1917 Poll 2.0

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Choose your favourite films from 1917 (according to IMDB).

Each person can vote for up to 20 films. Do not feel compelled to fill the maximum allowable number.

Twenty-film ballots can be formatted as follows:
- Five tiers of four films each, 4/4/4/4/4; scored 5-4-3-2-1 pts/film/tier
- Four tiers of five films each, 5/5/5/5; scored 4.5-3.5-2.5-1.5 pts/film/tier
- Two tiers of ten films each, 10/10; scored 4-2 pts/film/tier
- No tiers, unranked; scored 3 pts/film
- A 20-film three-tier ballot is not possible

A tiered ballot can include less than 20 films, but in that case the total number of films must still be able to be factored by the number of tiers, so:
- A five tier ballot can include only 20, 15, 10, or 5 films
- A four tier ballot can include only 20, 16, 12, 8, or 4 films
- A three tier ballot (scored 5-3-1) can include only 18, 15, 12, 9, 6, or 3 films
- A two tier ballot can include only 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, or 2 films
- Ballots that are 19, 17, 13, 11, 7 or 1 films must be no tiers

Users are urged to post their provisional lists as soon as possible, so that others can use them for recommendations. You may revise your lists at any point prior to the deadline.

Deadline for 1917 ballots will be Wednesday, November 30th at roughly midnight EST.

[flip]

excluding the several billion years before 1895, this is the year from which i've seen the fewest films. might try to change that this month, tiered ballot for now:

The Immigrant (Charlie Chaplin)

The Adventurer (Charlie Chaplin)

By the Sad Sea Waves (Alfred J Goulding)

Bliss (Alfred J Goulding)

[rischka]

i have...
straight shooting (ford)
malombra (gallone)
a modern musketeer (dwan)
rapsodia satanica (oxilia)
the dying swan (bauer)
bucking broadway (ford)
raffles, the amateur cracksman (irving)
until they get me (borzage)
satan triumphant (protazanov)
thais (bragaglia)
the girl from the marsh croft (sjostrom)
a man there was (sjostrom)
for happiness (bauer)
the immigrant (chaplin)
easy street (chaplin)

[greennui]

Terje Vigen (Victor Sjöström)
Rapsodia Satanica (Nino Oxilia)
The Dying Swan (Evgeny Bauer)
Unmasked (Francis Ford, Grace Cunard)
Malombra (Carmine Gallone)
The Portrait of Captain Grogg (Victor Bergdahl)
Thomas Graal’s Best Film (Mauritz Stiller)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w5-GRv7aWs

[Lencho of the Apes]

I'm starting with

Alexander The Great - Stiller
Bucking Broadway - Ford
The Dying Swan - Bauer
A Girl's Folly - Tourneur
For Happiness - Bauer
A Man There Was - Sjostrom
Mater Dolorosa - Gance
Raffles The Amateur Cracksman - George Irving
Revolutionary - Bauer
Satan Triumphant - Protazanov
Straight Shooting - Ford
Thomas Graal's best Film - Stiller
Until They Get Me - Borzage

[sally]

malombra
rapsodia satanica
a dying swan
a man there was
straight shooting
the merry jail
a modern musketeer
wolf lowry
le coupable
hjertetyven
holland in ice (willy mullens!!!)

to watch:
the ones that aren't shit quality (you guys watched thais? )

[niminy-piminy]

MARRIED BY SATAN (Vyacheslav Viskovsky, 1917)
... the film is incomplete, and it's intertitles were lost!

Elena, which is hopelessly in love with the prince Bassargin, goes to a fortune-teller Sybil, and Sybil - with help of "the power of the Great Beginnings" - unites the Elena’s soul with Bassargin. Then Satan himself married the souls of Elena and Bassargin, and the prince marries Elena in real life. However, sometimes Elena is feeling the smell a dead body from the prince, and sees a skeleton... Then Elena falls in love with Ivnev, her childhood friend, and starts unfaithful to her husband. After a while the prince (thanks to Sybil’s witchcraft) gets into a catastrophe. Six months later, Elena married Ivnev, but the ghost of the dead prince begins to torment her. Sybil is trying to help Elena again, but Elena's heart doesn’t stand up nightmares of suggestion...

or in other words...

