The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Often sited as one of the greatest horror films of the silent era, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German movie and a prime example of German Expressionism. Written by first time screenwriters Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, the script is generally considered to feature the first twist ending in cinematic history. The main thrust of the story is presented in flashback in which a young man called Francis (Friedrich Fehér) recounts a series of terrible murders that took place in the small town of Holstenwall. His story speaks of a Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) who, at a local fair, unveils a fortune telling somnambulist (sleep-walker) whom he is able to control using hypnosis. When murder strikes the small town, the finger is pointed at Caligari and his attraction.

This movie is one which I’ve wanted to see for several years and heard nothing but good things about. It’s with regret then that I have to report that I was often bored by the story. Ending aside, I found it dull and was too often confused by developments. I’m certainly going to pin some of the blame on a poor quality DVD which I bought from the normally reputable Fopp but even seeing through this, I didn’t fall in love with the film. Despite my lack of enjoyment with regards to the plot, the film has much to offer even the most casual film buff.

Making a Living

February 2^nd 1914, exactly one hundred years ago today saw the launch of one of the most successful Hollywood careers in history. On this day a century ago, a twenty-four year old Englishman called Charles Spencer Chaplin made his screen debut in a one reel Keystone comedy called Making a Living. Eighteen months later he would arguably become the most famous entertainer on the planet and by his late twenties he was the richest. Being a man for whom Chaplin has a special place in my heart, not to mention a permanent inked place on my arm, today is something special for me and to celebrate I decided to watch his first film exactly a century after its initial release.

Although I’ve reviewed over forty of Chaplin’s films in the past two years on this blog, Making a Living was one that I had never seen. In a way I’m glad that today was the first time I’d seen the short film as there’s something interesting about seeing it for the very first time exactly a hundred years after it was first exhibited. Chaplin plays a charming swindler called Edgar English having not adopted his iconic Tramp costume and persona until his second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice. During the thirteen minute runtime, English has frequent run-ins with Henry Lehrman’s reporter and eventually falls foul of the Keystone Kops, leading to a chaotic and slightly confusing conclusion.

Un Chein Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is a short, silent surrealist film from 1929. It was the debut film of Luis Buñuel and was written by Buñuel and fellow surrealist Salvador Dalí. The film features no discernable narrative in the traditional sense but rather dream logic, seemingly popping from one scene to another, often with tenuous links. Lasting only around sixteen minutes, it nonetheless crams in many eye catching (and eye slitting) images, some of which have passed into the collective consciousness. Describing the plot is near impossible as it weaves in and out of normality and plausibility with no regard for sense or building upon what comes before. Perhaps best described as a series of vignettes or windows into the minds of the men behind the film, it’s sometimes a frustrating watch but is notable for its striking imagery and skilled production.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Sometimes it only takes a few frames to realise that you’re in for a treat. This was the case for me with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc. It is however a film that I’d put off watching for a long time. Despite my interest in silent cinema and all the great things I’d read and heard, there was something about what little I knew of the film that put me off. Perhaps it was the subject matter (more on that later) or the idea that it would be a depressing and/or dull watch but either way it took a good five years from my first whiff of the film to actually sitting down to watch it. What a silly boy I was for those five years. Like many other renowned films that I’d put off viewing it is of course a superb movie that features some of the best acting, editing and camera placement I’ve ever seen.

The film tells of the imprisonment, trial and (spoiler) execution of Joan of Arc (Noah’s wife) who claimed divine guidance and lead France to several important military victories during the Hundred Year’s War before being captured by the English and tried for heresy, all by the age of nineteen. The film draws on the five hundred year old transcripts of the trial and indeed original documents form the basis of the script.

