Le trou [The Hole / The Night Watch] (Jacques Becker, 1960)
Jun
25
care package
Butchering a care package – butter, sausage and other joys of life – for contraband. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.
“Hello. My friend Jacques Becker recreated a true story in all its detail. My story. It took place in 1947 at La Santé prison.”
Le trou [The Hole / The Night Watch] (Jacques Becker, 1960)
Jun
19
International Box Day
The prisoners keep themselves occupied with making cardboard folding boxes. The second man from the right is the novel's author and real-world (ex-) inmate José Giovanni aka Jean Keraudy as Roland Darbant. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.
Inmates preoccupy themselves with making cardboard boxes. While working together, talking, gaining trust, plans for an escape unfold.
– Jean Keraudy as himself
Le trou is based on a real prison escape and introduced by one of the men involved, Jean Keraudy.
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 ★★★★☆
“Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice.”
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
May
27
Golden Gate Bridge
A pensive Novak in black in front of a sunlit Golden Gate Bridge. DP: Robert Burks.
A bridge to celebrate the 1937 Golden Gate Bridge opening.
The Kirlian Witness (Jonathan Sarno, 1978)
Apr
13
International Plant Appreciation Day
Rilla (Nancy Snyder) in a neglected room, the floor's littered with empty food packaging. On a small table in front of her, a ficus hooked up to a polygraph. DP: João Fernandes.
Kirlian photography claims that plants can communicate telepathically. Rilla (Nancy Snyder) delves deep into the science so to interrogate the only witness to her plant-loving sister Laurie's murder, a ficus.
Not to be confused with the inferior alternative cut The Plants are Watching.
“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”
The Naked City [Homicide (Jules Dassin, 1948)
Feb
10
All The News That's Fit To Print Day
On a crowded subway train, a distraught young woman looks at the back of a newspaper. She may just have read the front, held up by someone offscreen. Headlines read YOUNG MODEL FOUND SLAIN IN BATHTUB. The prop newspaper uses too many typefaces at once. DP: William H. Daniels; still photographers: Bert Anderson & Arthur “Weegee” Fellig.
Filmed on location in New York City, with still photography by Arthur “Weegee” Fellig and others. Weegee was a press photographer known for his stark black-and-white crime scene #photography in the city's seedy underbelly.
– narrator
Accident (Joseph Losey, 1967)
Feb
1
Car Insurance Day
Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) on the backseat of a car, her head tilted back. DP: Gerry Fisher.
A car accident.
