Maciste (1915)

MACISTE (1915)
Article 4190 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-29-2013
Directed by Luigi Romano Borgnetto and Vincenzo Denizot
Featuring Bartolomeo Pagano, Leone Papa, Clementina Gay
Country: Italy
What it is: Thriller

When her father dies and her mother is abducted by a scheming uncle intent on acquiring the father’s fortune, a young woman, desperate for help, approaches the actor who played a heroic slave in the movie CABIRIA. He agrees to help her bring the criminals to justice.

CABIRIA is one of the touchstones of cinema history; it was one of the most impressive epics of its day, and it proved to be an inspiration for D.W. Griffith when he made INTOLERANCE. It also makes for an interesting footnote in the history of fantastic cinema, in that this is the movie to first introduce the character of Maciste to the movie screen. The character proved very popular, not just to audiences but to the actor who played him, muscular Bartolomeo Pagano. Pagano then made a career of playing the character, and even made “Maciste” his stage name. This was the first of his follow-ups to CABIRIA.

Oddly enough, the movie doesn’t really qualify as belonging to the fantastic genre on its own terms; though the character of Maciste is strong here, he does not have super-strength, and the story belongs to the realm of crime thrillers rather than fantasy. Nevertheless, I’m absolutely delighted at having had the opportunity to cover it, because it’s a real treat. The central conceit in itself is charming; Pagano is essentially playing himself (which is to say, the actor who played Maciste in CABIRIA), and he finds himself adopting the character of his persona to perform his own acts of heroism, and by the end of the movie, he’s even calling himself Maciste. There are two really striking things about this movie. First, Pagano performs his own impressive stunts. Second, a wicked sense of humor pervades the film; I laughed more often watching this movie than I do most comedies from the period. In particular, I liked a gag in which a criminal trying to escape from Maciste successfully jumps off of moving train… only to be scooped up by Maciste a few windows down and pulled back inside. Quite frankly, this movie was a lot of fun.

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The Cricket on the Hearth (1909)

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH (1909)
Article 4189 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-28-2013
Directed by D.W. Griffith
Featuring Owen Moore, Violet Mersereau, Linda Arvidson
Country: USA
What it is: Dickensian drama

A young man, having been at sea for three years, finds that his girl is now engaged to a much older man who she doesn’t love. In order to get close to her and win her back, he disguises himself as an old man. However, the disguise is penetrated by a man who thinks the stranger is having an affair with his wife…

From what I gather, a stage version of this story was, for a while, more popular than the stage version of “A Christmas Carol”. I’m assuming that it was still very popular at the time this version was made; I found it rather difficult to follow myself, and this might be because people were expected to already be familiar with the story. After watching it, I had to hunt up a couple of plot descriptions to figure it out, and one thing became apparent; the fantastic content in the story (to wit, a cricket from the hearth that appears as a fairy to keep the jealous husband from committing murder) seems to have been jettisoned completely for this adaptation; the husband does hover around a fireplace a bit, but if he’s talking to a fairy, it’s not apparent. That leaves us with a confusing and not quite satisfying melodrama, and I also found it interesting that the Christmas element seems to be missing as well. This is certainly not Griffith at his best.

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Faust (1910)

FAUST (1910)
Article 4188 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-27-2013
Directed by Enrico Guazzoni
Featuring Ugo Bazzini, Alfredo Bracci, Giuseppe Gambardella
Country: Italy
What it is: Dealings with the devil

Faust sells his soul to the devil for youth and pleasure, and falls for the beautiful Marguerite.

I’m making some guesses on the credits above; the IMDB listing for this has a problem because it mixes up credits for three different productions of the story, and since this is the Italian version from Cines, I picked out the Italian names from the cast, and hope I got it right. It’s probably the most elaborate telling of the story I’ve encountered that predates Murnau’s take on the story. Beside that, I’d say the most striking facet of this version is the extreme theatricality of the acting, especially from the actor playing Mephistopheles; if this weren’t a silent movie, I’m sure all the actors would be shouting their lines at the top of their lungs to reach the rafters. Unfortunately, the theatricality becomes more annoying than fun, and given the fact that the production is somewhat flat, this tends to make it one of the less appealing versions of the story. I wonder what the other 1910 versions of the story were like.

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Red Riding Hood (1907)

RED RIDING HOOD (1907)
aka Little Red Riding Hood, Le petit chaperon rouge
Article 4187 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-26-2013
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Fairy tale

Red Riding Hood is sent out to deliver a baked tart and a pot of butter to her ailing grandmother, but will be she outwitted by the hungry wolf?

This is apparently a slightly edited “show-at-home” version of the original short; all of the original scenes are there, but they have been shortened, and copious intertitles were added. Granted, given the familiarity of this story, I’m not sure how many of them were necessary. There are some points of interest in this version of the story. The titles tell us that Little Red Riding Hood’s red riding hood was made by her mother (thus delving into the mythic origins of Little Red Riding Hood), the wolf is played by a live animal (who seems very friendly, even if we do get a scene of it attacking grandma), the wolf disguised as Grandma invites Little Red Riding Hood into bed with her (which I’m sure is meant in all innocence, but once you let your imagination run wild, you end up in all sorts of places you’d rather not be), and this version of the story omits the woodsman, which means the final scene leaves only one character still living in Grandma’s house at the end, thus rendering it one of the more depressing versions of the story, as well as making the revelations about Little Red Riding Hood’s mythic origins rather a wasted effort. Still, I will admit, I was entertained by this one.

