“When we began to compare the typically American, typically European, and typically Russian films, we noticed that they were distinctly different from one another in their construction. We noticed that in a particular sequence of a Russian film there were, say, ten to fifteen splices, ten to fifteen different set-ups. In the European film there might be twenty to thirty such set-ups (one must not forget that this description pertains to the year 1916), while in the American film there would be from eighty, sometimes upward to a hundred, separate shots. The American films took first place in eliciting reactions from the audience; European films took second; and the Russian films, third. We became particularly intrigued by this, but in the beginning we did not understand it.” Эффект Кулешова [Kuleshov Effect] (Lev Kuleshov, 1918)
Aug
5
A closeup of a man, followed by a medium shot of a child in a coffin, then back to the man. Can you see how his expression changes? (via). DP: to be determined.
Celebrating Dia de Los Muertos [on November 1 and 2, of course]: a cemetery, coffin, or dead person*
– Lev Kuleshov, The Principles of Montage, from The Practice of Film Direction (pp. 183-195) (source)
Director Lev Kuleshov explains what happens when a scene is followed by a reaction shot. Depending on the preceding image, the viewer projects an emotion onto the performer's facial expression. In his most famous montage, made up of existing footage – because property is theft, we see matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine “react” to a bowl of soup, a little girl in a coffin, and a woman sprawled out on a divan.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.
1910s
L'eclisse del 17 aprile [An Eclipse of the Sun] (1912)
Apr
17
1912
Scientists in impeccable suits observing the 1912 solar eclipse. The colour used for tinting this scene, a turquoise, indicates moonlight/dusk. Image source: Cineteca di Bologna (via).
कालिया मर्दन [Kaliya Mardan / The Childhood of Krishna] (Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, 1919)
Apr
1
April Fools' Day
Shri Krishna (Mandakini Phalke, the director's seven-year old daughter), playing his flute with a twinkle in his eye. DP: Dhundiraj Govind Phalke.
A fool or jokester for April Fools' Day
As a child, Shri Krishna, the eighth avatar of Lord Vishnu, was a prankster. The Lord and his childhood friends would steal makhan and, if there was too much to eat all at once, would share it with the monkeys.
Kaliya Mardan is one of the handful films from India's early cinematic output that has survived. Do check your attic
“Bonsoir. Je m'appelle Rosalie!” Rosalie et son phonographe [Rosalie and Her Phonograph] (Romeo Bosetti, 1911)
Mar
28
Something-on-a-Stick Day
Rosalie (Sarah Duhamel) dances to her new phonograph. Duhamel makes eye contact with the viewer throughout the film, and even formally introduces herself during the intro.
A laugh out loud scene for Something on a Stick Day (USA)
Rosalie (the wonderful Sarah Duhamel) buys herself a phonograph and is delighted by the wonders it brings. Quick, the whole household should know!
Not only the obvious moments (no spoilers here), but the small, seemingly improvised bits is what makes Rosalie stand out above American productions of the time – with the exception of Roscoe Arbuckle's; his water bucket pun in His Wife's Mistakes (1916) still has me in stitches.
Duhamel makes great use of her physique, and doesn't shy away from looking inelegant, boorish even. Her hips are for pushing things and men out of her way, and her mighty paws easily toss any unwieldy piece of furniture out of the window.
Like Rosalie's irresistible gusto and her delightful ditties, the combination of Duhamel's physical comedy and (former #vaudeville-ian) Bosetti's Italian-flavoured slapstick, plus some of the best stop-motion trickery I've ever seen, is simply magical.
Homunculus, 4. Teil – Die Rache des Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1917)
Feb
3
finance
Richard Ortmann, the homunculus (Olaf Fønss). DP: Carl Hoffmann.
A film about finance because “the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issues the first paper money on February 3, 1690”. The oldest surviving paper bill in what is now the United States bears the date February 3, 1690. The first documented paper money was issued during the Tang and Song dynasties in China, starting in the vulgar year 618. Who would have thought those new colonies were not the center of world history… sigh…
In the fourth instalment of the Homunculus saga, the artificial man callously heads the nation's financial powerhouse while secretly goading the workers in revolt against the ruling class. Soulless and unable to love, he aims for the annihilation of mankind.
Some claim that Die Rache des Homunculus, “The Wrath of the Homunculus”, foreshadows Hitler. I say, beware of businessmen enthralling the working classes.
“She must have one complex mechanism!”Die Puppe [The Doll] (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919)
Dec
16
Stupid Toy Day
The doll (Ossi Oswalda) mischievously sticks out her tongue. DPs: Theodor Sparkuhl & Kurt Waschneck .
A ridiculous toy for Stupid Toy Day.
– Lancelot
Рождество обитателей леса (ca 1912)
Various beetles and a grasshopper rejoice around the Christmas tree materialised by Old Man Frost.
December 25: a Santa for #Christmas
Pождество обитателей леса [Rozhdestvo obitateley lesa / The Insects' Christmas] (Wladyslaw Starewicz, ca 1912)
Father Christmas makes a Christmas tree for the people of the forest.
Дед Мороз (Ded Moroz, or Old Man Frost) is the Slavic version of Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. An ornament depicting the old grey climbs down a child's (or doll's) Christmas tree and sets off to the forest where he plants his magic staff to create a Christmas feast for the woodland animals.
The word “animation” means “a bestowing of life“. Like his ancestor in the arts Bernard Palissy and the ancient winter solstice celebration of the return of light that long ago spawned Christmas, Wladyslaw Starewicz's Insects' Christmas breathes life into real but inanimate beetles, dragonflies, and frogs. The illusion is complete as you effortlessly forget they are painstakingly animated.
