Review of Treasures DVDs in Hollywood Reporter
craig
Bruce Calvert
> Long review
>
http://199.249.170.186/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000652957
Treasures from American Film Archives
By Doug Pratt
Bottom line: Fascinating scraps of otherwise lost films such as "The
Flute of Krishna" are featured in this eye-opening DVD release.
For a long time, people tended to look upon the silent film era as the
source of a few comedic movies, the works of D.W. Griffith and a
couple other features. It was assumed in a self-defeating sort of way
that since the other movies made during those times were not now
widely disseminated, they can't have much to offer. Fortunately, the
utility and popularity of the DVD medium is helping to change that
impression, and one series that has been particularly eye-opening
comes from the National Film Preservation Foundation and Image
Entertainment, the four-platter "Treasures from American Film
Archives" and the three-platter "More Treasures from the American Film
Archives 1894-1931."
The collections are gathered from many different museums and film
repositories. Each platter comes in a separate jacket and is loaded
with long films, short films and even fascinating scraps of otherwise
lost films. All have musical accompaniment of some sort (there are a
few sound films, too), usually in a relaxed and mildly dimensional
stereo. The presentations are all windowboxed. The transfers are
meticulous and usually appear somewhat aged but presentable. With a
couple exceptions, there is no need to identify which programs have
been tinted or provide further details on the quality of each image
transfer. The menu designs are excellent, giving the viewer a 'Play
All' option, or presenting each film with detailed background notes
and a profile of the institution where it is preserved.
On "More Treasures," many of the films have commentary tracks, and
while some are rudimentary descriptions of the action on the screen,
others are highly insightful. Each boxed set also comes with what is
basically a paperback book ("Treasures" runs 137 pages, "More
Treasures" runs 185 pages) by Scott Simmon and Martin Marks,
containing still more comprehensive background information about each
film and its musical accompaniment.
The centerpiece of the first platter, or Program 1 as it is called in
the series, is a mesmerizing William S. Hart western from 1916,
"Hell's Hinges," which runs 64 minutes. Hart's performance is
startlingly good. He commands the camera in every shot while seeming
totally integrated with his environment. His confidence is clearly
heroic, and yet the emotional and moral arcs of his character are
realistically nuanced and natural. He's a vivid movie star, whose very
presence in the film is exciting. There is also the sense in the film,
as there is in many westerns from the silent era, that the spare,
rugged sets depicting the "western" town are contemporary in design;
that, in essence, the movie was truly shot in the Old West, thanks to
the first-hand knowledge and experience of its designers.
The story is about an eastern preacher who journeys west and tries to
start a church in an untamed town. Hart's character ends up helping
him fend off bullies, who burn down the church and kill a number of
people. The action scenes are fully integrated with the narrative. The
plot may be similar to innumerable sappy Hollywood productions that
would follow over the years, but the film itself has a grownup
attitude, an uneasy "happy" ending and an indelible sense of
accomplishment, as if the movies needed to advance no further than
they had by 1916 to succeed.
The other movie on Program 1 that is stunning in its artistic
achievement is a 14-minute silent documentary from 1939 entitled
"Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther." The cinematic equivalent
of folk art, the film intercuts images of a woman writing in a journal
with what are apparently home movies from Cologne, Minnesota,
depicting the social and business activities within the farming
community. The journal entries work as intertitles for the program.
There may be no better film ever created that captures the essence of
an idealized America the way this one does, particularly since its
documentary tone makes the utopia seem fully graspable.
Like "Hell's Hinges," there is a feeling to the 15-minute 1912 film,
"The Confederate Ironclad," that while it may not have been created in
the era that it depicts, it drew its design and atmosphere from
artists who had first or at the least, secondhand knowledge of its
particulars. An enjoyable fictional story about female spies gives the
narrative its context, but the film's depiction of the Monitor and its
battles are quite spectacular.
