1910s & 1920s – Scene by Green

Die Nibelungen (1924)

Fritz Lang | Part 1 (2hr 30min), Part 2 (2hr 11min)

As a new medium of storytelling emerged in the early 20^th century, the appeal in reimagining those archetypal fables of centuries past grew with it, paying homage to heroes and monsters who passed through songs, plays, and novels. The 13^th century epic poem Nibelungenlied was very familiar with such adaptations too, building an enduring legacy through Richard Wagner’s operatic cycle ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’, though it took a visionary such as Fritz Lang to recognise its extraordinary potential as a work of cinema. The result is a five-hour fantasy saga of ambition so grand, it is surprising that it often gets buried beneath his better-known films Metropolis and M. Nevertheless, Lang’s majestic tale of greed, betrayal, and vengeance stands as a monumental achievement of silent filmmaking, lifting mythical kings and battles out of legend and giving them extraordinary, larger-than-life form on the silver screen.

The impact of Lang’s creation did not fade with the passing decades and shifting cinematic trends either. Eighty years later, Peter Jackson would adapt the works of another storyteller deeply inspired by Germanic and Norse mythology – J.R.R. Tolkien, whose The Lord of the Rings series bear more than a passing resemblance to Richard Wagner’s cycle of operas, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Just as dwarven riches, fearsome dragons, and magic treasures are scattered through Siegfried’s quest for glory in the ancient legend, so too do Bilbo and Frodo Baggins encounter them in their own respective journeys, with archetypes reflecting humanity’s capacity for good and evil being deeply embedded in both.

*High fantasy and incredible imagination in Lang’s visual creations, resting the Nibelung treasure on the shoulders of chained dwarves.*

*Miniatures used for establishing shots, imparting a sense of wondrous grandeur.*

*Imposing authority in the main hall of Burgundy, commanding a solemn air of medieval reverence.*

*The wild mountain men are prototypes for Jackson’s orcs, tearing meat from the bone with their teeth.*

*The Oscars were not yet established in 1924, but Die Nibelungen surely would have surely won Best Hair and Makeup for these feral, unruly wigs.*

When Jackson eventually decided to take the reins and adapt The Lord of the Rings himself, we continue to see how his visual designs and staging drew influence from Lang’s own duology. The primitive mountain men who feast on hunks of meat look to be the prototypes of orcs, particularly with their unkempt makeup and hairstyling, while the imposing sets which comprise the Kingdom of Burgundy mirror the cavernous halls and fortresses of Middle Earth’s majestic cities. When Siegfried ventures to Iceland, Lang even uses magnificent castle miniatures upon steep mountains to personify Queen Brunhilde’s prideful, stubbornly independent character, laying the groundwork for similar architectural achievements three years later in Metropolis. Like Éowyn, she defies traditional gender roles as a powerful warrior, and yet the role she plays in ensuring Siegfried’s downfall alongside King Gunther’s devious adviser Hagen of Tronje reveals both to be cunning, Wormtongue-adjacent manipulators.

*A castle perched on a steep, rocky mountain rising from the fire below, announcing Queen Brunhilde before we meet her.*

*Brunhilde is a fiercely independent warrior queen, challenging traditional gender roles with her stubbornness and pride.*

*The one-eyed hagen of Tronje is weaselly and treacherous, whispering in King Gunther’s ear and pulling strings for his own purposes.*

Lang is clearly attuned to the archetypes of this text, bringing each together in service of an epic narrative following our hero Siegfried’s rise, betrayal, and the vengeance that his widow seeks for his assassination. As the son of King Siegmund, he is a valiant figure destined for greatness right from the start, mastering the art of forging under the reclusive blacksmith Mime and immediately resolving to marry the beautiful Princess Kriemhilde, brother to King Gunther. His adventure through towering forests and misty swamps sees him fight a dragon, astoundingly brought to life as a giant, mechanical puppet that breathes real fire, and gain Achilles-like powers of invulnerability by bathing in its blood – that is, except for one spot on his shoulder which is shielded by a leaf. Later, his encounter with the crafty King of Dwarves brings him to the heart of a mountain where he claims the trickster’s net of invisibility, the legendary sword Balmung, and the rest of his enormous hoard.

*Towering forests emerge from and disappear into darkness, diminishing Siegfried in a daunting world.*

*Danger lurks in misty swamps – an archetype found in fantasy tales from The Lord of the Rings to The Neverending Story.*

*Magnificent practical effects with the life-sized dragon puppet, breathing real fire as Siegfried fights it one on one.*

*The King of Dwarves, a hostile, covetous, yet tragic monster not unlike Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.*

*Towering, fantastical rock formations in the dwarven cavern, inviting Siegfried into a new world.*

By the time Siegfried arrives at the Kingdom of Burgundy, he has amassed enough power and influence to win an audience with King Gunther. Taken with songs of Siegfried’s conquests, Kriemhilde longs to meet the brave adventurer, yet portentous dreams also warn her of future misfortune. Lang’s decision to render these visions in silhouetted cut-outs is a formal masterstroke, enlisting the help of animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger who only a couple of years later would use this technique to create cinema’s first animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Here, we witness a collection of shapeless masses morph into birds, setting two black eagles against a white falcon who perishes in the assault. Kriemhilde may not immediately understand the dream’s symbolic significance, but given that this first part of Die Nibelungen is subtitled Siegfried’s Death, it isn’t hard for us to foresee their intertwining of fates.

*Lotte Reiniger is brought in to animate this dream sequence, morphing light and shadow with ethereal grace.*

*Symmetrical blocking and magisterial mise-en-scène as Siegfried arrives in the Kingdom of Burgundy, flanked by his vassals.*

Lang’s daring manipulations of special effects do not end here either. To make the beautiful Kriemhilde his wife, Siegfried must first aid Gunther in winning Queen Brunhilde’s hand in marriage, yet it is plainly evident that the King is not up to the physical challenge of besting her in the three tasks she sets him. Fortunately, Siegfried has a cunning idea – with his net of invisibility, our hero can help the King cheat in the stone hurl, distance jump, and spear throw. Manifesting through faint double exposure effects, Siegfried secures victory for King Gunther, and thus marries Kriemhilde back in the Kingdom of Burgundy.

*An inspired us of double exposure to reveal Siegfried’s invisible form, assisting King Gunther in his feats of physical prowess.*

*A triumphant return to Burgundy with soldiers lining the horizon and standing in the moat, holding the bridge aloft for their king. Magnificent scale rendered in rigorous staging.*

*A gorgeous garden backdrop of flowers as these lovers unite, bound by matrimony yet destined to be separated.*

*Establishing shots inspired by D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, revelling in the enormity of sets which dwarf the extensive ensemble below.*

It is only a matter of time though before Brunhilde recognises her husband for the submissive weakling that he is, as well as the con which Siegfried has orchestrated, thus commencing Die Nibelungen’s political intrigue with her pursuit of retribution. Siegfried took her maidenhood, she lies to King Gunther, who is quick to turn on his friend. This “ravenous wolf” must be put down, he declares, and the duplicitous Hagen is more than happy to feed his madness.

*An assassination treacherously disguised as a hunt, turning the high fantasy of Die Nibelungen towards political intrigue.*

Kriemhilde meanwhile continues to be haunted by prophetic dreams of Siegfried being ripped apart by a boar and crushed by two mountains, yet even after she is tricked by Hagan to mark on her husband’s tunic the location of his sole weakness, still she remains naïve to the conspiracy which surrounds them. Only after Hagen has pierced Siegfried’s vulnerable shoulder with a spear during a hunt and brought his body back to the castle does Kriemhilde begin to grasp the treachery afoot in the Kingdom of Burgundy, and Lang once again draws from Georges Méliès’ playbook to visualise her love withering into grief. Recalling her dire dreams, she sees Siegfried standing with open arms in front of a blooming tree, which rapidly shrivels up before our eyes as he fades from view. Still the image continues to transform though, and through a skilful blend of lighting, editing, and production design, Lang menacingly morphs these dead branches into a large, sinister skull.

*Kriemhilde’s last memory of her living husband is corrupted by his death, creatively symbolised in these dissolves transforming a withering tree into a skull.*

Never again do we see the light return to the princess’ eyes, with this newfound bitterness positioning her as the vindictive antihero of Die Nibelungen’s second part, Kriemhilde’s Revenge. Her patience is deadly and her string-pulling merciless, outdoing even the late Brunhilde who took her own life with gleeful satisfaction after Siegfried’s death. The transformation we see in Margarete Schön’s performance is tremendous, her face hardening as she finds a new husband in King Attila of the Huns and twists his pledge of loyalty into sworn vengeance against her family. His pleas to forget Siegfried go ignored, while his one-sided, lovesick devotion draws mockery from his own people, accusing him of falling under the “White Woman’s spell.”

*Kriemhilde is overcome by a cold ruthlessness stemming from grief, light leaving her eyes.*

*An impeccably lonely frame, using the arches and towers of Burgundy to isolate Kriemhilde in her mourning.*

*Rigorous blocking, movement in Burgundy’s symmetry…*

*…making a terrifically harsh juxtaposition against the chaos of the Hun kingdom.*

*Wooden, tribal designs decorate Kriemhilde’s new home within a far more ferocious culture of warriors.*

As we move deeper into the second part as well, Lang’s mise-en-scène notably shifts with it, distinguishing the immaculate symmetry and opulence of Gunther’s palace from the exotic, rugged design of the Hun kingdom. Instead of guards stationed in rigorous formations, Kriemhilde is greeted by hordes of barbaric warriors and gawking masses, while Attila’s primitive hall of scattered weapons and dirty floors chaotically illustrates his warmongering culture. As he ventures into battle too, tents made from animal hide host legions while campfires fill the air with black smoke. These people may be crude, yet in them Kriemhilde sees an opportunity to stir dissent, particularly when Gunther, Hagen, and the Burgundian soldiers eventually arrive on their steps as visitors for the Midsummer Solstice.

