1923 poll

[karl]

The Sjostrom is awesome, definitely one of the essential films of '23, even with the "toxic masculinity"!

(whatever that means)

Also the Mauritz Stiller, even tho it's incomplete, is a gem.

[karl]

HARD WILLS (John Brunius). Brunius, who had a fondness for making films from the books of the early Scandinavian Nobel Prize winners - Thora van Deken from a novel by Henrik Pontoppidan, The Mill by Karl Gjellerup, Synnøve Solbakken by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, and this - adapts a minor Knut Hamsun novel. Brunius is definitely not in the Sjostrom/Stiller league. This has its charms, including the nice nature photography typical of Swedish films of the day, but there's never any highs here: stuff like running reindeer pulling some poor feller through the snow or horse-drawn sleigh pursued by wolves or log race through the rapids, etc. Karl says 7/10

[rischka]

Enjoyed *the extra girl* though I guess Mabel Normand's career was already in decline here: haven't seen much of her work at all. Some really funny bits, esp 'teddy' and the lion

[rischka]

Toxic masculinity=insanely jealous and controlling husband making everyone around him suffer. Ofc his behaviour leads to disaster

[karl]

Then can we have a "toxic femininity"=insanely jealous and controlling wife making everyone around her suffer - as well? To balance things out? Or maybe we can just agree that there are horrible people of both sexes... and all colors and countries, while we're at it? Thus avoiding meaningless ephemeral pet media phrases altogether?

I think the cool thing about the film is that the men are both, in their different fashions, jerks - and the film knows it. Sjostrom's character in particular seems nothing but a shiftless ne'er do well through most of the first half. But the film posits - as most of Sjostrom's films do - that people can grow and improve, be better people. Which is something that those who label ("privileged white males," "thieving Jews," etc) won't concede, 'cos they got their nice neat categories for everyone. Is all I'm sayin.

[rischka]

Sure Karl whatever you say.

[sally]

perhaps we all need to take a step back and read this:
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/ ... &q&f=false

tl;dr - stay away from the mad finns (or not ♥)

but i'm not sure i can join this discussion until i've at least seen hard wills. karl, don't suppose it's anywhere available is it?

[karl]

It's unsubbed on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWb-u69o7aY

I can upload a slightly better copy with subs in resources. But, as said above, it's not a great film. Still, if you insist...

Gonna take a pass on Masculinity in the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema, I've got Melville's Mardi and Anatole France's Red Lily still to get through. I do find it hilarious that there are publishers willing to print such stuff. Who do they expect to sell it to? Must reckon it might become a required text in a handful of obscure universities. Anyway, the Karl-Rischka spat was prompted not by Hard Wills but by Sjostrom's Fire Onboard (aka Hell Ship), a much better movie.

[St. Gloede]

Only 14 films rated 8 or higher for this year, though I could have squeezed in 7.5s like Safety Last!, Three Loves and Der Absturz. I really should rewatch the first of those 3 though, and I have been meaning to rewatch Cœur fidèle for years (and Three Sided Mirror), as I generally love Epstein.

1. Merry-Go-Round (1923, Rupert Julian & Erich von Stroheim)
2. La maison du mystère (1923, Alexandre Volkoff)
3. Our Hospitality (1923, Buster Keaton)
4. Le brasier ardent / The Burning Brazier (1923, Ivan Mozzhukhin)
5. Souls for Sale (1923, Rupert Hughes)
6. Der steinerne Reiter / The Stone Rider (1923, Fritz Wendhausen)
7. Eld ombord / The Hell Ship (1923, Victor Sjöström)
8. La souriante Madame Beudet (1923, Germaine Dulac)
9. Alles für Geld / All For Money (1923, Reinhold Schünzel)
10. Scaramouche (1923, Rex Ingram)
11. Cirano di Bergerac (1923, Augusto Genina)
12. Why Worry? (1923, Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor)
13. Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination / Warning Shadows (1923, Arthur Robison)

[liquidnature]

i think we've overextended horribly in our pursuit of social justice right back into the extremes of prejudice. we should have seized the moments when social justice was actually within reach. but for now we burn new witches.

edit: not a criticism of any one here, at all. I'm hopeful that we can see the social paradigm change, but I'm not sure we are collectively going about it the right way.

[liquidnature]

Gloede! Welcome.

[St. Gloede]

Gloede! Welcome.

Thanks Liquid!

Great to see you here.

[greennui]

Salomé premiered 31 December 1922 in New York and had previously been shown in Turkey months earlier according to imdb. I'd like to add it to my list but It'd feel wrong lol.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Salome is 1922 on imdb.

[St. Gloede]

Thanks, my lists are based on IMdb but saved in word, who knows how long ago Salome was considered '23. Well, '22 just got a quite a bit better and '23 just got a whole lot worse. Sadly I checked IMDb and no films had moved the opposite direction (or from any other). A bit frustrating, '23 really can't catch a break, it was already my weakest year ...

Anyways, that makes it 13, updated above.

[rischka]

Ok no politics while toxic masculinity is president. Or after. My bad



Fwiw sjostrom was on the right side of the issue

[karl]

And no religion while toxic femininity is present, neither.

SCARAMOUCHE is pretty terrific!