A 17-minute excerpt is presented from a 1939 film shot in Yiddish,
Tevye, which most viewers will recognize--particularly since the sets,
costumes, performances and even camera angles are so similar--as the
source of "Fiddler on the Roof." While it is a shame that the entire
film cannot be replicated on the DVD, the segments that are presented
are fascinating. The program is supported by permanent English
subtitles.
Not to be confused with the 1928 French production of the same Edgar
Allan Poe story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," also from 1928,
running 13 minutes and directed by James Sibley Watson (e.e. cummings
helped on the script), is a surreal depiction of the tale, evoking
German Expressionism and particularly "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" in
its design -- or one might even say ripping off Caligari. In any case,
it appears that the filmmakers are more interested in toying with
design than they are in clarifying a narrative.
Also included is a delightful eight-minute animated short (using
mostly silhouette cutouts) from 1928, "The Original Movie," which
purports to present a history of moviemaking; three minutes of clips
shot by the Edison Company in 1893 (blacksmiths), 1903 (a lascivious
shoe salesman) and 1906 (tinting experiments); an amazing 1909 special
effects fantasy entitled "Princess Nicotine" or "The Smoke Fairy,"
running five minutes, about a fairy hiding in a man's pipe; two
minutes of home movies by Groucho Marx from 1933, showing him, sans
mustache, cavorting with his wife and children; a two-minute sound
film from 1938 promoting a bond vote for San Francisco Junior College;
a Private Sanfu cartoon episode, "Spies," running four minutes, from
1943, the only program in the collection that has appeared previously
on home video; and a 1968 experimental film by Scott Bartlett,
"OffOn," running nine minutes, utilizing what would now appear to be
primitive digital video effects to distort images of eyes, dancers,
birds, trees, faces and then just abstract designs. The colors on it
look a little aged.
John Huston's "The Battle of San Pietro," a 1945 U.S. Army film that
was suppressed at the time of its creation for not pulling its
punches, appears on Program 2. The 33-minute black-and-white
documentary, narrated by Huston, details the efforts of American
forces to take a well-defended Italian town from the Germans. They
succeed, but only after a long, hard fight, and Huston reports on the
battle pragmatically, making note of the setbacks and the costs
accompanying the successes. It is an overwhelmingly positive portrait
of the toughness and the resolve of the American soldier, but it is
also an admission that war is substantially more serious than a
sporting event, and not every soldier comes home again.
A full-length two-tone color film from 1922, "The Toll of the Sea,"
appears inspired by "Madame Butterfly," as it is about an Asian woman
who marries an American, only to have him called back to the States
and then return later with a new wife. The 54-minute program kind of
cops out in the last act -- you don't get to see the guy realize that
he has a child. But it is a basic, viable drama, and the colors,
though limited in range, are intriguing.
D.W. Griffith's "The Lonedale Operator," from 1911, runs 17 minutes
and is about a female railroad clerk, threatened by robbers, who
telegraphs for help while holding off the villains. Blanche Sweet
stars. "Her Crowning Glory," a 14-minute short from 1911, is about a
little girl who terrorizes the adults in charge of her, eventually
cutting off her nanny's hair.
Also included is a seven-minute collection of clips from 1901, 1903
and 1904, showing a time-lapse record of a building being torn down, a
street vendor, and a gag film pretending to show a machine that makes
dogs; a 1928 Western Union training film running five minutes that
shows how a typographical error can lead to financial disaster; home
movies taken in West Virginia in 1929 and 1935 that depict various
sights around the state; home movies from 1936 and 1937 running four
minutes with synchronized sound, the best segment being a tea party
two little girls have with their pet dog; a nine-minute piece from
1946 in which a Globetrotters-style Black baseball team demonstrates
their talents; and two artistic clips, a four-minute piece from 1940
entitled Composition 1 ("Themis"), which depicts geometric figures
moving about, and a 1985 film running nine-minutes that manipulates
images from Battery Park in New York City.