*Crude leather tents and black smoke as Attila sets out for battle.*

*Siegfried never truly loses Kriemhilde’s heart, yet Attila is besotted with her, making for tantalising power plays as she seeks revenge.*

*Compare the Attila’s main hall against Gunther’s – these kings inhabit entirely different worlds, and Lang illustrates their differences through their shared traditions.*

Although Lang swings away from the more fantastical elements of Die Nibelungen in Kriemhilde’s Revenge, the political manoeuvring only deepens. With Attila backing down from his pledge and asserting Hagen’s rights as a guest, Kriemhilde decides to take matters into her own hands, bribing the Hun warriors with gold to incite conflict during the feast. When the chaotic confusion ultimately leads Hagen to slaughter Attila and Kriemhilde’s son though, all civility is officially thrown out the window. In the final act of this five-hour duology, Lang stages an epic battle of sieges, hostages, and executions, simultaneously drawing inspiration from the fall of Babylon in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance and setting a standard of cinematic medieval warfare that Jackson would later strive to match in The Lord of the Rings.

*Fast-paced action editing kicks in as we head into the climactic final act, seeing the Huns lay siege to their own building where the Burgundy soldiers take shelter.*

*Hagen Tronje remains as ruthless as ever fighting for his life, and Kriemhilde matches him in pure force of will.*

Despite her success in stoking hostility and trapping the Burgundians inside the hall though, Kriemhilde is far from satisfied. “I died when Siegfried died,” she coldly laments, turning away from the sentimental innocence of her youth. With her son as the first casualty of this war, her soul blackens beyond redemption, callously rejecting her brothers’ pleas for mercy when they refuse to turn over Hagen. It is all too fitting that this woman who seeks the destruction of her family should order the Huns to attack their own infrastructure, and demand her most faithful vassal to kill his son. Heritage means nothing to a woman so twisted by rage that her only loyalty is to a dead man, and it is through her own selfish actions that she ultimately sets in motion the downfall of two great civilisations.

*Confronted by the death of her own kin, Kriemhilde’s facade cracks a little, yet she remains firm in her merciless pursuit of vengeance.*

In the flames and black smoke which billow up from the burning hall, a blazing emblem of Kriemhilde’s barbaric legacy is born, before eventually collapsing beneath its own weight. “Loyalty, which iron could not break, will not melt in fire,” Hagen’s men staunchly proclaim, refusing to give up their leader even as they are crushed by the falling roof. Lang’s practical effects are as spectacular as ever here, yet tragedy reigns in the wake of such a daring set piece, with Gunther and Hagen emerging from the ruins to face their executioner.

*Epic visuals as flames and black smoke billow up from the hall, marking one of the great set pieces of the silent era.*

Although Kriemhilde finally delivers the vengeance she has long sought against her kin, there is no great reward awaiting her on the other side of this conquest. Die Nibelungen has few survivors, as even the tyrannical princess soon falls to the blade of her own disillusioned sword master. From the wondrous fantasy of this legend’s beginning, love withers into grief, and finally begets contempt, violence, and widespread devastation. Lang orchestrates legend with a composer’s precision, and through a finale as colossal as the stories which inspired it, he concludes an operatic spectacle that continues to reverberate cinematic fanfares, choruses, and cadences through the ages.

Die Nibelungen is currently in the public domain and available to watch for free on YouTube.

Destiny (1921)

Fritz Lang | 1hr 39min

When Death hitches a ride into town with a pair of lovers, they do not quite understand the mark that is placed on their heads. They live in a world of joy so sweet, they cannot fathom a force that would tear them apart, yet destiny holds no regard for such romantic affection. What lies behind the walls that Death has erected next to a cemetery is a mystery to the local villagers, so when the young woman’s fiancé mysteriously disappears one evening and is later witnessed walking through the barrier with a procession of ghosts, she is left in devastating grief.

Still, she does not give up so easy on her lover. “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death,” she reads from the Bible’s Song of Solomon, and thus newly inspired, she sets out to win him back from the clutches of Death.

*Murnau uses the negative space of this wall to great effect, dominating compositions with its vast height and breadth.*

*Double exposure effects add a touch of the ethereal to this procession of deceased souls.*

For Fritz Lang, this is merely the framework of his Gothic anthology film. Like the three other fables told here, the young woman’s bargaining with Death is grounded in archetypes stretching back centuries, underscoring the universality of her struggles, desires, and fears. It is rather through Lang’s haunting visuals where this film paints out astonishing visions of that eternal, incorporeal spectre which exists at the root of all human behaviours and, here in Destiny, takes eerie form with a black cape and gaunt, pale features.

*A dissolve transfigures a pint glass into an hourglass, hinting at Death’s ominous presence in this town.*

*German expressionism distilled in a single shot – dominant darkness, geometric shapes, and a claustrophobic sense of foreboding.*

*The hall of candles makes for a magnificent set piece, each flame representing a soul that flickers for its lifetime, yet is inevitably snuffed out.*

Illusory special effects suggest Death’s presence to excellent effect here, manifesting translucent ghosts and the supernatural transfiguration of a pint glass into an hourglass, though Lang’s set designs are often even more impressive. Those who approach Death’s vast wall are dwarfed beneath its colossal façade which separates the living from the deceased, and when we finally cross to the other side with the young woman, we are met by a dark hall of long, towering candlesticks. Each one individually represents a life, Death explains, burnt up and eventually extinguished. The woman’s love for her fiancé is pure, yet no more so than all those other grand stories of star-crossed sweethearts which echo throughout history, and certainly not enough to overcome life’s natural limits. Nevertheless, Death strikes a deal.

“Look at these three lights flickering out. I place in your hands the chance to save them! If you succeed, even with only one of them, I will give your loved one’s life to you!”

*Three fables, three candles – a tremendous formal motif giving weight to each individual tragedy.*

From here, Destiny splits into three tales, presenting mirrored narratives of doomed lovers and poetically recasting our two main actors as reincarnated versions of themselves. There is a slight touch of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance present in this splintered storytelling, distinguishing each thread by their diverse settings, and as such Lang’s accomplishment of mise-en-scène only continues to expand. Where the Islamic city of the first tale is a busy settlement of patterned textiles and sandstone buildings, Venice is defined by its lavish Renaissance architecture, while the Chinese Empire is a paradise of highly stylised gardens and ornate palaces. Even the fonts of his intertitles shift with each fable too, as if translated and handed down by scribes to modern audiences.

*Clashing patterns, sandstone buildings, and busy crowds in the Islamic city.*

*Majestic Renaissance architecture and art decorating the halls of power in Venice.*

*Twisted trees and exotic gardens in the Chinese Empire.*

In the ‘Story of the First Light’, the Caliph’s sister Zobeide conducts a secret affair with a European derogatively branded a giaour – a non-Muslim. After the Caliph almost catches him during the holy month of Ramadan, Zobeide sends her servant to find the European and tell him to meet her in the palace at night. When the servant is followed by the Caliph’s guard though, the European is ultimately sentenced to be buried alive, thus extinguishing the first of Death’s three flames.

*A secret affair conducted in a Middle Eastern palace of lattice windows, fine drapery, and polished floors.*

In the ‘Story of the Second Light’, a Venetian carnival sets the scene for a forbidden romance between noblewoman Monna and her middle-class lover Gianfrancesco. Her politically powerful and jealous fiancé Girolamo has no patience for such disloyalty, and so after hearing of her plans to kill him, he deliberately mixes up her letters and sends Gianfrancesco into her trap. With Monna tricked into accidentally killing the man she loves, the second flame burns out, and Girolamo’s earlier words ring painfully true.

“How near to death men often are without suspecting at all. They believe an eternity remains to them, yet they do not even outlive the rose with which they trifle.”

*A sharp yet minimalist composition, using the architecture to frame a Venetian fountain in an archway.*

In the ‘Story of the Third Light’, Lang’s special effects bend our perceptions of reality further than ever when the magician A Hi is summoned to entertain the cruel Emperor of China. Stop-motion animation unravels an extraordinarily long scroll, miniatures and double exposure effects whisk us away with a flying carpet, and forced perspectives make a horse appear to rapidly grow while an army of pocket-sized soldiers emerge from A Hi’s robes. Still, the Emperor remains unimpressed, demanding the magician hand over his assistant Liang and thus provoking her lover, Tiao Tsien. Still Lang continues to weave movie magic of his own when Liang steals A Hi’s wand to escape, ultimately turning herself into a statue and her lover into a tiger that is slain by their pursuers. As a tear runs down the statue’s cheek, the final flame dissipates, proving once and for all that love cannot conquer mortality.

*The third fable is the most visually impressive of all three, set around the Chinese Emperor’s impressively ornate palace.*

*Murnau’s double exposure blends images to give the impression of a magic carpet soaring over mountaintops.*

*An abundant array of special effects and camera trickery in the third fable, using forced perspective to make these soldiers appear to be miniatures marching out from under A Hi’s robes.*

Still, Death does not claim victory over the young woman with such finality. If she can take the life of another in the hour before midnight, then she can trade it for the life of her beloved, maintaining that balance which governs all creatures. Desperate, she beseeches an old man and a beggar whose lives she believes are inconsequential, though her misfortune soon takes a turn when a fire breaks out in the neighbourhood. Lang’s colour tinting thus far has reflected the warm yellows of interiors and cool blues of the evening, but now as this blaze lights up the town, its startled villagers are consumed in red hues. His editing is similarly effective here as they attempt to douse it, cutting between their noble efforts, a mother’s panicked realisation that her baby is still trapped inside, and the young woman’s anxious journey inside to sacrifice the infant for her lover.

Nevertheless, this pure heart cannot be so easily corrupted when the innocence of another is on the line. “I was not able to overcome you for that price,” she cries to Death.

“Now take my life as well! For without my beloved it is less than nothing to me!”

*Red tinting sets in with the building fire, heavily contrasting against the town’s yellows and blues.*

*Excellent editing in this sequence as the villagers take water from the fountain to douse the blaze, and the young woman is faced with a moral choice from inside the building.*

*One life may be exchanged for another – Death is fair, abiding by a harsh set of rules existing outside the boundaries of human morality.*

Just as like the candle motif marked the end of a life with a snuffed-out flame, the extinguished house fire signifies the loss of another, sending the young woman to meet her fiancé in the afterlife. Clearly no love, no matter how great, can loosen the grip of death – yet this does not mean that it too must perish, as we witness their ghostly apparitions ascend to the heavens. Within Fritz Lang’s Gothic compendium, love is immortalised across all ages through the very act of storytelling, bound to a destiny as timeless as the tales themselves.

*Death cannot break love, but delicately embraces it as man and woman move into the afterlife together.*

Destiny is currently in the public domain and is available to watch on free video sharing sites such as YouTube.

