Category: 1927

William A. Wellman | 2hr 24min

Before there was Best Picture at the Academy Awards, the category was split into two – the Best Unique and Artistic Picture went to expressionist landmark Sunrise at the very first ceremony, while Wings was named the Outstanding Picture. Though the latter film has not established a reputation close to that of its co-winner, holding it to the prodigious standard of silent filmmaking that Sunrise set would not do this technical marvel justice. Wings is a product of a well-oiled studio system exercising its big-budget powers, building the war genre from the ground up, but it is also a display of liberated creativity in William A. Wellman’s magnificent aerial sequences. By taking a birds-eye perspective of humanity’s greatest innovations and devastating injustices, the sheer magnitude of both is baked right into its presentation, heightening the glory and grief of our most monumental ambitions.

More specifically, this tale follows a pair of men who enlist as combat pilots in the Great War, starting off as rivals from the same town fighting for the heart of local girl Sylvia. David is the wealthier of the two who truly has her heart, though aspiring aviator Jack is nonetheless persistent in his efforts to win her affection, remaining ignorant to the advances of his neighbour, Mary. The name she gives his treasured car, ‘Shooting Star’, becomes the same title which he fondly dubs his plane upon arriving at training camp. It is also there that he and David quickly abandon their contempt after a violent brawl, and become close friends.

Before Wellman’s camera lifts us into the sky, he takes the time to lay these character dynamics out across small town America and military camps. While Jack carries Sylvia’s locket and David keeps his childhood bear with him as lucky charms, their tentmate who defies superstition perishes in a crash – an ominous sign of what’s to come further down the line. For now though, Wellman sweeps us along on the energy of training montages and comedic relief, such as the enthusiastic Dutchman who confronts xenophobia by showing off his patriotic star-spangled banner tattoo. Every now and again we got the odd aerial shot looking down from above, though it isn’t until Jack and David themselves take to the “high sea of heaven” for the first time that Wellman unleashes his most inspired cinematography.

At this point in Wings, it is hard to not draw parallels to Top Gun with its military setting and central male friendship. When it comes to the final act, it even looks as if Top Gun: Maverick has directly lifted the scene of David crashing behind enemy lines and escaping with one of their planes. Most of all though, the strongest influence comes from Wellman’s grand visuals, always seeking the most exhilarating angles to track aerial formations and dogfights. The camera often sits in the cockpit of these scenes, hanging on faces while astonishing backgrounds sway from side to side in deep focus. There is virtually no part of the plane that it isn’t fixed to at some point though, whether being planted on wings or looking from the undercarriage straight down at No Man’s Land as it erupts in explosions and bloodshed.

Even beyond these scenes, swings and parachutes become the vehicles through which Wellman vigorously moves his camera, while the arrival of the giant German plane Gotha brings with it a heavier, daunting presence. It quite literally rolls over us as it leaves the hangar, obstructing our low angle view with its wheels and struts, and even in the intertitles it is described as a “great dragon” which “roars out to seek its prey.” In this way, the action almost becomes fantastical, with such strong written imagery turning modern air combat into awe-inspiring folk tales. Our heroes who ride “eager birds” face this great evil head on, pouring “a stream of fire into the belly of the monster” while those on the ground below scurry around like ants.

One only needs to look at the exact same year in cinema history to see how technological innovation and cinematic panache don’t always line up, as 1927 saw The Jazz Singer introduce synchronised sound recording without a whole lot of artistry behind it. Here in Wings though, the two are inextricably linked, with Wellman putting his technician’s mind to work in the execution of daring set pieces that crash planes into each other mid-air, send deflated zeppelins to the ground in clouds of black smoke, and construct explosive spectacles out of widespread destruction.

Just as impressive is the fast-paced editing which cuts vigorously between multiple air duels at once, certainly taking inspiration from the Soviet montage movement, but also D.W. Griffith in the sharply coordinated intercutting between the air and ground. Such careful balancing of multiple narrative threads also brings a touch of dramatic irony to these scenes. When the Germans attack the town that Mary is working in as an ambulance driver, Jack does not realise that she is one of the victims down on the ground he is saving, nor is she immediately aware of his presence until she hears the name of the plane that rescued them – the ‘Shooting Star.’