A 1924 drama running 86 minutes and shot in Alaska, "The Chechacos,"
on Program 3, appears to be the inspiration for Charles Chaplin's "The
Gold Rush," as there are many shots and settings in the latter that
imitate the former. The story follows several characters, but is
essentially about a mother and daughter who are separated during the
boat ride up, and their lives with the men they attach themselves to
until they reunite a number of years later. There are a few action
scenes and some compelling scenic shots, but on the whole, it is a
fairly standard concoction.
A 13-minute collection of footage features shots taken in 1928 of a
large passenger plane called the "Keystone Patrician" and home movies
taken in 1936 during an Atlantic crossing of The Hindenberg. A
15-minute short from 1937, "We Work Again," promotes the success of
WPA projects and concludes with a lengthy clip from the finale of
Orson Welles' 'voodoo' stage production of "Macbeth." Also featured is
a very clever 1908 film entitled "The Hand," running five minutes, in
which a prosthetic arm appears to have a life of its own; a 1910 short
running 11 minutes, entitled "White Fawn's Devotion," in which an
Indian tribe mistakenly believes that a white settler has murdered his
Indian wife; seven minutes of home movies taken between 1927 and 1932
of Japanese Americans, much of it shot in Tacoma, Washington; a
spellbinding six-minute documentation from 1951 of George
Ballanchine's sublime choreography for Maurice Ravel's La Valse
featuring Tanaquil Le Clercq and Nicholas Magallanes; a 10-minute
documentary from 1962 about Berlin, entitled "The Wall," that takes on
an interesting perspective now that the Wall has come down; and a 1965
exploration of the junk collected by a homeless squatter running eight
minutes and entitled "George Dumpson's Place," directed by Ed
Emshwiller.
A full-length 1916 feature tells the story of Snow White in 63 minutes
on Program 4. The film gets a bit confused in spots -- there are two
villains -- and the romance seems rushed, but it chugs its way through
the familiar plot points and has some nice moments of fantasy. You
definitely have to read the booklet essay to understand what is going
on with "Rose Hobart," a 1936 film by a truly Surrealist filmmaker,
Joseph Cornell. Running 19 minutes, Cornell took footage from a 1931
feature called "East of Borneo" and spliced it together in his own
fashion, mixing in footage from other sources as well. Taken out of
context, the movie looks like a fragment from a romantic jungle film,
but if you watch it after obtaining the basic knowledge of what
Cornell was doing, it becomes far more transfixing.
Additionally, there is a minute-long collection of footage from 1894
depicting a circus contortionist and a "slack wire" acrobat; a
fascinating trip up an East Side subway line in New York from 1905,
running five minutes, which apparently had plenty of light; a
three-minute line drawing cartoon from 1916 entitled "I'm Insured,"
about a guy who can't get himself hurt for the life of him, until the
day his insurance expires; a good 15-minute travelog from 1918,
looking at Japan; a 12-minute film from 1930 that depicts farmers in
Maine clearing a field without the assistance of motorized technology;
a 10-minute newsreel summarizing the important world events from 1934,
including several assassinations we'd never heard about before; a cool
10-minute War Office film from 1943 that depicts "The Autobiography of
a Jeep"; and a 1939 clip running eight minutes of a concert given by
Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The most rousing piece on Program 1 in "More Treasures" is a 14-minute
film from 1925 entitled "The Hazards of Helen: Episode 26." Ostensibly
part of a 119-episode serial, the equivalent of which would be a
weekly television series today, the program is relatively
self-contained, as the heroine races upon many different modes of
transportation to prevent a train collision. The commentary, by
Jennifer M. Bean, is also superb, looking at the parallel rise of
technology and the action star, and analyzing the economics of
filmmaking.