The Last Laugh (1924)

F.W. Murnau | 1hr 28min

As far as the proud, jolly doorman of The Last Laugh is concerned, there is no greater calling in life than the hospitality he offers to patrons of the Atlantic Hotel. This is his entire identity, so essential to his being that he is not even given a name. Instead, he is distinguished by his portly figure, regal moustache, and elaborate, militaristic uniform, commanding respect from those who pass through the revolving door he loyally guards. That he is so willing to help the homeless children who loiter outside his apartment building speaks to the strength of his moral character as well, establishing him as a man whose existence has been joyfully dedicated to the service of others.

It is a cruel turn of events then which delivers a letter of demotion into his hands, relegating him to the position of washroom attendant. He has gotten too old for his position, management claims, and in his place a younger man has donned the uniform he holds in such esteem. Framed through the glass double doors of the boss’ office, darkness surrounds him on all sides, until the camera tracks forward across the barrier and into the room itself. As we read these devastating words, F.W. Murnau imprints a vision over the top of the previous attendant handing in his white coat, and the text begins to blur in tearful distress. There is a desolate future ahead of this former doorman, and from here The Last Laugh plunges into his deep humiliation, teasing out the shame and indignity that comes with an earth-shattering shift in status.

*Emily Jannings strikes a proud, regal figure with his moustache and uniform, setting up his bombastic pride before the humiliating fall.*

*Murnau’s camera tracks forward from outside the door and into the room as bad news is delivered.*

*In the absence of intertitles, Murnau uses these creative visual cues to relay exposition.*

So rich is Murnau’s visual storytelling here that all exposition is minimised to a single intertitle, giving him room to explore the ambitious limits of his camerawork and mise-en-scene. Three years before Fritz Lang’s triumph of set design that was Metropolis, The Last Laugh was bringing to life busy streets, apartment buildings, and majestic hotels built on studio stages and backlots, each brimming with the sort of expressionistic detail that Germany was pioneering in the 1920s. The glass revolving door in the hotel foyer makes for a particularly impressive set detail as well, the oscillation of its vertical lines constantly reframing exterior views and merging with brisk camera movements to imbue the city with a bustling liveliness.

*Tremendous apartment buildings and city sets constructed on studio backlots, brimming with expansive expressionistic detail.*

*The revolving doors make for a superb recurring set piece, its oscillating lines constantly reframing exterior views of the city.*

On a larger scale, this liberation from static tripods sits at the core of The Last Laugh’s stylistic brilliance, especially standing out for its immersion into our downtrodden doorman’s psyche. Right from the very first shot, we are introduced to the hotel from within the elevator, descending multiple stories as we gaze through the metal grills into the crowded lobby. When the doorman dances, the camera spins with him in gleeful unison, and when he dashes past sleeping security guards on the night shift, it too takes desperate flight.

*The very first shot introduces us to the lobby via the elevator, descending into the bustling crowd.*

*The camera spins with the doorman as he dances, swept up in his exuberant glee.*

*Clean geometric lines and shapes in Murnau’s sets, making a bold statement of class and privilege.*

Having recently dabbled in the realm of horror and fantasy, Murnau relishes the uncanny dreaminess of these visual devices, entering the doorman’s waking nightmare of the hotel’s edifice bearing down on him like a monster and later slipping into his unconscious mind with experimental panache. There, a double exposure effect blends a close-up of his sleeping face with an absurdly tall vision of the hotel’s revolving doors, before entering hazy, distorted crowds lavishing him with applause. There is no cumbersome struggle with bulky luggage in this world, as he is instead endowed with an almost superhuman strength, lifting bags with one arm above his head and tossing them into the air. For a moment, Murnau’s camerawork even goes completely handheld, stumbling with the doorman in dizzy motions among his ardent admirers.

*Our entry into the doorman’s dream is marked by this double exposure effect, merging his face with that revolving door which extends infinitely up past the top of the frame.*

*Hazy, distorted visuals in the doorman’s dream as he easily lifts bags in the air above his head, groggily captured by a swaying handheld camera.*

When the doorman awakes the next morning though, it seems that reality hasn’t quite caught up. Too embarrassed to come clean to his family and neighbours about his demotion, he bears the weight of a guilty conscience, and through point-of-view shots we see his perception of the world stretch and blur in disorientating patterns. He finally arrives for his first day at work, yet in Murnau’s beautifully severe wide shot, this washroom looks far closer to a prison of harsh angles and dingy lighting. The mirror which extends an entire wall simply reflects his shame back at him, and next to it he sits alone in a wooden chair, no longer dominating frames with his hefty physique but rather shrinking into the background.

*Faces stretch and warp as the doorman faces the world with a guilty conscience.*

This washroom looks far closer to a prison of harsh angles and dingy lighting in Murnau’s beautifully severe wide shot, extending a mirror along an entire wall to reflect the doorman’s shame back at him.

Every bit of Emil Jannings’ physical presence embodies this transformation too, making for a soaring accomplishment of silent acting that few others from this era have matched. It is a depressing thing to witness a man as large and exuberant as him shrivel up in sheepish submission, his back hunching over as he cowers before patrons and colleagues. Within Murnau’s magnificent close-ups too, his beaming smiles fall into maddened grimaces of distress and misery, and his tired eyes drift off in disoriented confusion.

*Jannings’ face is meant for German Expressionism – a canvas of heightened emotion.*

*The exposure of the doorman’s secret is played as horror, suspensefully edging his relative towards the washroom before hurtling us towards her screaming face.*

There seems to be no end to the doorman’s suffering either, as it is only a matter of time before the truth of his demotion comes home to his family and neighbours. When one relative visits the hotel, Murnau plays her discovery like straight horror, suspensefully edging us towards the washroom before hurtling towards her terrified expression as he comes into view. Gossip spreads quickly around his apartment building too, and Murnau’s camera actively tracks its passage in whip pans between balconies and tracking shots into attentive ears. Catching like wildfire through the community, derisive laughter surrounds the doorman as he stumbles ashamedly through the streets, and soon inundates the entire frame as a multiple exposure effect thrusts expressions of gleeful scorn upon us.

*Gossip spreads fast, and the camera tracks its passage in whip pans between neighbouring balconies.*

*A brisk tracking shot into a neighbour’s ear, receiving news of the doorman’s humiliation.*

*We stumble with the doorman down the street, neighbours pointing and mocking his shame.*

*Cruel laughter dominates the frame in a double exposure effect, undercutting whatever dignity the doorman had left.*

In a pure tragedy, this is where the story would end, leaving our wretched protagonist at his lowest point. In a strange twist of fourth wall breaking justice though, Murnau’s sole intertitle confesses the pity he took on the doorman, instead bestowing upon him an improbable epilogue which lands him as the beneficiary of one Mexican multimillionaire’s fortune. Whoever’s arms he should pass away in should inherit his estate, the wealthy man’s will decrees, and it just so happens that the Atlantic Hotel’s washroom should host his fatal heart attack.

Murnau’s moving camera continues to blend elegantly with the blocking here, comically revealing the doorman’s jubilant face behind a crowd of waitstaff and an enormous cake, though formally this development is shaky at best. However pleasing it is to see him become the hotel’s most distinguished guest and give its staff the respect he never received, this jarring shift in tone has no grounding in the narrative which led up to it. Clearly Murnau’s stylistic intuitions are sharper than his plotting, so it is fortunate indeed that this fable plays out largely by way of its dynamic, enthralling visuals. It is through the avant-garde after all that we find reality slipping so elusively from our grasp, and it’s in that vulnerable state that The Last Laugh reveals the heartbreaking capacity of our self-loathing, ready to destroy us the moment we hang our pride upon the dubious, fragile illusions of social status.

The Last Laugh is in the public domain and available to watch on YouTube.

The Wind (1928)

Victor Sjöström | 1hr 35min

Impoverished ingénue Letty is absolutely convinced that the Texan wasteland where she tries to plant her roots in The Wind is haunted, though not by any malevolent poltergeist or demon. High up in the sky, she envisions a ghostly white horse galloping among the clouds, stirring a gale which tears at the foundations of ranches down below. This invisible force of elemental chaos possesses no alliance to any greater good or evil, but exists of its natural accord. It is to be marvelled at, feared, and for those who are particularly susceptible to its maddening influence, hopelessly succumbed to in total resignation.

It is through this eerie visual motif that what would otherwise be a straightforward melodrama takes on dark psychological dimensions in The Wind, delivering a metaphor of profound, existential instability. Especially for a woman like Letty whose life is so consumed by turmoil, this restless tempest is a constant companion, blowing around debris just as she herself is helplessly tossed between homes and men. What she initially hopes will be a chance for a new life in Sweetwater offers little in the way of security, especially when she begins to realise how vulnerable she is at the hands of the local bachelors – not all of whom have honourable intentions.

*California’s Mojave Desert stands in for the Texan badlands, showcasing some superb location shooting in Hollywood’s earliest days.*

*The winds take the form of a great white horse in the sky, galloping across clouds with ceaseless momentum.*

It is an uncertain, ever-changing world that she inhabits, and as an early pioneer of location shooting, Victor Sjöström is powerfully in tune with capturing its raw elements. California’s Mojave Desert effectively stands in for the Texan wilderness, and airplane propellors are cleverly situated just out of shot to simulate the titular winds, buffeting the actors’ hair and clothes. When an advancing cyclone turns a carefree party into an accelerating stampede to safety, even his blocking adopts that perpetual, unidirectional momentum. Standing amid the rush, Letty fearfully clings to her most persistent suitor Wirt, before being whisked away into an underground bunker with the other patrons. Clearly if she is to find any sort of stability, then she must hitch herself to a man, regardless of whether she finds the available options particularly appealing.

*Gish literally surrounded by suitors in this framing, pressing in from every side.*

*A rush of bodies flying past Letty, manifesting the winds in Sjöström’s blocking.*

As D.W. Griffith’s muse, Lillian Gish was certainly no stranger to playing naïve, innocent women, though Sjöström makes even better use of her talents here to corrupt Hollywood’s paragon of virtue. Even when she is safe inside, her troubled gaze is constantly drawn to windows where views of the heavy gale slowly erode her sanity, and bitterness makes a home in her heart as she perseveres through a reluctant marriage to Sweetwater local Lige Hightower. Her adamant fury when he forces a kiss is strengthened by its contrast to her usually passive demeanour, and opens the door to a deeper mistrust of those men she once believed were meant to be protectors of women.