City Lights

In the late 1920s film stars, directors and producers faced a dilemma. 1927’s The Jazz Singer had opened the world’s eyes and ears to the talkies; movies with sound and the revolution had taken off quickly, brushing former silent stars aside and ushering in a new era of spoken dialogue. Arguably the biggest star of the silent era was Charlie Chaplin. His films had been hugely popular in every corner of the globe, from London and Los Angeles to Leningrad and Lahore. His universality came not only from his popular and identifiable Tramp character but because people from any country could understand the language of the film. Each film’s themes and jokes worked in any language and were loved by all.

It was because of The Tramp’s universality as a silent character that caused Chaplin to shun the talkies for a decade after they first became the norm. City Lights was his first film produced after The Jazz Singer and he stuck to his guns, despite outside influence, and kept The Tramp silent. The movie’s opening scene gently mocks the new medium at a statue unveiling. The City Mayor proudly strides to a podium to dedicate a new statue and when he speaks an amusing Donald Duck type noise is emitted from his mouth. His lady wife then takes the stand with similar, higher pitched results. To me this is Chaplin’s way of proving his point to the English speaking world. We can’t understand what the characters are saying so how would his fans in France, Russia or Brazil understand him if he spoke? With this opening scene we not only have our first laugh but also a taste of an ever maturing Chaplin, a man who isn’t afraid to express his opinions on screen.

City Girl

F.W. Murnau’s 1930 film City Girl was the third of just four that the German cinematic pioneer made in Hollywood. With 1928’s 4 Devils among the thousands of lost films from the period, we only have three left from the Director who in his home land made such iconic movies as Nosferatu and The Last Laugh. City Girl shares many themes with his masterpiece Sunrise in that it is about love and the struggle between rural life and urbanisation.

Lem Tustine (Charles Farrell) is sent from his Minnesota farm to Chicago by his overbearing father to sell their wheat crop. While in the big city, the country boy meets and falls in love with a city waitress called Kate (Mary Duncan). Lem sells the family crop, but for a lower price than his father desired and brings his new bride back to the farm to meet his parents. Kate soon discovers that life in the country isn’t all she expected it to be and with leering men much the same as in the city and a father-in-law who distrusts her, she begins to think she’s made a huge mistake.

The Idle Class

Arriving on the back of his first great film The Kid, Charlie Chaplin’s The Idle Class feels weak and thin in comparison. The writer in Chaplin was struggling for ideas before he got the spark for The Kid and it almost feels as though he is back to square one while writing the two reel The Idle Class. A Tramp (Chaplin) gets off a train, and not how you’d expect him to, before heading for a day at the golf course. Meanwhile a wealthy wife (Edna Purviance) also disembarks expecting her well to do husband (also Chaplin) to meet her at the station but he is drunk at home. Following some hi jinks at the golf course there is a case of mistaken identity at a ball at which Edna takes the Tramp for her husband.

For me The Idle Class lacks the depth which made The Kid great and also lacks the direction and laughs that are found in the likes of A Dog's Life or Shoulder Arms. It occasionally takes a more dramatic route but this often fails to match even Sunnyside for dramatic narrative. The film is saved by a middle act on the golf course which is brilliantly inventive and funny but is unfortunately bookended by a beginning and end which did little for me.  

Rescued by Rover

Rescued by Rover is a 1905 film which along with the likes of The Great Train Robbery (1903) helped to bridge the gap between films that were a mere curiosity or fairground attraction towards the narrative structure which dominated the following century and continues today. The film makes use of the recent invention of the cut or edit to slice together the action surrounding a baby which is kidnapped by a beggar woman. It mostly follows a dog as it seeks out the missing child to alert its owner, the baby’s father. Although by today’s standards the plot is fairly predictable and quite repetitive, for the time it was groundbreaking. Just five years earlier the Hepworth Manufacturing Company was producing films which although interesting were single shot amusements, now in 1905 they had produced a proper narrative film which is much more coherent than any contemporary film I’ve seen so far.