From me to you, a little Christmas treat
Director Wladyslaw Starewicz and his daughter Irina (Irene), surrounded by several of his tiny actors. Irina, writer and director in her own right, starred in her father's WW1 short “Liliya Belgii” [“The Lily of Belgium”] (1915).
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WladyslawStarewicz #Russia #fantasy #animation #ShortFilm #Christmas #holidays #StopMotion #insects #animals #1910s ★★★★☆
His Wife's Mistakes (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1916)
Aug
4
National Water Balloon Day
Janitor Roscoe uses the comedy staple seltzer bottle to fill a balloon with some spritz!
The great Roscoe Arbuckle just can't help himself while at the wonderfully hedonistic Oriental Café in this delightful short slapstick.
Suspense (1913)
Triangular split-screen in Suspense (1913). While the Wife (Lois Weber) is on the phone with her Husband (Val Paul), unbeknownst to them the Tramp (Sam Kaufman) cuts the telephone wire.
June 11: say Hi! on #SayHiDay
Suspense (Phillips Smalley & LoisWeber, 1913)
Now he's in the…
Suspense is not only the title of this short silent thriller, but also the state of mind the viewer is put into as soon as the film opens. Using POV (point-of-view) shots and breaking the fourth wall, the imminent threat – a vagrant trespassing and creeping up to a lone woman and her newborn child – creeps up on us. We know we're safe, on the other side of the screen, but the Tramp (a particularly haunting Sam Kaufman) looks us right in the eye. He passes us on the stairs, but he's going around us so he must be, hopefully, aware of our presence.
Meanwhile, we also see something that only cinema and books can give: multiple happenings at once. The Wife (Lois Weber) calls her Husband (Val Paul) on the phone. Suddenly the screen splits into three: in the middle, the Husband on call, listening to his Wife on the right who's begging him to hurry home. On the left, the Tramp. Unlike us, he cannot see the conversation promising a happy end. But instead that bringing some relief to the viewer, he cuts the phone cable. While we see that happen, we have no way to tell the Husband to make haste, or the Wife that the Tramp's getting closer.
What's striking too is the omnipresence of modernity: the couple's home and Husband's office have telephones and therefore electricity, and the Husband speeds off in an automobile. The cinematography for the telephone and car chase scenes are filmed and edited with great knowledge of the technical possibilities of the medium; split-screen (only gathering popularity much later, see Pillow Talk (1959), and the usage of the Entfesselte Kamera [unchained camera], the latter a mid 1920s German invention.
A similar, triangular split-screen scene from Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959) with (LtR) Eileen (Valerie Allen), Jan Morrow (Doris Day), and Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) on the party line. With Ms Day's character centred, we know that she's the one to identify with in this particular scene. DP: Arthur E. Arling.
With that, Suspense not only preceded Italian futurist cinema, but also the usage of suspense as a cinematic technique. Now go and watch, and remember
it's only a movie it's only a movie it's only a movie
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #PhillipsSmalley #LoisWeber #SamKaufman #USA #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #drama #suspense #crime #thriller #HomeInvasion #1910s ★★★★☆
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
Gertie raises her creator Winsor McCay in her mouth. McCay holds a dressage whip but in his tuxedo resembles a musical conductor more than a lion tamer. DPs: John A. Fitzsimmons & Winsor McCay.
June 1: dinosaurs for #DinosaurDay
Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay, 1914)
I made ten thousand cartoons —each one a little bit different from the one preceding it.
Long before we all flocked to the movies, there was vaudeville. Vaudeville comes in many flavours, from raucous song and dance, acrobatics (see #BusterKeaton's start) to chalk talk: a live performance in which an artist would chat and draw on a blackboard in real time. The format is perfect to enlighten and entertain an audience, about the dangers of alcohol, the importance of religion, the demand for women's suffrage.
But where there's a scholar, there's a showman. As a chalk talk consists of a succession of quickly drawn illustrations, one flowing into the next while the performer raps over it, the leap to animation is a logical one. In 1914, a brontosaurus named Gertie and a comic strip creator called Winsor McCay travelled the land – both animated and real.
McCay, known for his fantastic comic strips Little Nemo in Slumberland and its predecessor Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, introduced the great animated animal to the audience with little tidbits of knowledge about the mighty brontosaurus, throw her an apple, demonstrate her gentleness by stepping into the screen (a parlour trick made the transition from real to animated look incredibly convincing) and let Gertie carry him around in her prehistoric world. In front of the delighted audience, the showman then would reappear into our realm.
The movies were young and promising, and Gertie's leap to celluloid was made the very same year. Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), an adaptation of the vaudeville act and the first animated dinosaur movie, moves the stage to a dinner party at the animator's studio, where McCay shows off his animation skills as part of a bet.
Gertie, with its combination of animated and real content, had a huge influence on film makers to come. You can see it in Max Fleischer's wonderful Out of the Inkwell cartoons (1918 – 1929) and Ubi Iwerk's Alice Comedies (1923 – 1927, the only original work that ever came out of the Disney studios). And Buster Keaton? In honour of Gertie he rode a claymation brontosaurus in his Three Ages (1923).
The Boy's (Buster Keaton) nifty use of a pre-Willis O’Brien stop-motion Brontosaurus' high vantage point. DPs: Elgin Lessley & William C. McGann.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WinsorMcCay #JohnAFitzsimmons #vaudeville #comedy #dinosaurs #animals #animation #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #USA #1910s