*A landmark of acting in silent cinema, twisting and corrupting the paragon of virtue which Gish so frequently represents.*

*Our gaze is frequently drawn to window frames of the exterior view, establishing a thin barrier between safety and madness.*

Wirt’s willingness to pursue her even after she marries Lige sets him apart as the worst of the bunch. She has already rejected him upon learning that he simply wants to make her his mistress, yet still he continues his advances, driving Letty mad with panicked terror. When he is brought to her place to recover from an injury one day, she can’t help but picture his leering eyes and creepy smile as he sleeps, rendered disconcertingly in a double exposure effect. With men like this hanging around, little can soothe her anxiety, which Sjöström soon builds to a fever pitch as the fabled North Wind plagues her home with howling, frenzied chaos.

*A haunting double exposure effect layers Lige on top of himself, leering disconcertingly at the camera.*

Gish too seems possessed by this invisible force, her eyes stretching wide with terror and drooping into a hypnotic trance as she rhythmically sways with the hanging lanterns and camera. Kitchen bowls rock on shelves as if enchanted by spirits, and soon even the glass windows give in to the piercing wind, knocking over an oil lamp and setting a blanket on fire. In the sky above, that great white horse continues to whip up violent flurries, but a pounding at the door heralds an even greater peril – an opportunistic Wirt, taking advantage of Letty’s vulnerability to force himself on her.

*Remarkable montage editing as the wind enters the house, knocks over an oil lamp, and drives Letty mad.*

The relative serenity of the following morning does not bring an end to Gish’s madness. She is deeply traumatised, and as she sits stiffly in a kitchen chair, the camera’s forward tracking shot directs our gaze towards the object of her attention – a pistol, lying atop a pile of debris. She seems prepared to defend herself, though later when she finally fires it into Wirt’s stomach, she can barely comprehend her own actions. Even after burying him, all she can do is watch in terror as the wind gradually re-exposes his body, convincing her that the pair of hands forcing open the front door belong to his vengeful spirit.

*A steady camera movement inching forward from behind Gish and towards the pistol lying on the table.*

*Madness builds to another peak after Letty’s murder of Lige, the wind revealing his buried body.*

That it is Lige who enters cabin instead comes as a great relief to Letty, though even more reassuring are his words of comfort. “Wind’s mighty odd – if you kill a man in justice – it allers covers him up!” he proclaims, pointing out the weather’s mysterious concealment of her murder. Contrary to the rest of Sweetwater’s foreboding mythologising, this is the first suggestion that there might be some semblance of moral order in an otherwise lawless cosmos. Even more importantly, it is also the first demonstration of Lige’s selfless, forgiving love. With a steadfast certainty like this, all other doubts and insecurities fall away, and not even the winds hold the same psychological influence anymore as Letty and Lige bask in the draught of the open doorway. Worldly elements may ravage material constructs in The Wind, yet there is still peace to be found in Sjöström’s allegory of life’s erratic movements, delicately revealed in our ability to face its ravaging, mercurial turbulence.

*Finally embracing the elements and life’s uncertainty without fear, captured in this gorgeous frame.*

The Wind is not currently streaming in Australia.

October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928)

Sergei Eisenstein | 1hr 40min

Within the tumultuous Russia of October: Ten Days That Shook the World, statues ascend to a prominence beyond carved stone and moulded clay. They are icons of ideological resolve, seeing the grand effigy of Tsar Nicholas II torn down with his abdication of the throne in March 1917, and comparing the Provisional Government’s leader Alexander Kerensky to a dour-faced figurine of Napoleon. So too are idols of Christianity, Hinduism, and ancient mythology set against the advance of the Imperial Army on Petrograd, linking the tyranny of organised religion to its militaristic nationalism, and leading into the ominous, reverse-motion restoration of the Tsar’s statue.

*Eisenstein uses statues throughout October as ideological icons, elevating them to a prominence beyond carved stone and moulded clay.*

Freedom is fragile in Revolutionary Russia, and Sergei Eisenstein’s docudrama is pointed in its attacks upon those who threaten it. Having engaged with smaller-scale strikes and mutinies in his previous two films, he now turns his focus to the uprising which officially established the Soviet Union, stretching his narrative across a far wider scope. Although this leads to somewhat looser storytelling that lacks the formal rigour of Strike or Battleship Potemkin, October continues to demonstrate the pragmatism of his montage theory, particularly in its comparison of juxtaposed images to create fresh, symbolic connections. This is intellectual montage at its strongest, setting Russia’s tale of Bolshevik victory against its historic, deeply emblematic statues, both set equally in stone.

An avant-garde exercise in pure, intellectual montage – Eisenstein saw the potential to extend his craft beyond straightforward narrative convention, and creates abstract symbolism from religious and military icons.

As the Provisional Government takes control in the film’s opening minutes, it is clear through such comparisons that little has changed after the collapse of the Romanov dynasty. From the cutaways to laughing men in suits, church crosses, and the imperial eagle, it is plain to see that the bourgeoise are celebrating this new state of affairs, while the presence of flags in virtually every second shot at Lenin’s rally conversely defines the working class by their righteous anger.

Beyond Eisenstein’s intellectual montages though, the full expanse of all his editing techniques is not to be ignored, as he continues to experiment with the slicing and timing of images in action-heavy set pieces. When the army attacks Bolsheviks peacefully protesting in Nevsky Square, Eisenstein unleashes rapid-fire montages alternating between machine guns and artillerymen, with each shot lasting no more than a frame each. It is a novel development of metric montages which not only rhythmically cuts to the army’s barrage of bullets, but also disorientates us within the panic, as the masses frantically scurry back to the city centre.

*Rapid-fire montage slices like bullets, flashing between the machine gun and the artilleryman.*

Seeking to isolate the protestors from their destination though, the government orders Petrograd’s bridges to be raised – a sequence which Eisenstein grotesquely plays out with victims being forcefully split between both sides. There is no reverence for the dead here, as one slain woman’s hair and hand slowly slide into the widening gap, and a horse hangs from the scaffolding by its tangled reins. His imagery is visceral, finally ending the massacre with the bourgeoise tossing Bolshevik newspapers and flags into the river, and gratuitously ransacking their headquarters.

Montage in service of action as this bridge is raised, cutting the protestors off from the city centre. The hair of a dead woman slides off one side, a horse hangs from its tangled reins, and a wagon slowly begins to roll backwards.

October’s immediate shift into the vast, ornate Winter Palace where the Provisional Government operates from couldn’t be starker in comparison. Now empty of Tsars, these arched halls and grand stairways host meetings between Mensheviks, while its imposing statues watch on with unimpressed gazes. Passing by the Greek goddess Diana, Minister-Chairman Kerensky pauses to admire the laurel wreath she seems to bestow upon his head, yet he is ignorant to the fact that victory is not yet secured. As he preens and postures to his fellow officials, Eisenstein even cuts to a mechanical peacock as his stand-in, mocking his artificial attempts to impress the same people who snicker behind his back.

*Kerensky is set against a dour-faced Napoleon, diminishing his historical stature.*

*Kerensky is also compared to a mechanical peacock, preening and posturing to his fellow Mensheviks.*

It is no thanks to Kerensky that Petrograd is so well-defended against the attempted coup led by General Kornilov. The Bolsheviks alone are responsible for the successful counterattack here, expeditiously uniting their forces against the aspiring dictator. Low, canted angles of them trekking in lines against a dark sky give the impression of an uphill march, meeting their enemy with rifles while those who remain behind spread leaflets and arm citizens. Their triumph is swift, yet their temporary alliance with the Provisional Government is only fleeting. Emboldened by their solidarity, their vote to revolt against the country’s incompetent leaders passes in a landslide, and Eisenstein thus leads us into the final days of the October Revolution.

*A low, canted angle as the Bolsheviks march to war, set against a dark sky.*

Ten o’clock in the morning of October 25^th is the time that the assault on the Winter Palace is to begin, but first the Bolsheviks must prepare their operational and political strategies. Eisenstein formally reiterates shots from earlier as the bridges are once again raised, although now it is the workers in control, allowing the warship Aurora safe passage into Petrograd. Elsewhere, delegates from across the nation gather to vote the Soviets into power, prompting the Bolsheviks to surround the Winter Palace where the Cossacks and Women’s Death Battalion weakly defend their government. Eisenstein particularly depicts the latter as frivolous layabouts, lounging on billiard tables and decorating statues with lingerie, while the Mensheviks are left to draft ineffective treaties declaring themselves Russia’s legitimate masters.

*The Women’s Death Battalion lounge around on billiard tables and decorate statues with lingerie in the Winter Palace – the Provisional Government’s greatest defence.*

*Eisenstein mocks Kerensky’s pleading with a graphic match cut to this angel statue.*

*Eisenstein batters the Mensheviks with his intellectual montages as they literally ‘harp on.’*

It is no wonder that both these military units surrender out of pure frustration before the assault is even launched. All the Provisional Government seems capable of is redundantly filibustering about sad misunderstandings and peaceful resolutions – and of course Eisenstein aims his editing towards this too with a mocking tone, undercutting their ‘harping on’ with a literal montage of harps.

The Mensheviks’ wishes for non-violence may be granted, but the coup d’état which follows is no less epic for it. The momentum building outside the palace is as unstoppable as the spinning wheels and roller chains intercut through the scene, finally reaching a breaking point when the signal to storm the building arrives with a cannon blast from the Aurora. As insurgents climb the opulent gates and wreak havoc on this relic of Tsarist splendour, Eisenstein’s vigorous editing races toward climactic victory, bringing each narrative thread together in these now-crowded halls of power. The courtyards outside are showered with sparks and smoke, while in the wine cellar a small group of Bolsheviks shatter bottles they see as icons of bourgeoise greed, stashed away to be hoarded but not consumed.

*The wheels are in motion, their spinning unstoppable.*

*The storming of the Winter Palace plays out through a series of epic imagery, flooding the vast, ornate halls with Bolsheviks.*

At 2:17am on 26^th October 1917, the Soviets officially seize power from the Provisional Government, and Eisenstein does not let the significance of this historic moment escape us. A Petrograd clock bears this analogue timestamp right next to one in Moscow, and soon they are joined by New York, Berlin, London, and Paris among others in a circle, proudly placing the October Revolution on the world stage. The movement of clockfaces flying by the camera matches perfectly to the crowd’s applause, delivering one final montage that sets its sight on a much brighter future. Eisenstein makes no secret of his ideological biases when it comes to illustrating the past, yet rarely has history been instilled with as much lively effervescence as it is in October, immortalising that jolt of exhilaration once felt in 1917 through the eloquent arrangement of allusive, flickering images.