There are several areas in which this film is inventive or pioneering. The first is perhaps the most important. Rescued by Rover was the first film to ever feature paid actors. Before this time roles were filled by the crew, friends or sometimes passers by. Here though two actors, one of which was May Clark, are employed in a cast which also features Director Cecil Hepworth’s wife, child, dog as well as himself. The film is also noted as being the first to create an animal star. The dog, Blair, became famous for several years following the film’s release and is also one of the best trained I’ve seen on screen.

The Kid

Undoubtedly Chaplin’s finest film of the period and one of the highlights of his long career, The Kid was not only his first feature film but also in my opinion his first great work. Produced at a difficult time in the star’s life, The Kid is the first of several Chaplin films which perfectly balanced comedy, drama and pathos. His previous films had often contained at least one of these elements and earlier films such as A Dog's Life and The Immigrant had provided at least two, but for the first time in 1921, despite personal tragedy and pressure from his studio, Chaplin created his first true masterpiece.

Production began in 1919 just ten days after the death of Chaplin’s baby son Norman. Chaplin, who had been struggling creatively, was instantly hit with an idea that was to become The Kid. As his Tramp character Chaplin finds a baby who has been abandoned by a poor single mother (Edna Purviance). The Tramp ends up raising the child alone and when he is around six or seven the child (Jackie Coogan) helps his adoptive father in his window repair business. The father follows the boy around town as the boy breaks windows. Soon after being smashed, the man turns up to repair them. All is well until the boy falls sick and a Doctor realises the Tramp is not the natural father. Soon after Social Services arrive to take the boy from the man in what is one of the most gut wrenchingly moving scenes in cinema history.

Sunnyside

When a workshy farmhand (Charlie Chaplin) misplaces a herd of cows the local town of Sunnyside suffers the consequences. The young farmhand has even more trouble on his hands when a well to do city boy (Tom Terriss) arrives in town and has his eyes firmly set on the hand’s girl (Edna Purviance). Chaplin’s forth film for First National was preceded by the hugely successful Shoulder Arms and proved to be one of his least successful of the period. Despite this the film holds up fairly well today and has a first act which is of some note. Unfortunately though the film misses a step with the introduction of the romantic plot from which it never truly recovers.

The first thing I noticed about the film is that unlike almost every Chaplin film to come before, there was an actor on second billing. Most of Chaplin’s early title cards read something along the line of “Charles Chaplin in…” or “….. with Charlie Chaplin” but Sunnyside reads “Charlie Chaplin in Sunnyside with Edna Purviance”. I don’t recall seeing another actor’s name so prominently placed on a title card before this film and it perhaps shows Chaplin’s ever increasing belief in his leading lady as an actress. As it turns out, Purviance’s role isn’t really much larger than in the likes of Burlesque on Carmen, The Vagabond or A Dog's Life but it feels like she is the focus of attention for a larger part of the film.

Shoulder Arms

Set partly amongst the trenches of the First World War, Shoulder Arms was a bold film for Charlie Chaplin to make in 1918 given the wide reaching criticism he received for failing to sign up to fight. He was advised by close friends to abandon the film for something less controversial but Charlie battled on and despite the possible outrage and backlash the film became Chaplin’s most critically acclaimed and financially successful film up to that point, was particularly popular with returning Doughboys and features a couple of scenes which may well be recognisable to people who have never even seen a full Chaplin film.

Charlie plays a young recruit who is sent over to France to join the war. Despite typical problems to begin with he soon discovers that he is a more than competent soldier and after numerous brave exploits ends up in the house of a French woman (Edna Purviance) who tends to his wounds. With the help of his new love and a dear friend from the trenches, Chaplin ends up winning the war for the allies. Or does he?

The Bond

A half reel propaganda film, funded by and starring Charlie Chaplin, The Bond is a unique film in Chaplin’s cannon in that it is the only film he ever made to be filmed in front of a plain black set. There are just a few dimly lit props littered around the stage alongside the actors, Chaplin regulars Edna Purviance, Albert Austin and Sydney Chaplin. The film depicts several sketches along the theme of bonds, from friendship to marriage to the most important, Liberty Bonds.