Similarly, when David is forced to steal a German plane during the climactic battle of Saint-Mihiel, Jack remains tragically unaware that it is his own friend on the other end of his fire. Of course, this is also the first time David has mistakenly left behind his lucky charm, dooming him to the same fate as his old tentmate. Their companionship up to this point has not been without conflict, primarily stemming from David’s great efforts to protect his friend from heartbreak, and yet their final minutes together are spent in melancholy reconciliation. Though they both have their own romantic desires for women back home, it becomes evident that the greatest love in Wings is shared between these two men, who seal their affection here with cinema’s first same-sex kiss. In this moment, Wellman poignantly cuts to a plane sitting in front of a cemetery, its propellors slowing to a halt just as David passes away.

With silent movie stars like Clara Bow, Charles Rogers, and Richard Arlen leading this cast, Wings’ comic, dramatic, and action beats are injected with a whole lot of old Hollywood charm, grounding Wellman’s staggering practical effects in the hopeful idealism of youth. Those giant metal beasts which they fly through the air are monuments to their freedom, liberating them from the constraints of the ground, and yet such unruly, uninhibited ambition comes at a dangerous cost. With his soaring aerial photography and brisk editing, Wellman isn’t one to lose sight of such peril either, furiously beating back any preconceptions of silent cinema as being archaically stage-bound by turning its magnificent feats of engineering into vehicles for compelling, emotive storytelling.

Wings is in the public domain, and available to watch on many free video sharing sites including YouTube.

Abel Gance | 5hr 33min

Before there were unspoken rules about how long big-budget movie spectacles should be, there was Napoleon, the last great epic of the silent era running at an extravagant 5 and a half hours. In terms of pure length, this was actually a step down for Abel Gance, whose drama La Roue from 1923 ran for 7 and a half hours. He was a filmmaker following in the fresh footsteps of D. W. Griffith, innovating the sort of editing and camera techniques that keep a project as weighty as this light on its feet, fizzling with a radical passion that sends French leader Napoleon Bonaparte plummeting to the brink of failure, before pulling him up again to the heights of historical glory. Additionally, Gance takes a great deal of narrative inspiration from Victor Hugo, weaving an eloquent literary voice through his intertitle narration, and detailing accounts of French revolutionary history with a similarly intellectual and patriotic fascination.

Authenticity is particularly important to Gance in unfolding the story of Napoleon, as he inserts his own voice into the film to announce that those lines of dialogue marked as “Historical” are authentic to reliable records, and proclaiming as we move to Corsica that all of the following scenes were shot on location where the real events occurred. “I would like to be my own posterity, to witness what a poet would have me think, feel, and say,” presages Napoleon in an opening epigraph, and evidently Gance views himself as that modern day poet to do justice to his story.

He doesn’t waste time either in setting up his main character as a stubborn yet strategically minded outsider, opening on a wintery field of young boys at a military school warring against each other in a snowball fight. From within a trench, Napoleon uses the reflection of his belt buckle to look over the edge before rushing forward and engaging with the enemy in close combat. Very quickly, battle breaks out, and this tiny model of war reveals the wise, courageous leader that up until now has lain dormant inside the young boy.

Napoleon’s excited ambition in this sequence is only matched by Gance’s fervent filmmaking, rapidly firing between static close-ups of his subject’s calm, controlled face and the surrounding chaos, where a camera has been strapped to the operator’s chest to simulate a handheld effect. Given the size and weight of film equipment in the 1920s, this on its own a pioneering technical move from Gance. In blending its movement with zealous montage editing, and then leading into multiple exposure shots of Napoleon’s visage over the snowball fight though, it is the immediate, visceral impact of these combined techniques which hits us before anything else, landing us right in the middle of a battle where only one boy is in total control.

From this point on, Gance just keeps on finding new mounts for his camera, using these creative positions to craft the sort of shots that bring us right into the action rather than keeping us at a distance from it. From rocking sailboats, charging horses, and even cannons we watch skirmishes and disasters unfold, often sharing the same points-of-view as Napoleon himself. It is that handheld effect which returns most frequently though, not just in battles but even amid meetings at the National Assembly and the Club of Cordeliers, where he delivers a rousing speech to a crowd of young revolutionaries. Gance plays these scenes like a symphony, rushing his camera through cheering masses, building this patriotic excitement upon the musical underscore of La Marseillaise as it is composed within the story, and finally accelerating the sequence’s rhythmic editing towards grand images of French victory.

Right from his early days as a young political hopeful, Napoleon’s obstinate courage and inspiring words remain the running character thread through all his greatest victories and trials, leading him to go so far as to confront a crowd of Corsican men and women who consider him a traitor for his incendiary anti-British sentiment. “If you could understand the dreams that fire my soul, you would follow me!” he passionately declares, momentarily subduing their contempt. Then as he races away on horseback, the shock subsides, and he is followed by an army of counter-revolutionaries looking to claim the bounty on his head. Once again, Gance makes us part of the chase as he tracks his camera along with the horses, though in wide insert shots that frame their silhouettes against low horizons, he also adds splashes of pictorial beauty into this dash for freedom. When Napoleon finally reaches a small boat on a shoreline, he hoists his stolen French flag up as a sail to catch the wind, literalising it a symbol of liberty.