*Clocks around the world mark this historic moment, spinning in concentric circles to the rhythm of the crowd’s applause.*

October: Ten Days That Shook the World is currently streaming on Tubi.

Mother (1926)

Vsevolod Pudovkin | 1hr 27min

The defiance of a lone, unarmed rebel standing against a tyrannical state is unlikely to shift the course of history. Their position is hopeless, dooming them to perish beneath the boot of their oppressors as so many others have before them. It is not this singular protest though which elevates them as a countercultural icon in Mother, but rather the tragedies that have led them to this point, radicalising those who find strength in defeat. While Sergei Eisenstein was celebrating the powerful solidarity of a unified working class in Strike and Battleship Potemkin, Vsevolod Pudovkin was turning his camera towards those whose resilience is fed by anguish, painting such individuals as models of Russia’s impassioned, revolutionary spirit.

Pelageya is the long-suffering mother in question here, caring deeply for her adult son Pavel who in turn protects her from the abuse of her alcoholic husband, Vlasov. No one in this family holds any explicit political affiliations, though as subjects of pre-Revolutionary Russia, tensions run rampant in their local community. While Pavel is secretly helping local socialists by hiding a stash of handguns in his home, ultra-nationalist group the Black Hundred are bribing Vlasov to join their counterattack upon an upcoming workers’ strike, making for an awkward, unexpected confrontation between father and son when they come face to face at the protest. “So you’re one of them?” Vlasov furiously growls as he chases Pavel into a pub, only for his rampage to be halted by a stray bullet from a revolutionary’s gun.

*A devastating confrontation of father and son on opposing sides of a workers’ strike, inevitably driving both towards tragedy.*

As his killer is forcefully apprehended, Pudovkin takes a moment to cut away from the action. Rustling tree branches, drifting clouds, and gentle streams carry us out of the chaos, before returning to the broken body of the man who took Vlasov’s life, now lying dead on the floor. The strike is over, and the Tsarists have won, leaving a captive Pavel in the hands of a judicial system he knows is not on his side.

*A peaceful montage of nature inserted within this violent assault – Pudovkin plays it perfectly, knowing when to let us step away from the action in deep reflection.*

Through Pelageya’s mixture of grief and desperation though, she remains convinced that mercy will be granted if he confesses the truth. At Vlasov’s funeral, her mind wanders to that loose floorboard back at home, which Pudovkin rapidly dissolves to reveal the stash of firearms below. Later at Pavel’s interrogation, her eyes shift nervously in close-up, intently observing the suspicious police officer, her son’s stoic denial, and his clenched fists behind his back. Her torment is unbearable, and finally reaches a breaking point when she reveals the hidden firearms – only to worsen again when she recognises the dire, irreversible consequences of her actions.

*A clever dissolve putting us in Pelageya’s mind, drawn to the hidden stash of firearms beneath a loose floorboard.*

*A tense montage of close-ups, observing Pelageya grow more anxious as her son maintains a stoic facade.*

Given that Mother‘s intimate drama operates on a relatively small scale, the editing isn’t quite as spectacularly complex as Eisenstein’s, though Pudovkin’s development of narrative continuity through montage is nevertheless a remarkable achievement. Where Eisenstein produces meaning from the abstract collision of images, Pudovkin emphasises the seamless flow of emotions, placing more weight on each individual shot. Especially when it comes to the juxtaposition of close-ups during Pavel’s trial, his editing delivers an intense clash of expressions, preceding The Passion of Joan of Arc’s historic innovation of this technique by two years. There in the Russian court of law, the judges’ sheer incompetence, laziness, and prejudice are on full display, and Pudovkin doesn’t miss the chance to implicate the highest levels of government through cutaways to a bust of Nicholas II.

*Pudovkin borrows from Eisenstein in his use of Nicholas II’s bust through cutaways – intellectual montage in action, symbolically comparing the corrupt courtroom officials to the Tsar.*

As Pelageya’s lonely head pokes above empty rows of courtroom seats though, Pudovkin reminds us where the emotional centre of this film lies. Gradually over the course of Mother, actress Vera Baranovskaya visibly unravels, her tired eyes drooping and her posture slouching with dwindling hope. Only when her son’s sentence to a life of hard labour in Siberia is delivered does she abruptly rise from her seat, stretching her face wide with horror as she indignantly screams – “Where is truth?!”.

*A minimalist composition underscoring Pelageya’s sheer loneliness as her family dwindles.*

*Vera Baranovskaya erupts with fury for the first time, and it is a sight to behold – the passionate anger of a mother seeing her family torn apart.*

For the first time, Pelageya’s agony does not wane into dreary depression, but rather explodes with fury. Once out in the world, that righteous anger is not so easy to put back in its box either. Even when it eventually simmers down, still it manifests as seething resentment, following her all the way to Pavel’s prison some months later.

With this narrative transition, Pudovkin once again delivers more montages celebrating the natural world, contrasting the inmates’ dreams of sunny, open pastures back home to the melting ice floes of Siberian rivers just outside their cells. Spring has arrived in this frozen wasteland, and nervous excitement is in the air. Between the latest batch of visitors making their way to the labour camp with a socialist flag and whispers of a prison break, Pudovkin’s parallel editing generates palpable anticipation, drawing the reunion between mother and son ever closer.

*Peaceful meadows back home versus the cold Siberian prison – Pudovkin’s scenery spans the utopias and wastelands of modern Russia.*

From here, the violent action which unfolds is a tightly choreographed dance between hope and despair, carrying this daring set piece aloft upon swift, unyielding momentum. The collective effort of the inmates ramming down doors, climbing walls, and overwhelming guards is largely successful, though Pavel soon finds himself cornered when faced with that vast, glacial river. Still, the only path is forward, and thus he begins jumping from sheet to sheet in epic long shots intercut with daunting close-ups of breaking ice.

*The prison break is a masterful orchestration of action and editing, carrying an energy through to Pavel’s daring escape across the river.*

*A climactic set piece worthy of Hitchcock, watching Pavel bravely jump between ice floes to meet his mother on the other side.*

From the other side, the visiting protestors are keen to celebrate the escapee, though none are so ecstatic as his mother. Her arms wrap him in an embrace so tight that only death itself could tear them apart – and that is exactly what the cavalry tragically delivers as they ride across a large, steel bridge, firing bullets at the crowd. Kneeling over her son’s body, she weeps, and becomes the only remaining visitor to not instantly flee at the first shots.

*A daunting, perfectly symmetrical composition of this giant bridge, granting passage to the cavalry who ride directly towards the camera.*

*Tremendous montage editing as the troops line up their rifles, the crowd scatters, and Pavel is tragically shot dead.*

In this moment, Pelageya transforms. The very foundations of her motherhood have been stripped away, and yet her maternal instincts persist, inspiring her to channel that fierce protectiveness she once reserved for Pavel towards the people of Russia. Within the fast-moving chaos, we carefully linger on her picking up the socialist flag, raising it to the sky, and fearlessly facing down the oncoming stampede in an imposing low angle. At last, the radicalisation is complete. Even as she is ruthlessly cut down like a martyr in these glorious final seconds, Pudovkin recognises that not even a hundred Tsarist troops can destroy her radiant spirit, infectiously shared among those lucky enough to witness the valour of a selfless, devoted mother.

*The radicalised spirit of Russia, facing down her oppressors with no hope or reward – just an undying, selfless devotion to her child.*

Mother is not currently streaming in Australia.

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Sergei Eisenstein | 1hr 15min

It is no coincidence that history’s most effective propaganda films have also featured fast-paced, avant-garde editing, and some of cinema’s finest at that. This device despicably valorised the Ku Klux Klan in The Birth of a Nation, celebrated Communist revolution in I Am Cuba, and stoked political conspiracy theories in Oliver Stone’s JFK – yet Battleship Potemkin nevertheless looms large among them all. The uprising of the working class against their Tsarist rulers is the central conflict here, and with Sergei Eisenstein labelling the oppressors “vampires” and “monsters,” it doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to realise where his loyalties lie.

This film is a product of the Soviet Union in its earliest years, not so much aiming to disseminate historical facts than to rouse passion and outrage from civilians. Under the purview of an artist who understands his craft on an intimate level though, Battleship Potemkin also transcends its own political message. The five methods of montage that Eisenstein developed in the early 1920s stand true across time, unaffected by shifting ideologies or opinions, and are cleanly distilled here in their purest forms. From this mechanical arrangement of moving images, he composes a narrative that disengages from conventional notions of heroic individualism, and in true socialist fashion identifies the collective masses as their own champions.

*In absence of a solo protagonist, the masses are our heroes in Battleship Potemkin, and Eisenstein’s eye for blocking these enormous crowds are major visual strength.*

If we are to pick a protagonist from the vast ensemble gathered in Battleship Potemkin though, that label must fall on sailor Vakulinchuk, who leads his crew’s initial rebellion against the cruel commanding officers. Even then though, his presence after Act II is largely symbolic, spurring on the Bolshevik cause as a martyr. Besides the obvious political dramatisation, Eisenstein represents the story of the real Vakulinchuk relatively accurately here, using a little-known historical event as the foundation of his artistic experimentations.

With Battleship Potemkin‘s dedication to packing hundreds of extras into the scenery and covering the full totality of this revolt, it may very well be one of the shortest epics ever put to screen, coming in well under 90 minutes. This can be mainly attributed to the sheer amount of visual information being thrown at us in the brisk, economical editing, though Eisenstein’s magnificent mise-en-scène shouldn’t be underrated either, particularly in scenes set upon that remarkable monument of naval warfare that is the Potemkin. Here, he carves out a rigorous array of geometric shapes from its industrial design, slicing through compositions with long, grey cannons and trapping its crew among vast webs of rope. Symmetry is crucial here as well, particularly in his blocking of the crew in militaristic formations along both sides of the deck, while his immense depth of field capture them in motion across multiple levels of the ship.