Though not in the least bit funny the film is still an interesting watch and Chaplin’s simple to understand depiction of what Bonds actually did would have been seen by millions of people across the world. In a very simple sketch Chaplin offers up his savings to Uncle Sam who in turn gives it to Industry who finally furnishes soldiers with rifles. The idea is simple and easy to understand despite the lack of dialogue. In the final scene, Chaplin uses a large hammer with the words Liberty Bonds engraved on the side to smash the Kaiser into submission, thereby further expressing the idea of the difference the bonds can make.

A Dog's Life

Charlie Chaplin’s first short for First National Pictures was released in April 1918, six months after his final film for Mutual. Chaplin in his Tramp character befriends a local mongrel dog called Scraps and together they go about causing mischief and mayhem. Later, Scraps comes to the aid of the Tramp when he gets into trouble with some thugs and helps his master set up a new life for himself and his new lady friend, a bar singer (Edna Purviance).

What was immediately obvious about this opening First National film was its quality. The sets, costume and story are all far superior to pretty much anything seen in a Chaplin film before. The sets especially look as though they may well have been real streets. There is a much more rounded story which incorporates comedy as one aspect rather than relying solely on kicks up the backside or doffing caps to curbs. The film is still funny but this isn’t one of Chaplin’s finest works. What it is though is one of his finest stories to date and overall one of his best short films.

Easy Street

Charlie Chaplin as his Tramp character is asleep outside a Mission, close to the danger filled and lawless Easy Street. After being partially reformed by the Mission where he meets a beautiful young woman (Edna Purviance), the Tramp decides to join the Police and is immediately sent out on the beat to Easy Street, a road from where Police return battered and bruised. Through luck and wit the new Policeman tries to reform the street and return it to the local residents.

Comedy wise this is probably the most disappointing of Chaplin’s Mutual Films that I’ve seen so far. In the entire film I only laughed out loud once and generally there were very few funny moments anywhere. What the film does contain though is another tender story about overcoming the odds, hard work, temperance and love which is something that Chaplin was becoming the master of at this stage of his career.

Behind the Screen

Behind the Screen stars Charlie Chaplin as a stagehand on a movie set. Chaplin is overworked and underappreciated and his boss (Eric Campbell) spends most of the time asleep, leaving Chaplin to do the heavy lifting. Meanwhile a young woman (Edna Purviance) is trying to get her big break as an actress but is turned down so dresses up as a male stagehand in order to have at least some involvement in the movies. At the same time the fellow stagehands go on strike for being woken up by a studio boss and plot their revenge…

This isn’t one of the funniest Mutual shorts but it certainly has one of the better plots up to this point. It’s multilayered and features side plot as well as the main narrative. It is also an opportunity to see behind the scenes of an early movie set in much the same way as His New Job, Chaplin’s first film for Essanay a year earlier. What the film is most famous for now though is its forthright joke about homosexuality, a subject which was barely mentioned in cinema for another fifty years.

The Pawnshop

Charlie Chaplin’s sixth film for Mutual is one with very high highs and disappointingly low lows. It features a scenario and story which doesn’t really go anywhere but also features several moments of slapstick that are amongst his best to date.

Chaplin stars as a pawnshop assistant and gets in a long running fight with fellow employee John Rand. Typically inept at his job, Chaplin is eventually fired only to be taken back on straight away after his boss Henry Bergman has a change of heart. Meanwhile Chaplin’s attentions are drawn to Bergman’s daughter Edna Purviance who is busy baking in the back of the shop. Trouble appears late on as a thief, Eric Campbell enters the shop intent on taking it for everything it’s got.