There is seemingly no ceiling to Gance’s majestic storytelling ambition, as when stormy weather strikes we find his camera fixed to this boat, being tossed around on the surface of this dark ocean. Meanwhile, back at the National Assembly in Paris, the Jacobin movement against the monarchy is splintering between the moderate Girondists and the more radical Montagnards. The display of parallel editing here is simply among the best ever put to film, accelerating in frenzied rhythms as one man’s struggle against nature is set against a political calamity, offering even greater weight to both. Guillotines and eagles are superimposed on top of incensed anti-monarchists calling for executions, all while waves crash across the crowd in a furious tempest. Handheld camerawork is no longer enough on its own to capture the raw agitation of this environment, and so Gance attaches his camera to a large pendulum and swings it in long strokes above the assembly, forwards and backwards, as if to make us seasick.

The colours that Gance incorporates through tinting his film also run up against each other in this sequence, as he briskly cuts between the melancholy blue of the ocean and sepia yellow of the National Assembly, visually distinguishing between the corresponding struggles. Such vibrant hues as these permeate much of the film, washing scenes of deep personal reflection in purple as the French leader wistfully ponders his future at an ocean shore, and in an angry red as mob violence takes over the streets of Paris. In this way, Napoleon also strives to understand its central subject on an intimate level as well, transcending its sweeping historicity to uncover the emotional core of the French leader.

No doubt that Albert Diudonné deserves a great deal credit for this, carrying the weight of the biopic in his performance through scenes of both sincere fervour and quiet contemplation. Especially when the film approaches its final act, Gance begins to turn towards Napoleon’s personal relationships with those he loved and those whose love he never returned. For Violine, the daughter of an old friend, he is an unattainable icon of worship, represented in her bedroom as a small shrine. Draped in a white veil like a young bride, she imagines his figure as a shadow against her wall, present but intangible. Meanwhile he pictures the face of the woman he does love, Josephine, over a globe, leaning in to kiss the location where she manifests – right on top of Paris, no less. The vision of an empty theatre being filled with the ghosts of old mentors and deceased revolutionaries manifests in a similar manner through a skilful use of multiple exposure, and in doing so Gance finds a consistency in Napoleon’s attitudes towards love and patriotism. To him, they are one and the same, and by openly expressing one, he ardently demonstrates the other.

It is in this amalgamation of love and patriotism that we keep finding the beating heart of this grand historical tale, with Gance echoing in his filmmaking the same enthusiastically eccentric attitude with which the French leader approached warfare. As such, scenes of violent conflict become the canvas upon which his avant-garde experiments are unleashed in full force. Mosaics of individual shots that make up a small-scale pillow fight and three-way split screens which wedge Napoleon between images of war capture the sort of layered martial chaos which has rarely been translated to film so succinctly.

Nothing can prepare us though for the magnificent final act, taking us into the heart of the Battle of Montenotte through the widest aspect ratio ever committed to film – a staggering 4:1, achieved by placing three cameras side-by-side to capture a triptych of images. Gance is singular in his vision and unmatched when it comes to capturing such a tremendous scope within a single shot, fitting an astounding number of extras into his frame as military preparations commence. From atop a mountain, Napoleon delivers one last stirring speech, motivating the French spirit of revolution before launching into a march and battle that sweep across epic terrains and three-way split screens. All at once, kaleidoscopic landscapes, heroic marches, cheering Parisians, maps of Italy, spinning globes, Napoleon’s stoic face, and dreamy visions of his wife visually harmonise like polyphonic orchestrations composed by a cinematic maestro.

And then, in the final minute as Gance hurtles towards the finish line, an explosion of colour erupts – blue, white, and red tinting, each take up a third of the ultra-widescreen and turning his triptych into a French flag marking Napoleon’s tremendous victory for his nation. This level of epic filmmaking is simply remarkable, punctuating every key beat in this sprawling narrative with a flourish of artistic splendour wholly unique to Gance’s own trailblazing intuitions, and delivering a defining piece of silent cinema that is all too difficult to find these days. More than just developing and passing on a language of visual storytelling, Napoleon pioneered techniques that have not been touched since, carving out its own strange yet fascinating corner of film history that it inhabits alone.

Napoleon is not currently streaming in Australia.