*Eisenstein carves out a rigorous array of geometric shapes from the battleship’s industrial design, angling the camera up through these grates to frame the sailors like prisoners behind bars.*

*Long, grey cannons slice through the mise-en-scène – these harsh diagonal vectors are especially valuable given that the length of each shot is so short.*

*Hammocks encase the sailors in a web of cocoons, hinting at the imminent emergence of newly born insurgents.*

Inside the sleeping berth where Eisenstein’s story begins, the hammocks crowding the frame almost look like cocoons, hinting at the imminent emergence of newly born insurgents. Talk of revolution has been passing around for some time, and after they refuse to eat a hunk of rotten, maggot-infested meat, the threat of execution is visualised in a haunting dissolve of bodies hanging from the masts.

The rising tension here demonstrates the first of Eisenstein’s five methods, metric montage, which creates a tempo based on a specific number of frames for each shot. As a canvas cover is thrown over the condemned sailors and a firing squad marches out, the pacing accelerates, cutting between rifles raised in perfect rows, Vakulinchuk’s stirring fury, and the officers’ malicious grins. This immediate danger is what finally triggers the riot on the vessel, leading into the first of Battleship Potemkin’s bravura set pieces.

*A creative use of a dissolve edit, visualising the threat of hanging sailors from the masts of the ship.*

*The first of Eisenstein’s masterclasses in rising tension through montage editing, accelerating the pacing as Vakulinchuk’s fury reaches the end of its fuse.*

Eisenstein’s staging here is marvellous, navigating the multiple battles unfolding across the ship with rhythmic montage – the adjustment of each shot length according to the movement unfolding onscreen. Meanwhile, cutaways to the Russian Orthodox priest onboard reveal him holding his cross like a weapon, demonstrating intellectual montage through the symbolic association of juxtaposed shots. These sailors are not merely rebelling against the government or its armed forces, but are subverting organised religion itself, toppling the power structures which bolster the Tsarist rule.

*Movement in the frame, running parallel in opposite directions – what looks like chaos is actually orchestrated through purposeful blocking.*

*The Russian Orthodox priest wields his cross like a weapon, symbolically representing the tyrannical connection between organised religion and the state.*

*A fine composition as Valukinchuk hangs from the side of the ship, martyred in his righteous rebellion against the Potemkin’s commanding officers.*

This mutiny is a victory for the Bolsheviks, yet for now celebrations must be put aside to mourn the loss of Valukinchuk, whose body is delivered to the Port of Odessa and set up inside makeshift shrine. Ships gently pass by as bereaved crowds gather, looking to pay respects in powerful solidarity. Eisenstein’s editing is not defined by tempo, continuity, or symbolism here, but rather uses complementary close-ups and long shots of unified crowds to capture the melancholy lament in the air, typifying his method of tonal montage. When one loudmouthed man tries to turn this wounded sorrow into antisemitic prejudice, fists clench and brows furrow, but not in support of his bigotry. Everyone can see that he is appropriating this tragedy for his own purposes, and thus he is promptly shut down.

Tonal montage as ships pass through the port and crowds gather to pay respects to a fallen hero. Eisenstein moves from frantic action to melancholy grief, yet still carries every emotion through his editing.

*Close-ups are played like staccato montages as one man tries to turn wounded sorrow into prejudice, only to be faced with the anger of those seeing through his ploy.*

*108 frames of blazing socialist glory, aggressively puncturing Eisenstein’s black-and-white mise-en-scène.*

As the Potemkin docks at the Port of Odessa and its locals gather in camaraderie, Eisenstein continues to navigate these swells of emotion with remarkable dexterity, even injecting colour in 108 frames of a waving red flag that he hand-tinted himself. As such, the shift from enamoured celebration to terror arrives with a jolt, heralded by a woman’s head violently spasming in uneven jump cuts as she is shot down by an advancing Cossack army. Before we can even register the threat, the infamous massacre upon the Odessa Steps has begun, seeing Eisenstein pull out every montage technique at his disposal to deliver seven minutes of raw editing genius.

*Tonal whiplash through editing – rapid-fire jump cuts of a woman being shot commences the Odessa Steps sequence.*

*Eisenstein’s greatest set piece and a monumental piece of cinema history, using this long stretch of stone stairs down to the harbour as an icon of social instability.*

From either end of this Soviet landmark, the stairway appears to stretch far into the distance, forcing citizens to flee towards either the infantry descending from above or the cavalry waiting to pick them off below. Eisenstein’s camera does not offer these soldiers the same empathetic close-ups as it does their victims, only ever taking their perspective by descending the steps with their steadfast regiment, and moving in a line as unyielding as the geometric formations of their raised rifles.

While this wall of white uniforms mows down everyone in their path, children are horrifically crushed in the stampede, pushing one devastated mother to pick up the broken body of her son and face her assailants. She stands alone in their long, dark shadows, begging them to end this terror, and for a brief moment we wonder whether she has at least slightly stirred their hearts. Within this fable of good and evil though, Eisenstein leaves no room for moral ambiguity – this mother is shot dead on the spot, and the Cossacks continue their forward march.

*Rifles aligned in perfect rows, mercilessly cutting down those who stand in their way.*

*Close-ups play a crucial role in Eisenstein’s montages, bouncing horrified expressions off the trauma surrounding them.*

*Tremendous compositions even in the midst of such fast cutting, as a lone, grieving mother hopelessly stands beneath long shadows of the descending Cossack forces.*

As the Odessa Steps sequence torpedos towards its climax, Eisenstein demonstrates the fifth type of montage that he defined as a young film theorist, inducing a more complex emotional response than metric, rhythmic, or tonal montages on their own. Overtonal montage combines all three here, suspensefully inching a baby carriage closer to the steps, following the motion of its uncontrolled descent, and spreading panic among onlookers who helplessly watch on in terror. The pacing accelerates as we cut from the baby’s face to the spinning wheels, and then just as it tips over, we are confronted by a snarling Cossack soldier striking the camera. Denying us the clean resolution of a long shot, Eisenstein instead chooses to end this sequence on a dissonant note, tightly framing a gasping woman with shattered, blood-streaked spectacles before fading to black.

*Overtonal montage as the scene builds to a devastating climax, cutting between the falling baby carriage, the reactions of onlookers, and the aggressors continuing their march.*

*Shattered, blood-streaked spectacles – the final shot of the Odessa Steps sequence is also perhaps its most memorable after the tumbling baby carriage.*

More than any political message or isolated image, Eisenstein recognises that emotion in film is derived from the timing and arrangement of these shots, congealing into a sweeping indictment of the merciless Tsarist regime. Beyond the disenfranchised men leading the Bolshevik cause, the innocence of women and children are at stake in Battleship Potemkin, and with it, the lifeblood of the very nation.

If the government considers this slaughter the best course of action to quell growing dissent among civilians, then they underestimate the furious passion of the Bolsheviks. “The ship’s guns roared into reply to the massacre,” the intertitles read, before we witness the Potemkin’s cannons shatter the Odessa Opera House into pieces.

That night as its sailors rest and prepare for an imminent confrontation with the Tsarist squadrons, Eisenstein settles an anxious tranquillity across the ship, silhouetting men against moonlit skies and slowing his montage editing down to a gentle lull. When that fleet of enemy ships begins to emerge over the horizon though, Battleship Potemkin launches into its final set piece, fearfully anticipating the gunfire that will surely sink this vessel of hope.

*Soldiers silhouetted against a moonlit sky, heavily intertwined with the ropes, masts, and ladders they hang off.*

Machines whir and black smoke billows from the warship’s chimneys, hanging a dark, ominous cloud overhead as it steers towards the squadron with nothing but a tiny destroyer by its side. Rather than meeting them with violence though, another far riskier tactic is considered. “Signal them to join us!” the sailors call out, raising flags and beseeching peaceful passage.

Once again, Eisenstein uses his metric montage to drive up tension, weaving close-ups of rotating gun turrets and rising cannon muzzles among long shots of the naval battleground – though this time bloodshed does not eventuate. “Brothers!” the sailors of the Potemkin call to their comrades aboard the Tsarist fleet, who eagerly allow them to pass between their ships. Hanging from the railings and crow’s nests, crews from both sides wave to each in solidarity, spurring on the Bolshevik movement which in years to come will take over all of Russia.

*Once again, Eisenstein builds his montage editing to a climax – and this time greets us with total catharsis as the Potemkin is allowed safe passage past Tsarist ships.*

Such bright optimism marks a notable shift from the bleak cynicism which ended Eisenstein’s previous film Strike, though if anything it simply proves the versatility of his editorial orchestrations, coordinating hundreds of dynamic images into fervent expressions that span humanity’s full emotional spectrum. In the hands of this young Soviet film theorist, cinema becomes a symphony of notes, rhythms, and textures, and Battleship Potemkin towers within the art form as the peak of such visual, kinetic innovation.

*Gorgeous symmetry as the sailors of the Potemkin celebrate their solidarity, delivering a win for the workers of Russia.*

Battleship Potemkin is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Strike (1925)

Sergei Eisenstein | 1hr 22min

Much like the factory workers uniting against their exploitative managers in Strike, Sergei Eisenstein walks a very narrow line between anarchy and order. There is the temptation in both political and artistic rebellion to throw caution to the wind, tearing down traditional institutions with reckless indignation, and yet revolution for revolution’s sake is no way to pave a path for the future. As furiously impassioned as these Bolsheviks may be, unity requires discipline and willpower, ensuring every action is driven by ideological principles rather than emotional instinct.

So too does a rigorous formal purpose underlie every visual and editorial choice that Eisenstein makes in Strike, pragmatically applying the ‘methods of montage’ that he had innovated as a young film theorist. In approaching his craft with such mathematical precision, he effectively set the stage for the Hitchcocks and Kubricks of the future, understanding the compositional details from which profound sensory experiences of art are born. More specifically, it was the ability to cut from one image to another which he identified as cinema’s distinguishing feature, separating it from theatre, literature, and painting as a radical mode of creative expression for the twentieth century. By connecting two individual shots in this manner, a third idea is born which is not contained in either, but is rather delivered through the sum of both.

It is easy to underrate Eisenstein’s skilful arrangement of mise-en-scène when so much of the discourse surrounds his editing. Geometric shapes imprinted as silhouettes against backgrounds draw ever so slightly from the German expressionist films of the era.