The Count

Charlie Chaplin’s fifth film for Mutual is a somewhat simpler film than its immediate predecessors The Vagabond and One A.M. and is more reminiscent of his Essanay work, albeit it more sophisticated and slightly funnier. Chaplin plays an inept Tailor’s assistant who gets fired for burning a Count’s trousers. His boss (Eric Campbell) finds an invitation to a party at the house of Miss Moneybags (Edna Purviance) and decides to impersonate the rich Count in order to marry the attractive, rich girl. Chaplin is also at the party having snuck in through the back door and beats Campbell to the impersonation. All hell breaks lose though when the real Count arrives, along with the Police to chase out the imposters.

The Count features lots of funny moments but lacks the knockout blow of the likes of One A.M. or The Bank. It’s testament to the quality of Chaplin’s Mutual films that I felt disappointed by The Count even though it is far superior to a lot of his Essanay films.

The Vagabond

A Musician-Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) leaves town following a chase to find himself in a gypsy camp. There he finds a poor abducted girl (Edna Purviance) who he attempts to cheer up with his music. Having witnessed a savage beating of the girl by the gypsy chieftain (Eric Campbell), the Tramp goes about saving the girl and setting her free. While attempting to woo her, a handsome artist chances by and has Edna sit for a portrait. The portrait attracts the attention of Edna’s estranged family who attempt to take her away from the Tramp for good.

I honestly can’t think of a single Chaplin film during which I’ve laughed so little but on this occasion that is not a negative statement. Here Chaplin provides plenty of his trademark pathos and creates a film which is much more of a romantic drama than romantic comedy or slapstick comedy.

The Fireman

A Fire Chief (Eric Campbell) is approached by a man (Lloyd Bacon) who asks that the Fire Department ignores a fire at his house so that he may collect the insurance money. The man insures that his daughter (Edna Purviance) is out during the fire so remains unharmed. The woman is not out though when an arsonist sets the property alight and she gets trapped upstairs. Meanwhile the Firemen which include accident prone Charlie Chaplin are at another house, putting out a fire. When the man realises his daughter is trapped he searches for them, finding Chaplin who attempts to save the day and win the woman’s heart.

Amazingly The Fireman was Chaplin’s 52^nd film but was released in June 1916. Despite his age and lack of years in the industry he was by now a pro and it shows here with clever gags and a nice central idea. Unfortunately the film suffers from a similar problem as The Floorwalker in that it just isn’t quite funny enough.

Charlie Chaplin - The Mutual Films

After a hugely successful but tense year making films for The Essanay Film and Manufacturing Company, Charlie Chaplin decided to look elsewhere when his contract came to an end. Despite several offers from larger studios, Chaplin under the advice of his elder brother and Business Manager Sydney signed with The Mutual Film Corporation on February 26^th 1916 for a world record breaking wage of $10,000 a week plus a signing bonus of $150,000. This was ten times his already substantial Essanay salary of $1,250 per week. The contract made Chaplin the highest earning employee in history and also stipulated complete artistic control over his films as well as a custom made studio. The aptly named Lone Star Studio was where Chaplin was to produce his twelve two-reel comedies for Mutual over the next twelve months. Chaplin later wrote in his autobiography that those twelve months were amongst the happiest of his career.

Although Chaplin was starting fresh with Mutual he did bring along some of his stock actors from Essanay and the likes of Leo White, John Rand and long time leading lady Edna Purviance joined him at the studio. In addition to these regulars Chaplin also hired a new group to work with him during his time at Mutual. Eric Campbell, Albert Austin and Charlotte Mineau joined a much larger group of regular actors as Chaplin’s films grew in scale.

In addition to writing, directing and starring in his films, Chaplin also began producing his movies with Mutual and went on to produce almost all of his subsequent films. The first three were co-written with his behind the scenes collaborator Vincent Bryan but Chaplin maintained sole writing and directing credit for the remaining Mutual comedies.

As with Chaplin’s Essanay films, I’ll be watching each one and posting a review on the blog plus a link to each one below.