[rischka]

ima watch scaramouche; i even love the '52 stewart granger version you guys i'm home and my cat is angry

edit: this was good. swords ultimate patriarchal weapon

JK karl. couldn't hit on a soundtrack (the yt i watched had none) til i tried john maus screen memories which weirdly worked well

always thought of navarro as a wooden valentino stand-in but he had something this bit from his wikipedia bio:

Along with Dolores del Río, Lupe Vélez and James Cagney, Novarro was accused of promoting Communism in California after they attended a special screening of the film ¡Que viva México! by famed Russian filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Broken Hearts Of Broadway - Irving Cummings, USA. Missing link between deMille's jazz-age moral recalibrations and the Busby Berkeley musicals from Warners, but Colleen Moore instead of Joan Blondell.

Nedbrudte Nerver/The Hill Park Mystery A.W. Sandberg, Denmark

Strong Hollywood vibe to this one, action//comedy a la Fairbanks. Lovely restored print "out there;" in terms of image quality, it's the sparkliest thing I've seeen so far among the '23s.

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[Pretentious Hipster]

Cœur fidèle [The Faithful Heart] - Jean Epstein

La souriante Madame Beudet [The Smiling Madame Beudet] - Germaine Dulac
La roue [The Wheel] - Abel Gance
Gunnar Hedes saga [The Blizzard] - Mauritz Stiller
Le brasier ardent [The Burning Brazier] - Ivan Mosjoukine
Fait-divers - Claude Autant-Lara
Our Hospitality - John G. Blystone & Buster Keaton
Souls for Sale - Rupert Hughes
Safety Last - Sam Taylor & Fred C. Newmeyer
Le retour à la raison [Return to Reason] - Man Ray

[karl]

Geneviève (Léon Poirier). Not sure what possessed me to watch a 2 1/4-hour French silent film with a blotted-out time-code in the center of the picture and that's completely missing all its title cards... Only the stills I saw looked pretty. And story's not that hard to follow: for some reason relating to her kid sister our heroine in early 19th century (?) French village has to give up her handsome devoted feller, and has a long slow road to ruin. The kind of hard luck lady movie that Mizoguchi specialized in with the outdoor imagery of the Scandinavian silents and some stark, Dreyer-like interiors. Seems to have put a lot of effort into getting the costumes and furnishings of the period right. Would like to see it with the title cards to fill in a few gaps, but liked it regardless.

[Lencho of the Apes]

bloody lillian saintly virginal anti-womanflesh-hood child-eyed all suffering gish

The patron saint of anorexia.

Watching Rosita tonight.

[rischka]

so i'm supposed to feel sorry for some old perv who looks up his daughter's dress while she's on the swing? that gance is such a madman

i can't tell if it's working but i'm inclined to say not. at least formally he's always interesting

[Lencho of the Apes]

Warning: the high-glam restoration of Black Oxen (Frank Lloyd, USA) with the big damn watermark kicks out after 23 minutes and there ain't no more. Minutes 23 - 58 (of 70) can be watched on a crap-looking TV rip (best option seems to b the 1.27.40 version) but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.

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There's a wild tribal-exotica Soviet Azerbaijani movie called Qız qalası əfsanəsi (///////////// OH SHIT -- between yesterday and today, IMDB changed it from 1923 to 1924. Available copy doesn't have subtitles, though, so only the broadest outlines of the plot were perceptible.

I was much taken with the 33-minute La légende de soeur Beatrix (Jacqis de Baroncelli, FRA), but the only copy available has titles in Spanish. I'm working on an srt file, though, and probably will finish it tomorrow. I'll put a thing in the place when it's done. If L'Herbier had been into Breton folk-art instead of Constructivist doo-dads...

[karl]

THE COVERED WAGON (James Cruz)

The template for all the westerns that Hollywood cranked out in the following decades: Indians on warpath, covered wagons through harsh terrain, wagon train leader loves a pretty girl on the wagon train, a no-good villain also vying for the girl's attention who wants to kill the fella, a few rowdy secondary scenery-chewers (with title cards in ole plainsman dialect) for comic relief, etc. It's been done better, perhaps, but this one's surprisingly good considering its age.

[Lencho of the Apes]

^The Covered Wagon was high-canon for a long time (or at least seemed that way to me) so I was surprised at not seeing it getting much attention here and now. I look forward to watching it.

[ofrene]

Coeur Fidele

Our Hospitality
The Smiling Madame Beudet
Safety Last
Three Ages

[rischka]

mmmkay so i said i wasn't enjoying la roue but i have to admit the last 40 mins was so powerful i'm gonna list it.



gance doesn't have the light touch of epstein in couer fidele, in fact everything here is heavy, overdrawn and overdramatic and it's probably still too long but i have to give credit (although i still prefer j'accuse) gance was a giant who used the medium like no one before or since. his rapid editing technique here predated soviet montage. gance's wife died the day filming was complete and star severin-mars soon after. the weight of tragedy is palpable

[St. Gloede]

Gance is the French Griffith as far as I'm concerned, heavy handed to the point of absurdity, but always well done. La Roue is really impressive, but I don't think I could ever bring myself to list it.

(I actually love the first J'accuse though, despite the laughable arbitrarily of the phrase when randomly uttered throughout)

Edit: Autocorrect changed Gance to Vance twice ...

[rischka]

i think of him more as a stroheim level misunderstood genius. they were just making it up as they went and everyone thought they were completely mad