*Poignant editing as this suicide plays out through visual inferences, focusing on the kicked over stepladder and the fastening belt loop.*

Eisenstein was not the only filmmaker of the 1920s to be experimenting in this arena, yet Strike was among the first features to demonstrate the enormous potential of Soviet Montage Theory, wielding cinema as a tool of propaganda. Set in pre-Revolution Russia, its narrative raises up the working class as their own heroes, planning to instigate a mutiny at their factory before the suicide of one labourer prematurely lights the spark. Close-ups on Yurik’s hands fastening his belt into a loop, a stepladder being kicked over, and the belt suddenly tightening around a metal beam tell his story through visual inferences, and from there Eisenstein executes a fervent set piece unlike any other that came before.

The length of the average shot in Strike sits a brisk 2.5 seconds, half that of the typical Hollywood film, though within this sequence it is even shorter. Machines are halted, feet run by, and tools are thrown into a pile, not to be picked up again until concessions are made. Quite unusually, there are no main characters here who stand above the fray. In true socialist fashion, strength instead lies in the masses, and as such Eisenstein dedicates many wide shots to his magnificent staging of their movements in powerful unison. The visuals are frantic, but never uncontrolled, propelling the scene forward as loose rocks are thrown through the foundry windows and the office gates are forced open. With nowhere left to hide, two unfortunate managers are carted out in wheelbarrows and tossed into a filthy river, at which point the temporarily satisfied crowd heads home.

*Eisenstein’s first great set piece unfolds with tremendous vigour, carrying on D.W. Griffith’s legacy to reveal the vast, unique potential of cinema as an art form.*

*Excellent blocking of crowds in unison. There are no main characters in this story – it is the people as a collective who we sympathise with.*

Cinema is clearly more than just a narrative vehicle for Eisenstein, as this first day closes with an image that serves only to reinforce the strength of the movement – three labourers folding their arms and directing stern gazes at the camera, while a spinning wheel is projected over the top of them. Equally though, this double exposure technique is also later used to dissolve the image of a clawed hand over the strikers drawing up demands, threatening to crush their aspirations of justice. Their stipulations are nothing outrageous by modern standards – an eight-hour workday, 30% pay increase, civil treatment by management – but their momentary peace is nevertheless interrupted by troops seeking to disperse them.

*Montage extends beyond the sequential arrangement of images for Eisenstein, but also blends them into the same frame, spinning the wheel of progress over these stoic, united factory workers.*

*A double exposure effect crushes these striking factory workers as they draw up demands.*

Through Eisenstein’s parallel editing, their sit-down protest makes for a compelling contrast against the small group of wealthy shareholders gathering in a dark office, puffing cigars and using their demand letter to mop up a spill. There, the image of a lemon being juiced in a squeezer underscores the visceral brutality of the police’s attempted crackdown, once again pulverising the proletariats in the hands of their superiors.

*Symbolism through editing – the squeezing of a lemon is visually compared to the police’s crackdown on the strikers.*

When it comes to orchestrating cinematic collages such as these, Eisenstein is in a league of his own, calculating the length, placement, and type of each cut according to the needs of the scene. Dissolves do not necessarily indicate the passage of time, but are woven organically into montages like a legato musical phrase, while close-ups of incensed faces are alternately played with rapid staccato. Even lively flourishes of style are integrated here in the visual blending of undercover agents with animals, noting their shared features and mannerisms. As we examine their frozen images in a photo book, these spies suddenly spring to life with comical glee, tipping their hats at the camera before promptly leaving their individual frames.

*Spies are given animalistic qualities through their code names, as well as the dissolves which blend them together in our mind.*

*Eisenstein reveals a lively sense of humour as the photos in this book spring to life, tip their hats to the camera, and cheerfully march out of frame.*

If these editorial rhythms liken Strike to a symphony, then Eisenstein is its maestro, merging every cinematic element in orchestral harmony. Despite his aesthetic perfectionism extending to his mise-en-scène and camerawork as well though, it is an unfortunate consequence of the film’s brisk pacing that many critics also underrate the strength of its individual shot compositions, which deftly build out the expansive world of this factory and its surroundings. The industrial architecture of glass and metal juts out at geometric angles, weaves through machinery, and frames bodies that are always in motion, particularly in those recurring tracking shots past rows of men at work. There is rich detail to be gauged from the camera’s tighter framing of people and objects as well, gazing at an upside-down, spherical refraction of the town’s streets through a glass orb in a shop, quite literally turning society on its head as the strike drags painfully on.

*Geometric* *composition* *through* *the sharp angles of the factory, fanning out across the ceiling in this low angle as workers hang from the beams.*

*The camera moves in a rigid path down this line of factory workers, effectively establishing the factory setting.*

*Eisenstien exchanges straight lines and angles for wheels in the junkyard, busying shots with circles and spokes.*

*The town is turned on its head through this glass orb – Kieslowski would pick up on this years later in The Double Life of Veronique*.

The junkyard of half-buried barrels marks another superb set piece as well when the crooked King of Thieves is introduced, seeking five unscrupulous types to loot and set fire to a liquor store. Crawling out from the ground like worms, his ragtag followers set out to do his bidding, instigating a riot as gathering masses cheer on the violence. “They’re trying to incite us! Don’t give in to these provocations!” the wiser proletariats among them shout, though the authorities need little justification to enforce their own oppressive rule of law. Rather than turning their high-pressure hoses on the blaze, the firemen cruelly blast the crowd, with the military arriving sooner after to capitalise on this moment of vulnerability.

*Barrels embedded in the ground, each housing the ragtag followers of the King of Thieves who are likened to worms.*

*The instigators threaten to ruin the strikers’ peaceful efforts, once again raising the temperature of these tensions by burning down a liquor store.*

*The fire fighters turn their high-pressure hoses on the protestors rather than the fire, revealing a deep corruption among forces of state and capital.*

This is the unchecked influence of capitalists in a corrupt system, Eisenstein demonstrates, enforcing their own rule through the arms of the state. All throughout Strike, the first line of Vladimir Lenin’s epigraph declaring that “The strength of the working class is in its organisation” has proven consistently true, though now as their unity fractures, the relevance of its second part begins to surface as well.

“Without the organisation of the masses, the proletariat is nothing.”

The devastation which follows is unrelenting. It does not carry the bittersweet tragedy of Hollywood melodramas, nor the haunting ambiguity of German Expressionism, but this conclusive downbeat rather reflects the gut-wrenching national trauma which eventually drove the Bolsheviks to revolt in 1917. A child is tossed over the edge of a balcony, hands reach to the sky in desperation, and as these labourers and their families are rounded up like animals into a field, Eisenstein intercuts their massacre with the slaughter of a bull. It is a symbolic and editorial device that Francis Ford Coppola would later use in the final minutes of Apocalypse Now, though where that signified the death of a madman, here we mourn and rage at the murder of innocence.

*The police assault invades the workers’ living quarters, silhouetting figures against a bright sky as children are ruthlessly tossed over balconies and homes are ransacked.*

*Devastation reigns – Eisenstein’s parallel editing compares the massacre of the strikers to the slaughter of a bull, raging at the loss of innocence.*

We are right to feel disgust. Eisenstein would not have used such dehumanising imagery if he did not agree that the physical desecration of a living creature is a deeply disturbing sight to behold, yet only in witnessing this bold artistic statement might we experience a fraction of the repulsion the Russian people held towards their oppressors. While cinema was still young, few people understood its immense power in shaping political thought, and even fewer mastered this skill through a dextrous, virtuosic command of moving images as Eisenstein does here in Strike.

Strike is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Our Hospitality (1923)

Buster Keaton | 1hr 14min

In a world of overwhelming natural forces seeking to overcome Buster Keaton’s stone-faced romantic, the added threat of an entire family out for his blood only complicates matters further – not that he is entirely aware of the danger closing in on him. When Willie McKay falls for Virginia Canfield, a young woman he meets on the train back to his hometown, he does not know the true extent of the long-running feud between their families. Ever since he was sent away to New York as a baby twenty years ago, his upbringing has sheltered him from the knowledge their continued animosity, making this Southern American village a very dangerous place indeed for the heir to the McKay estate. If there is going to be any saving grace in a situation as tense as this, then it is the Canfields’ unwavering code of honour towards guests, ironically granting Willie sanctuary for as long as he is in the home of his enemy.

*Compositional beauty isn’t always the focus for Keaton, but arranges a fine shot here as he stands by the piano, singled out as the target of the Canfields’ hostility.*

Much like Keaton’s great comedic masterpiece The General from a few years later, Our Hospitality finds its inspiration in American history. The Hatfield-McCoy feud stretched multiple decades in the latter half of the 19^th century, and although it becomes the subject of Keaton’s satire here, its politics couldn’t be of less interest to him. Right from his opening intertitles, he brushes off any attempt to derive meaning from their feud with a simple dismissal of their mutual hatred.

“Men of one family grew up killing men of another family for no other reason except that their father had done so.”

As a result, all we are left with in the present day are the giant egos of small men, bound by traditions that only drive them deeper into their blind convictions. Keaton doesn’t hold back from confronting the dire stakes at hand, quite unusually sapping his prologue of all humour and drenching it in a vicious thunderstorm as the two family patriarchs shoot each other dead. It isn’t until he turns up as the happily oblivious Willie McKay that Our Hospitality takes a lighter turn, whisking him through various mishaps as he rides a tiny steam train across America towards his inherited estate.

*The stormy prologue that kills off the patriarchs of both families is pure drama, but Keaton’s direction does not falter in his dramatic lightning flashes, violent wind, and downpour of rain.*

Both this film and Three Ages may mark Keaton’s first features, but by 1923 he had already spent years refining his art as a director and actor of short comedies, effectively setting him up next to Charlie Chaplin as a master of visual comedy. So too had his personal fascination with locomotives been established during this time, as here he continues to bounce physical gags off these giant symbols of modernity and progress. Crooked railways toss passengers up and down, wheels fall off, and carriages are split apart at a crossroads, yet his stoic vehicles relentlessly chug along at their own steady pace, indifferent to those caught up in its chaos.

