settima

1920s

Maciste all'inferno [Maciste in Hell] (Guido Brignone, 1925)

Oct

17

sinners

Maciste all'inferno (1925)

A demon eating a poor sinner. Numerous scenes are directly taken from Gustave Doré's illustrations of Dante's Divina Commedia, chapter Inferno. DPs: Ubaldo Arata, Massimo Terzano & Segundo de Chomón.

Медвежья свадьба [Medvezhya svadba / The Bear's Wedding] (Konstantin Eggert + Vladimir Gardin, 1925)

Sep

28

Медвежья свадьба (1925)

In preparation of the bear's wedding, a cook – wearing not much more than an apron and a toque blanche – stirs a huge kettle over a roaring fire. DPs: Eduard Tisse & Pyotr Yermolov.

Orlacs Hände [Die unheimlichen Hände des Doktor Orlac / The Hands of Orlac] (Robert Wiene, 1924)

Sep

25

Orlacs Hände (1924)

Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt) stretched out on a wooden bench in a tavern. A strange man sits on a second bench on the other side of the table. DPs: Hans Androschin & Günther Krampf.

狂つた一頁 [Kurutta ippēji / A Page of Madness] (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926)

Sep

12

狂つた一頁 (1926)

The servant's wife (Yoshie Nakagawa) eating. She looks up at someone offscreen, and smiles. DP: Kōhei Sugiyama.

Moonland (William A. O'Connor, 1926)

Aug

15

Chant At The Moon Day

Moonland (1926)

Mickey (Mickey McBan) and his dog looking up to the crescent moon from a perfectly round window with beaded curtains made of stars. Spot the Milky Way! DP: Edward Gheller.

A little boy and his dog are invited over by the Man in the Moon himself. The trip to the Moon is a big adventure for the drowsy duo and they meet peculiar flora, fauna and men along the way, lifted straight from the Great Moon Hoax.

“You and I may dream of gold or grocery bills — but when a child slaps Morpheus on the back and says 'Hello, old man' — well it's a different story.”

– opening title card

Post-McCay's serial Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905) and pre-Fleming & Cukor's The Wizard of Oz (1939), William A. O'Connor is heavily indebted to both. Which doesn't make his short Art Deco-styled science fiction fantasy any less magical.

Michael [Mikaël / Chained: The Story of the Third Sex / Heart's Desire] (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1924)

Aug

3

National Michael Day

Michael (1924)

Art critic Switt (Robert Garrison) with muse Michael (Walter Slezak). DPs: Karl Freund & Rudolph Maté.

Considered one of the earliest positive cinematic depictions of (male) homosexuality, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael tells the story of lonely artist Zoret (director Benjamin Christensen), his bright young muse and model Michael (Walter Slezak), and the more mature art critic Switt (Robert Garrison). Though it's mostly suggested – there's a female temptress (Nora Gregor) assuming a heterosexual perspective – its motif of the spoken and unspoken relationship between the men is definitely one of love, much in the same way Charles Vidor's Gilda (1946) is.

“Now I may die content, for I have seen great love.”

– opening title card

Michael is the second book adaption of Herman Bang's Mikaël (1902) after Vingarne [The Wings] (Mauritz Stiller, 1916).

盘丝洞 [Pan si dong / The Cave of the Silken Web] (Dan Duyu, 1927)

Jul

14

Pandemonium Day

盘丝洞 (1927)

Pandemonium happening, with Tang Sanzang as its object of desire (gif via. DP: Ganting Dan.

Dan Duyu's 盘丝洞 is, in its most literal sense, a fantastic silent interpretation of Wu Cheng'en's 西遊記 / Journey to the West. Monk Tang Sanzang (Meikang Jiang) finds himself trapped in a cave with seven beautiful sisters. Two of Tang Sanzang's faithful disciples, Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) and Zhu Bajie (Pigsy: half man, half pig), need to save him before one of the sisters takes the celibate monk as her husband. What follows is a vigorous display of #wuxia, horror, monkey shenanigans, and – during the pandemonium unfolding in the final act – a small glimpse into the vast pantheon of China's gods and demons.

“Today is our Queen's wedding day, let us drink it up!”

Note that some of the reels are still missing, and the English translation I found is subjective at best, so have a translation app at the ready. Nevertheless, take a moment to dim the lights, and accompany Tang Sanzang, the Monkey King, and Pigsy on their pilgrimage. Even if only for a little while.

Körkarlen [The Phantom Carriage] (Victor Sjöström, 1921)

Jun

13

International Axe Throwing Day

Körkarlen (1921)

David Holm (Victor Sjöström) attempts to break through a wooden door with the butt of an axe. This scene was the inspiration for the infamous door scene in Kubrick's The Shining (1980). DP: Julius Jaenzon.

“I want to be good, but no one believes me. Is it any wonder I cry?”

– David Holm

Броненосец Потёмкин [Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin] (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

Jun

8

Bounty Day

Броненосец Потёмкин (1925)

A closeup of a sailor. DPs: Eduard Tisse & Vladimir Popov.

“Shoulder to shoulder. The land is ours. Tomorrow is ours.”

– sailor

West of Zanzibar (Tod Browning, 1928)

May

14

Spinalcord Injury Awareness Day

West of Zanzibar (1928)

Lon Chaney as the tormented Phroso dragging himself along the ground. DP: Percy Hilburn.

A brawl over a woman. That's what breaks The Great Phroso. After recovery, a year later, he finds himself a #paraplegic and his stolen wife dead in a church with an infant next to her. To Africa he takes the child – it's the other man's, the ivory trader's – and carefully, vengefully raises her.

“How did God ever put a thing like you on this earth?”

– Maizie

Phroso, now known as Dead-Legs and White Voodoo to the tribe he resides over, uses his magician's skills to rule over his own little jungle empire. We see the gestation of Kurtz, oddly too an ivory trader in that other White Hell, Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899).

 

Despite attempts to tone it down on request of censors, West of Zanzibar is one of Tod Browning's meanest. Lon Chaney is fantastic, of course. His Phroso, torn by love and #revenge, one of the early and rare depictions of male frailty in western cinema.