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Love by the Light of the Moon (1901)

LOVE BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON (1901)
Article 4186 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-24-2013
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Comic trick short

A couple goes outside to spoon in the moonlight, but find that they’re being watched…

What we have here is your basic one-gag comic short. Outside of the two lovers, there’s a third character, and he’s listed in the title, and the fact that he appears as a character at all is where the fantastic content lies. It’s mildly amusing, but hardly essential; it’s the type of silent short not really worth hunting up specifically, but if you should stumble upon it, it’s worth a peek.

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The Diabolic Tenant (1909)

THE DIABOLIC TENANT (1909)
aka Le locataire diabolique
Article 4185 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-23-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Andre Melies, George Melies
Country: France
What it is: Elaborate trick short

A tenant rents an empty apartment, and decorates, furnishes and populates it with the contents of his small suitcase. However, he doesn’t have enough money to pay the rent, so…

This is one of Melies’s best and most entertaining of his later shorts… but it has one drawback, and it’s that it’s a retread of sorts. It’s basically a remake of SATAN IN PRISON from a couple of years earlier; it’s almost entirely the same premise, but with a slightly different storyline. Still, the premise itself was pretty sturdy to begin with, and I don’t think I enjoyed this one any less than I did its model; in fact, I think this one is a bit funnier. And the sheer volume of trickery almost requires that the whole thing move at a rapid clip.

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Butterflys (1906)

BUTTERFLYS (1906)
aka Le farfalle
Article 4184 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-22-2013
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: Italy
What it is: Early dance short

A butterfly is taken captive, and another butterfly undertakes to rescue it.

As anybody who has been following my series lately has no doubt noticed, I’m spending a lot of time on movies from the very early days of cinema. No doubt there are some people who wonder why I’m bothering to spend so much time with this era, and if anyone asks, I’m armed with an answer; since my project does aspire to be comprehensive and is somewhat geared toward emphasizing the early years first, I’m bound to cover this era extensively. My own problem with this answer is that it sounds a bit dismissive; it’s almost as if I was saying that if I had my druthers, I’d skip it and go on to later stuff. The truth of the matter is different; quite frankly, I love the silent era and I love covering these very early movies. Why? Because I think there’s something exciting about exploring the early years of any craft of this sort, before the rules and traditions were set and where people would experiment in a way that is hard to imagine them trying these days.

Just for example, I’ve become a bit fascinated with the whole phenomenon of hand-tinting. It seems to me that it was only in the very early days of movies that this approach was taken, and some of the stunning results I’ve seen make me regret that it’s something of a lost art. I thought about that while I was watching this short, in which a butterfly’s wings change colors throughout the movie. It’s the type of novel touch that seems natural to the art of hand-tinting. I do wonder what the original music for it sounded like; the copy I found featured a remix of Bjork’s song “Sacrifice” (an acquired taste, to be sure), but it looks to me like the short is fairly complete as it is. Outside of that, there’s really not much in the way of special effects; the anthropomorphic butterflies are the fantastic content, and the whole short emphasizes the use of dance; it looks like a short ballet. But it’s noticing the little touches here and there that makes exploring these early shorts an adventure of its own, and it’s one I’m glad I’ve undertaken.

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Krazy’s Race of Time (1937)

KRAZY’S RACE OF TIME (1937)
Article 4183 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-21-2013
Directed by Manny Gould and Ben Harrison
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animated cartoon

A vision of the future is presented that culminates with Krazy Kat taking a trip to Mars.

Much as I love cartoons, they’re not all great, and this is one of those that doesn’t quite make the grade. It’s mostly an assortment of gags about the future (the year 1999, they say at one point), and with the exception of one gag involving a propeller hat, there’s no real laughs here (and even the exception is more of smile than a laugh). If Krazy Kat has a personality, this doesn’t give him any opportunity to really show it, and the whole Mars sequence is particularly disappointing. Maybe those are the reasons this one is somewhat forgotten in the annals of time.

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The Living Playing Cards (1904)

THE LIVING PLAYING CARDS (1904)
aka Les cartes vivantes
Article 4182 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-20-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Magic short

A magician performs some tricks with a giant playing card that can change its pattern.

The title is derived from the fact that the face cards end up emerging as real people. Yes, this is another of Melies’s magic trick shorts, and in some ways is pretty ordinary. He does, however, do a particularly nice job of staging this one, especially in the way he sets up some of the humorous bits, such as the opening part where he becomes frustrated at trying to get the audience to tell which card from an ordinary size deck he’s holding, requiring him to magically increase its size. This is one of the better examples of this particular type of short.

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Little Nemo (1911)

LITTLE NEMO (1911)
aka Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics
Article 4181 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-19-2013
Directed by Winsor McCay and J. Stuart Blackton
Featuring Winsor McCay, John Bunny, George McManus
Country: USA
What it is: Live action/animation

A cartoonist makes a promise that he will make some of his comic characters move through animation.

In the history of motion pictures, Winsor McCay is primarily known for giving us one of the great early animated shorts, GERTIE THE DINOSAUR. This one predates it, and serves as something of a warm-up for that one. The structure is basically the same; the live action sequences begin with McCay stating his goal to a group of people. We then have a few scenes of him at work, usually with the addition of some comic pratfalls (usually involving lots of pieces of paper falling onto the floor). The movie concludes with the presentation of the animation. This one isn’t quite at the level of the Gertie short, largely because the animation, though well done, is rather aimless; it lacks the characterization and the interaction that add to the charm of the later movie. Still, as a warm-up, it’s interesting, and part of the animation features two characters sitting on thrones in a dragon’s mouth, so there is some fantastic content.

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