*Keaton’s love of steam trains forms the basis of much visual comedy in Our Hospitality, proving to be a quaint inconvenience to their passengers.*

*Excellent foreground and background work in Keaton’s gags, leaving the train driver oblivious to the carriages speeding off down a parallel track.*

What Chaplin never quite got the hang of though which Keaton takes to with ease in Our Hospitality is the enormous potential of the camera in framing these gags, frequently setting us back in wide shots to appreciate the dramatic irony unfolding across each layer of the image. As the train driver thoughtlessly kicks back in the foreground, Keaton squares up his shot to catch the rogue carriages that have broken free behind him, making their way down a parallel track. Later when Willie tries to escape the Canfields disguised as a woman, Keaton once again angles his camera from a distance to catch the back of a frock and umbrella, only to reveal the horse that he has dressed up and put in his place just as it turns to the side. This visual comedy is just as much about the creative conception as it is the perspective taken, abiding by a strict set of cinematic rules. If we can’t see something in the frame, then neither can his characters. If his characters can’t see it, then we still might catch the punchline just behind their turned backs.

There were virtually no other directors framing their comedy like this in the early days of cinema, including Chaplin – this horse gag is one of Keaton’s best, emphasising the significance of perspective to reveal the punchline.

*Dramatic irony in Keaton’s wide shots, drawing tension from the danger that lurks just around corners.*

It is also through these stylistic devices that Willie remains so clueless to the Canfield brothers’ attempts to murder him, drawing out the tension of their one-sided conflict through the walls that divide them. For a time, he is only getting by on pure luck and blissful ignorance, right up until Virginia invites him home and inadvertently grants him protection as a guest. When the recognition of his perilous situation sets in though, the whole world suddenly shifts for Willie – the moment he steps outside, he is a dead man, and so he must constantly stay one step ahead of his hosts whose hands rest above their holsters. Just as Keaton delights in outsmarting the Canfield brothers, so too does he indulge in some darkly comic wordplay here, with the father making menacing small talk about the rainy weather – “It would be the death of anyone to go outside tonight” – and Virginia failing to recognise the irony of her piano piece, ‘We’ll Miss You When You’re Gone.’

*Physical comedy as Willie outsmarts his hosts, bending the rules imposed on him by their code of hospitality.*

*Keaton’s deadpan face is perfect for this comedy, adopting women’s clothing to make a getaway in disguise.*

*Strong location shooting combined with epic imagery as Keaton blows up the dam – quite innovative in this era of studio filmmaking.*

Still, Our Hospitality never strays too far from the real reason Keaton held such mass appeal to 1920s audiences, as right around the corner from every understated witticism is a grand set piece showing off his athletic stunt work. Much of the action here centres around a dam that is blown up early in the film to irrigate the surrounding forest, making for a superbly economical narrative when Willie is dumped from his getaway train into its waterfall. Steep drops such as these are where Keaton the actor works best, scaling cliff faces like a silent era Tom Cruise, throwing his full body into the action, and building up to one of the greatest stunts of his career. With a rope tied around his waist and Virginia being swept towards her death, he leaps from the edge of the cliff, grabs her by the arms, and saves her just as she begins her plummet to the rocky riverbed below.

*Keaton the stuntman shows off his athletic prowess and coordination in the final act, as he dangles from cliffs and straddles a pair of split train carriages.*

*Still one of Keaton’s greatest set pieces and stunts, swinging from the edge of the cliff to save his lover as she plummets over the edge of a waterfall.*

Keaton’s physical presence may be violently pushed around by enormous forces far beyond his control, but it is his adept navigation of chaotic environments that makes him such a compelling figure to watch onscreen, and which further quells his conflict with the Canfields. Their truce does not just come through a laying down of arms, but a romantic union of children from two warring families like Romeo and Juliet – though of course Keaton does not squander the opportunity to play this as a brilliant final gag, giving up about a dozen guns revealed to be hidden on his body. Ignorance to immediate danger may be bliss in Our Hospitality, but accidentally ending a decades-old feud by saving a life may be even more gratifying.

*A hilarious final gag to end the film, with Keaton laying down arms hidden in his pockets, coat, and boots.*

Our Hospitality is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Pandora’s Box (1929)

G.W. Pabst | 2hr 13min

Unlike so many of his fellow silent filmmakers, G.W. Pabst does not grant us the luxury of clear-cut character judgements in Pandora’s Box. With her black bob hair, slim dresses, and plunging necklines, it would be tempting to lump flapper girl Lulu in with other vamps of early cinema. Given Pabst’s sympathetic recognition of her social persecution though, it isn’t quite that simple. Neither does she fit into the archetype of virginal beauties typified by Lillian Gish, especially considering how much her sly manipulations of men come as second nature to her. The black-and-white morality of the courtroom cannot be so easily applied to her circumstances, even while the prosecution frames her as that infamous mythological figure whose irresponsibility corrupted the world.

“Your honor and gentlemen of the jury. The Greek gods created a woman… Pandora. She was beautiful and charming and versed in the art of flattery. But the gods also gave her a box containing all the evils of the world. The heedless woman opened the box, and all evil was loosed upon us. Counsel, you portray the accused as a persecuted innocent. I call her Pandora, for through her all evil was brought upon Dr. Schön!”

If Lulu is indeed a Pandora for the 1920s, singlehandedly ruining lives for the sake of her own fickle curiosity, then Pabst at least has the grace to consider the decadent world which equally shaped her. Like all the great German expressionists of his time, his aggressively stylised mise-en-scène is key to unlocking these influences across high and low ends of European society, stretching from its crowded theatres and ballrooms to its rundown wharfs and hovels. No doubt she has a hand in navigating the crowds of male suitors lining up to win her heart, but in this hypocritical culture which simultaneously celebrates and punishes such behaviour, how can one blame her alone for a lack of moral integrity?

*Louise Brooks gives one of the defining female performances of the silent era, challenging the vamp and virgin archetypes with a wholly complex character while lighting up the entire screen.*

More than just an icon of 1920s fashion and excess, Louise Brooks becomes a truly luminous presence in Pandora’s Box, like a flame drawing curious moths to their scorching deaths. Through close-ups that rival those that D.W. Griffith was innovating a decade before, Pabst often catches the light in her twinkling eyes and traces her vivid facial expressions, which we observe in one scene shift from a brilliant smile to a petulant frown the moment she spots the fiancée of her old paramour, Schön, at her variety show. The cogs turn in her mind as she plots a sulky protest against going onstage, thus drawing their heated confrontation into a storage room where she lures him right back into her arms. With Schön’s lover barging in and discovering their embrace, the timing couldn’t be better for Lulu, whose face betrays a hint of a devilish smile. Driven to restore his honour, Schön changes tact. “Now I’ll marry Lulu,” he wearily resolves. “It will be the death of me.”

*As bright and elegant as she is devilish and cunning – Brooks has a confident grip on the full range of her character’s nuances.*

Much like Lulu’s playful cruelty, Pabst’s foreshadowing is not without an edge of humour to it, even as both lead us down paths towards dark, haunting tragedy. Her flouting of social norms draws eyes from across her wedding reception as she dances with another woman, Countess Augusta Geschwitz, who promptly falls in love with her, and in a back room she once again cavorts with old lovers. Behind them, Pabst hangs an unsettling wall sculpture of a contorted man grasping at the outreached hand of a much larger being, his eyes closed in either overwhelming terror or infatuation. When Schön barges in and furiously discovers his wife’s infidelity, it doesn’t just form a disturbing backdrop to his accidental murder at Lulu’s hands, but is fully integrated into his compositions as a mirror of her doomed romantic relationships.

*Pabst’s mounted wall sculpture becomes the marvellous centrepiece of multiple compositions, like a reflection of Lulu’s dangerously intoxicating romances.*

*Cluttered frames from high-class theatres to dingy gambling dens – excess and decadence surround Lulu at both ends of society.*

The expressionistic aesthetic that Pabst’s cinematographer Günther Krampf crafts may not touch his legendary work in Nosferatu, and yet it continues to accompany Lulu’s fall from grace with dark foreboding, sinking the camera through the decks of a gambling ship as she descends into a seedy underworld. Even in these cramped, grimy sets, Pabst is still crowding out his shots with frame obstructions intruding on Lulu’s personal space, drawing a thread of visual oppression between the aristocracy and peasantry. Their customs may be distinct, and yet the same patriarchy rules over both, exploiting their women for all they’re worth before throwing them away.

*Pabst’s camera movement physically cuts through the floor of the ship as it sinks below deck, like a descent to the criminal underworld.*

*Stifling frame obstructions in the ship close Lulu’s world in around her.*

It is a dance of manipulation that Lulu must perform to survive in this world, using her innate charm to try and climb her way back up, but indulging too much in its whimsy is a dangerous game. Turned out by high society, and now being pimped out in a crime ring by a man she thought she could trust, she is forced to escape again another rung down the social ladder. In the cold, squalid pits of London, Pabst’s dark expressionism manifests powerfully in the heavy shadows and angular construction of its rundown hovels, tragically confining her to the life of a street prostitute.

Pabst imposes a cruel irony on her when he decides to pick her story up some time later at Christmas, keeping her out in the cold as she searches for customers while her few remaining male companions find a Dickensian warmth and comfort. Though she is no longer bound by the constraints of any rigid social structures, neither are the men who dwell in darkness and inflict their lawless misogynistic violence on hapless victims.

*The deeper into Pandora’s Box we get, the more Pabst submits it to classically expressionist stylings with angular sets and stark shadows.*

*The light twinkles in Brooks’ eyes one last time even as she hits rock bottom, and right before it is snuffed out for good.*

For a brief moment at the end of her life, it would appear that Lulu’s natural magnetism might be enough to appeal to the better side of the patriarchy and escape its danger one last time, though even this is not enough to quell the depraved madness of Jack the Ripper. Her coquettish charisma truly is a coin flip that in any given instance could either play to her advantage or ruin her, depending on the unpredictable temperament of her target. Though she plays fast and loose with this wily power all throughout Pandora’s Box, one could hardly blame her for the circumstances surrounding her untimely demise at the hands of London’s most famous serial killer – but then again, she wouldn’t be here in the first place were it not for her own selfish recklessness. In the delicate hands of Pabst, this fable of female scapegoating develops beguiling nuances in its thoughtful characterisations, unequivocally rejecting clear-cut labels of vamps and virgins baked into the history of mythological storytelling, yet never failing to draw us deeper into Brooks’ dazzling feminine thrall.

Pandora’s Box is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

May I ask, why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

May I ask why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

[…] 13. Bringing Up Baby […]

Where would you place it on the list?

I have to say, Really shocked to see Hero not make the cut