La Roue

La Roue (2008 DVD)
Directed by Abel Gance
France, 1922
Silent with English intertitles

• Sisif: "There are no flowers amid the rails for us, son. You realize that, don't you? And if by some miracle one should blossom some day, we can be forgiven for reaching out for it."

Visually impressive, narratively underwhelming silent film effort from '20s legend Abel Gance. The lumbering pace of this four and a half hour "modern tragedy" only starts to pick up steam halfway into the movie, so take me off of the list of those tearing their hair out over the loss of the missing two and half hours of footage. Sure, it'd be nice to have that film back for historic purposes, but Gance has more than enough time to dwell on his characters' various beatdowns by the wheel of fortune. With an approach somewhat reminiscent of Zola re:the suffering of the working classes, Gance basically spends the film version of an eternity mapping out the story of Norma, a young orphaned survivor of a train wreck, who gets illicitly "adopted" by soot-faced master engineer Sisif (Séverin-Mars). Brought up as a baby sister alongside fellow motherless baby Elie, the adult Norma (Miss Ivy Close) eventually grows up both pretty and carefree--a bit of a problem since she and the sensitive, violin-making Elie (Gabriel de Gravone) begin to develop an "unhealthy" affection for each other. Others interested in Norma's charms include both the man she knows as Papa and a wealthy rail magnate named Monsieur de Hersan (Pierre Magnier), who uses the family's extreme poverty as an excuse to try to buy his way into Norma's affection. While a wealth of literary quotations (and a translator's misspelling of Baudelaire, tsk tsk!) help Gance hammer his heavyhanded points home in a manner much less worthy of praise than Léonce-Henry Burel's inventive cinematography and special effects, I must admit that I eventually warmed to the characters in a sort of cinematic Stockholm Syndrome. Rating: 3/5 freedom stars. (http://www.flickeralley.com/)

Norma, Sisif, and Toby the dog

Chandu the Magician

Chandu the Magician (2008 DVD)
Directed by Marcel Varnel and William Cameron Menzies
USA, 1932
In English with French and Spanish subtitles

Chandu the Magician, one of three discs in the Fox Horror Classics, Vol. 2 collection that came out about a month or so ago, is a super-cheesy thriller that's probably more like a serial adventure than a horror classic when it comes down to it. I had a decent enough time watching it due to the old school special effects, "exotic" set designs, and clever cinematography that it's become somewhat famous for (face it, any film having to do with astral projection and death rays can't be all bad--and that one imitation thrill-ride dolly shot in the Egyptian rock temple is a real winner), but unimaginably bland lead Edmund Lowe is almost entirely devoid of charisma in the title role of the ex-army captain turned Indian-trained yogi known as Chandu the Magician. While the hero's lack of acting chops and wispy moustache will surely make you want to root for the bad guys, Irene Ware (undeniably lovely as Chandu's love interest, the Princess Nadji) and Bela Lugosi (at his hammy best as Chandu's nemesis, the megalomanical Roxor) help this film salvage a Gambling with Countess Dusy Told rating of 2.5/5 stars--by any sane person's standards, a good 2.5 stars more of entertainment than that full-on dud The Prestige from 2006! (http://www.foxhome.com/)

Irene Ware

Der Letzte Mann

Der Letzte Mann (2006 DVD)

Dirigida por F.W. Murnau

Alemania, 1922

Silente

Se puede encontrar la reseña aquí.

Technicolor Dreams

Rancho Notorious
Directed by Fritz Lang
USA, 1952

This was the first of two back-to-back movies I saw last Monday night as part of the Harvard Film Archive's Technicolor Dreams series. While not without some snappy dialogue and the occasional artfully-crafted scene, Lang's garish-looking, extremely melodramatic western is basically a dud when it comes right down to it. Some of the material's datedness is to be expected, of course, but Arthur Kennedy is horribly miscast as the whiny, revenge-minded "tough guy" Vern and then there's this annoying cowboy song on the soundtrack called "The Legend of Chuck-a-Luck" that goes on and on about "hate, murder and revenge" with very little subtlety. Marlene Dietrich and Mel Ferrer are kind of amusing as troubled lovers Altar Keane and Frenchy Fairmont, but this is easily the least interesting/worst acted work I've seen in quite a while.

Madigan

Directed by Don Siegel

USA, 1968

After that Lang letdown, Siegel's Madigan was quite a lot of fun. One of the canonical late-60s/early-70s NYC cop movies in which all the police and criminals still seemed to know each other by name, this film is aided and abetted by an excellent ensemble cast, a high-energy pace with the requisite dialogue to match ("Can I fix you a drink?" Detective Madigan is asked. "Yeah, easy on the water."), and the urban decay of the Big Apple captured in all its technicolor glory. Adultery, police corruption, and race relations all intrude on the story without overwhelming it, but this is basically a hard-boiled buddy movie about a pair of semi-dirty detectives (played with panache by Richard Widmark and Harry Guardino) trying to keep the bad guys off the streets and their wives off their backs. Recommended.

• Viewed at the Harvard Film Archive (Cambridge, MA) on 7/7/08.

Encounters at the End of the World

Encounters at the End of the World

Directed by Werner Herzog

USA, 2007

Click here for review at Caravana de recuerdos.

Asphalt

Asphalt (2006 DVD)

Directed by Joe May

Germany, 1929

Silent with English intertitles

See review at Caravana de recuerdos.

La Voie lactée

La Voie lactée (2007 DVD)

Directed by Luis Buñuel

France, 1969

In French with English subtitles

Click here for a bilingual review at

Caravana de recuerdos.

Haz click aquí para una reseña bilingüe a

Caravana de recuerdos.