weber as one of the directors, though the trivia section says she refused to direct this one because it was “racially insensitive”. And in some ways it is; stereotypes abound, and Topsy herself comes across at times as a somewhat subhuman character. Still, I can’t help but be impressed at a few things; it’s one of the rare cases where we see Three Stooges-style slapstick taken on by a female (I can’t help but notice Del Lord listed as the director), and Topsy is openly insolent to so many of the white characters in the story that I’m sure some audience members of the time were taken aback; I’m sure the only way they got away with it is because she was being played by a white person in blackface rather than a black person. Oddly enough, the usual fantastic content in the story is soft-pedaled this time; all we see is Topsy praying and Eva reviving, which makes the miracle one that is only implied. Still, there are a few other touches of the fantastic. The opening scene has storks delivering babies, and there is a quick scene in heaven with black angels shooting dice. Still, the most interesting moment in this regard is a scene in a graveyard which plays like a horror comedy; Topsy passes through unaware that several slaves have buried themselves in the snow there, and when they dig themselves out, she thinks the dead are rising from their graves.

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Three Little Wolves (1936)

THREE LITTLE WOLVES (1936)
Article 5356 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-28-2017
Directed by David Hand
Featuring the voices of Billy Bletcher, Pinto Colvig, Dorothy Compton
Country: USA
What it is: Disney Silly Symphony

The Big Bad Wolf and his three sons hatch a plot to catch the pigs by pretending to be Little Bo Peep and her sheep.

Lest we forget, one of Disney’s most famous shorts was THE THREE LITTLE PIGS, and I was rather surprised to find they also did one called the above title. I was hoping for an inversion of the original cartoon (with the pigs as the villains and the wolves as the victims), but this turns out to be more of a straightforward sequel which references the original by reprising the song. It borrows from a couple of other sources as well; you’ve seen the Bo Peep reference in the plot description, and the general plot owes quite a bit to the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!”. Like most sequels, it’s not the equal to the original, but it does have two highlights. One is the use of an elaborate machine called a “Wolf Pacifier”. The other is one of the rare times where Disney throws out a joke that totally blindsides me; it’s how the pigs react when the wolf (in his Bo Peep costume) locks them in his house and swallows the key. It’s actually a pretty risque joke for a post-code cartoon.

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Malefices (1962)

MALEFICES (1962)
aka Where the Truth Lies
Article 5355 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-25-2017
Directed by Henri Decoin
Featuring Juliette Greco, Jean-Marc Bory, Liselotte Pulver
Country: France
What it is: Thriller

A female African explorer falls in love with a married veterinarian who comes to treat her jaguar. When he refuses to accompany her back to Africa, his wife suddenly takes ill. Is it possible the explorer is practicing voodoo?

This is another movie that has been rescued from my “ones that got away” list; it became available in France and I was able to order an import DVD. That being the case, I suspected there would be no English dubbing or subtitles, so I armed myself with a plot description so I could follow the movie at least somewhat; nevertheless, I do have to point out that my ability to judge it fairly is hampered by the language difference. I do know this much; several of my sources list the running time as 83 minutes, but my copy runs 101 minutes. Truth to tell, I’d rather have seen the 83 minutes version; at the longer length, it feels like it takes forever for the plot to get moving. Granted, it may be a lot more interesting if I understood the French dialogue, but given that its rating on IMDB is a little on the lukewarm side, I suspect that the pacing is a problem. It does have a nice twist and a memorable ending; the last 15 minutes are easily the best part of the movie. The presence of voodoo or black magic is the fantastic content, but you’ll have to see the movie yourself if you want to find out if that is real or imagined. I have to admit I was a little disappointed by this one.

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Along the Moonbeam Trail (1920)

ALONG THE MOONBEAM TRAIL (1920)
Article 5354 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-24-2017
Directed by Herbert M. Dawley and Willis H. O’Brien
Featuring Herbert M. Dawley, Alan Day, Chauncey Day
Country: USA
What it is: Dream fantasy

Two children and their uncle dream they encounter a fairy queen who grants them their wish for a magic aeroplane that will take them into outer space. They end up on a planet inhabited by dinosaurs.

I’ve been a bit lucky lately with movies on my “ones that got away” list; several have turned up in the last few weeks. This one may have been on the list the longest; it was considered lost until its rediscovery recently, and I’ve now had a chance to see the restored copy. The credits above are a combination of what is on IMDB and what I found on the movie itself. I believe the O’Brien credit above may be incorrect and the movie is entirely Dawley’s work. I knew the short involved dinosaurs (which is probably why it was originally attributed to O’Brien), but I always thought it had a curious title for a dinosaur movie. There’s actually a lot more fantastic content here than just the dinosaurs; fairies, magic aeroplanes, cosmic gods subbing as traffic directors, and human-faced moons all make appearances, and the first half is more like a Melies fantasy than a dinosaur movie. The dinosaurs show up for the second half; there’s a Stegosaurus, a Trachodon, a Pterodactyl and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The short isn’t quite complete; the ending is missing, for one thing, but the restoration has a summary of the ending, though the remaining footage was probably enough for you to figure out how it would end. This fantasy is a lot of fun, and I’m glad it’s become generally available.

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Transfigurations (1909)

TRANSFIGURATIONS (1909)
aka Les transfigurations
Article 5353 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-23-2017
Directed by Emile Cohl
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Partially animated silent short

A man with a “future-telling booth” allows customers to look inside to see how they or their loved ones will look in the future.

Despite the fact that the movie has a definite set-up, this is mostly an excuse for Emile Cohl to do what it is that he usually does – engage in stream-of-consciousness animation. Though he does mostly concentrate on changing human faces, he doesn’t limit himself to that; I don’t think anyone’s spouse is going to end up looking like a weather vane. Granted, most of the customers seem very unhappy with what they see in the booth; the only exception is the man who wants to see what his mother-in-law is really like, so the movie ends on a rather obvious joke. It’s pretty typical of the work of Cohl, and it’s a pretty fun short. I’m also not surprised that he had a short with this title; it describes most of his work.

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