In 'Venchal ikh Satana', a young lesbian cat who struggles with prejudice in Moscow finds a copy of the Necronomicon and a cursed flute which she uses to take revenge upon her oppressors — a group of homophobic agents of the Tzar, but when the wife of the Tzar invokes Basement Cat, she doesn't know what is in store in this rollicking romantic comedy.

https://youtu.be/qnsrVgyGZfo

[sally]

the above is gloriously delicious

this one.....not so much

durchlaucht amüsiert sich - carl heinz wolff

[sally]

whilst the lack of subtitles left me as bemused about the plot as carlo wieth is...



and whilst the sentiment-besotted heroine appears in the end to willingly submit to grotesque patriarchal oppression and emotional blackmail, gotta hand it to the (cynical?) danes of 1917 for the happy ending (miscegenation! with no punishment! (other than the woman as property thing))

a prince of bharata - robert dinesen

streaming here: https://www.stumfilm.dk/en/stumfilm/str ... gshustru-i





if i hadn't spent so much of the film wondering what the hell was happening (due to no subtitles) i suspect the film might be even more interesting & layered than even the unexpected ending suggests (unless it is suggesting that women care more about fantasy than their freedom, in which case it can fuck off)

[sally]

lost and won - frank reicher

i'm sure there are tons of amazing films languishing in archives, yet it's the infantile moralizing trash that gets restored so that creeps can drool over plucky-but-winsomely-virginal sub-moronic nymphs. yes american films have snappier technique but otherwise they are utterly repulsive (not even the mildest lip-breaching kiss, when the two 'good' romantic leads get wholesomely married in the end, and of course the bad woman is portrayed as a cigarette smoking slut - quite the contrast to yesterday's dinesen)

i have a demille in reserve but i'm quite disheartened

[sally]

je' sku' tale med jør'nsen / i want to speak to johnson - lau lauritzen sr

vigorous madcap with very affectionate friends

https://www.stumfilm.dk/en/stumfilm/str ... me-jornsen

me every single morning

[pabs]

Choose your favourite films from 1917 (according to IMDB).

Is there a normal year poll for this month too, or just this tiny 1917 poll?

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Just 1917. From what I can infer, y'all devoted 3 weeks solely to '17 last time, so devoting a month to it in this iteration would be standard practice.

I appreciate that not every one finds these films interesting, and if there's enough pushback, I'll change. But you'll have to make a case that people who like 1917 can relate to. If it's just that we shouldn't devote a whole month to years that are not exciting because silents are boring, then that's obviously not going to work. I think years after the mid-60s are largely boring, and if I ran the zoo we wouldn't devote a whole month to them (wouldn't even poll them at all!), but I wouldn't even suggest such a policy because I want everyone to get the most out of the years they most enjoy.

[pabs]

No worries.

[sally]

"normal"

aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

(what movie from any year is 'normal'?)

if there's a witches curse where you bite your tongue so hard it falls out and you hurl it at the screen in mockery of a sarcastic kiss, then burn me.

[sally]

mater dolorosa / the torture of silence - abel gance

ok, this is something else apart, ART, don't make 'em like this anymore (as a somewhat portentous 'classics'-fanboy (aka conservative who will only look for value in the previously lionised) letterboxd review declaims/reminds - silents were never silent, they only became silent when speech (or its agonizing lack) inevitably erupted and imprisoned their images) - this film could only work as a silent movie....although i also read it as one of those dialogues that were fashionable in the period - between modernity (impersonal, Progress! Science!, the return of the repressed) and more fragile Art, though i guess that's a refraction of the same thing...

anyway, epic, epically intimate (as opposed to gance's more glorified intimate epics) and the doc sniffing his wife's veil was the most touching thing i've seen in months. could have been a clip in goodbye to language (rip♥)





also, woohoo! gaston modot! (apparently artaud is in it too, but i didn't catch him)

[sally]

pax æterna - holger-madsen

veeeeeeeeeery dull, even the director's own war film in 1914 was less stodgy

however....on the theme of silence in silent movies that weren't aware of their silence until it was made explicit, when the Bad Thing happened there was a close-up of a bell tolling on screen for 1min 17 seconds uninterrupted, which was quite astounding and as far as i'm concerned constitutes the sole worth of the entire film (i mean, assuming that when it was playing in cinemas it was accompanied by a sound effect, but the duration....don't recall anything else like it)


(aside: she looks like a statue!!!)

[sally]

castles for two - frank reicher

much more engaging than the other doro (but goodness, the heroes are still imprisoned in chaste restraint) and the setting of mistaken identity in the old world seems to allow the dreams of the past to split the film material itself in liberal superimposition shots (literally fairy ghosts)

[sally]

so i guess the theme for 1917 that i'm noticing (and now looking to notice) is how the physical material of the film itself is intentionally interacting with plot & concept in the throes of filmic self-reflections

(as well watched ivan mosjoukine playing the actor ivan mosjoukine in an, alas, surviving fragment of behind the screen/a life destroyed by pitiless fate, which meta concept also fits the above, ivan being both the filmed physical material and the concept of himself)

(nothing gonna beat the gance tho, that one is IMPORTANT)

[sally]

oh and i forgot to mention this one - it's cool to see the minarets in thessaloniki before they got pulled down in 1923 when all the muslims were forcibly kicked out

https://vimeo.com/231803848

[sally]

a bid for fortune - sidney morgan

this fluffy crime serial stuffed into a feature is total twaddle, but i did enjoy the british proclivity for cheap smut scattered throughout in incessant phallic references and such








altho tbh my sympathies were with the bad guy walking around with a pussy on his shoulder and lusting after the 'rod'

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Thanks for these recs, Sally! Didn't know about either Castles for Two or A Bid for Fortune and they both look well up my alley

[sally]

if i watch any more fluff i will remember to note it here!

accidentally wandered past the war memorial when they'd all gathered as part of remembrance sunday, they had stopped the traffic, tooted out the last post on a trumpet signalling the two minute silence and due to fucking hypnotic crowd psychology i got all weepy. fuck's sake.


am watching some 1917 war films now anyway

https://twitter.com/AshmoleanMuseum/sta ... v77Fl-N2CA

[sally]

revolutionary - bauer

bauer is a god. every scene, the staging, the movement, so thought-out, considered, adult. gorgeous. also, puppies.

(altho i'm still confused what actually convinced the son to come around)





the war & the dream of momi - giovanni pastrone, segundo de chomon

whereas this on the other hand was quite disconcerting. war is child's play

[Lencho of the Apes]

bauer is a god.

I hope you get to The King Of Paris.

[rischka]

thx for doing all the legwork (again) guys! gance & bauers were amazing.




and we're not going to have a nazi governor after all CHEERS

[sally]

bauer is a god.

I hope you get to The King Of Paris.

i will! only the obvious places have truly horrible almost unwatchable versions. anyone have a clear crisp version available?

[Lencho of the Apes]

truly horrible almost unwatchable

Picky, picky, picky. This one looked okay to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ny5e25-j0c&t=71s

but my thresholdd of unwatchability is way down here somewhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3AbkHk4OPo

[sally]

no lencho, that's horrible, but i guess i'll have to suffer it

till then am watching all the nice (image quality not necessarily content) ones

az utolsó éjszaka / the last night - jenö janovics

guy falls for older woman (i approve) turns out it's his mother, they seem to get over it; creepy bad guy that looks like a parody of lubitsch...




le calvaire de mignon - marcel simon

nothing about this on the web much apart from (rightly) dismissive bordwell: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2011/ ... ent-today/ and featuring a bizarre orientalism (the 'arab' bad: the 'moor' good) but occasional lush landscape shots





then i got distracted by non fic....an apt (cuz it's getting fucking cold now) tour of a snowy danish region

watch here: https://www.danmarkpaafilm.dk/film/vejl ... -vintertid




and then a royal visit to norwegian sandefjord - which is much more interesting than these usually are, cameraman seems more curious about scene setting, before and after shots, landscape, context, spectators than he is in the actual somewhat awkward royalty. very nice....

watch: https://www.nb.no/nbsok/nb/889ccfd11fda ... al?lang=no

something of ls lowry!

[sally]

now this is muuuuuuuch classier.....Art, death, authenticity and an actress i've never seen before but liked a lot - she had quite a dramatic life - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Orska


die schwarze loo - max mack, louis neher

what have i just seen, in the depths?



entering the depths, transformed into the death-bat of sublime creation






resurrection through the birth-canal curtains!


(and scandalous bedroom scene)