Dorothy Gish stars in a 1916 feature running 58 minutes, "Gretchen the
Greenhorn," playing a Dutch immigrant who moves to America and tries
to cope with underclass urban life. There are several subplots
involving various neighborhood characters and a crime story, about
counterfeiters, to give the drama some zing. There is nothing
exceptional about the film, but it is competently made, as the
commentators, Robert Gitt and Randy Haberkamp concur: "It's certainly
not definable as a lost classic, by any stretch of the imagination,
but is a charming representation of kind of the average picture, and
yet obviously a very entertaining and very well produced one, with a
very likable and very endearing star." The commentary also includes an
excellent discussion about tinting, and how replicated tinting is not
the same as what was done originally.
A fairly sympathetic portrait of indigenous Americans and the
miscegenation that is part of the American heritage, "The Invaders,"
from 1912, runs 41 minutes and is about an Indian tribe getting pushed
off their land because a railroad needs the right of way. A surveyor
meets the chief's daughter and the two fall in love, but they are
split apart when the Indians and the whites begin an escalation of
skirmishes. The daughter ends up warning a cavalry commander of an
impending attack, before dying in the arms of the commander's
daughter. The action scenes are good and the drama displays a moral
ambiguity that would evaporate for many years as westerns grew in
popularity. Rennard Strickland supplies a commentary track, talking
mostly about Anglo-Indian relations and the film's conceits. "Not to
be sarcastic, but there were more daughters on the screen in the West
than ever served with their fathers in their military command in the
entire history of the Indian wars."
A minute of film from 1894 includes shots of the real Annie Oakley
shooting things. The earliest known strip of film to be synchronized
with a sound recording -- of a man playing a violin while two other
men dance cheek-to-cheek -- comes from 1894, too, and runs 15 seconds.
It is presented in a repeating loop for a commentary track. A
marvelous 10-minute collection of early commercials, accompanied by a
commentary, includes an 1897 plug for a cigarette brand ("Admiral"), a
1920 bit for a cleaner with sophisticated split screen effects, a 1928
plug for a refrigerator, and, taking up the bulk of the segment, a
1910 depiction of an Edison phonograph being used as a dictaphone.
Also included is one of umpteen adaptations of "The Wonderful World of
Oz," from 1910, telling a reasonably complete version of the tale in
13 minutes; a 1909 D.W. Griffith short, "The Country Doctor," about a
rich girl and a poor girl who both get sick (with commentary); a
six-minute line-animated short from 1919 entitled "The Breath of a
Nation," about drinking liquor (with commentary); a 12-minute
corporate documentary from 1920 that shows how light bulbs are made
(with commentary); an imitation of the European 'city poem' films,
"Skyscraper Symphony" from 1929, running nine minutes; and a five
minute talking clip from 1928 in which George Bernard Shaw addresses
the viewer (with commentary).
The highpoint of Program 2 is another western, "Clash of the Wolves,"
a 1925 Warner production running 74 minutes and starring none other
than Rin Tin Tin. Tin portrays a wolf, 'Lobo,' who befriends a rancher
and helps him when the rancher runs into trouble with villains after
trying to stake a mineral claim. Tin not only has nearly the same
moral or emotional span as William S. Hart, but he's almost as sexy,
and the film is tightly scripted with plenty of great action scenes.
It's an ideal crowd pleaser.
From a seemingly earlier era, the eight-minute action film entitled
"From Leadville to Aspen: A Hold-Up in the Rockies" was made in 1906.
For much of the film, the camera gets placed on the engine of the
train, so that you get an uninterrupted view of the Leadville to Aspen
run. After the robbery, the bad guys get away in a carriage that runs
parallel to the train, enabling that same engine-point-of-view shot to
cover their getaway and the railroad crew's progress catching up to
them at the same time. It has the feel of a theme park ride. The piece
includes a commentary.
Running 13 minutes, "The 'Teddy' Bears," from 1907, starts out as a
depiction of the Goldilocks tale, but after establishing the bears as
being relatively sympathetic, they chase Goldilocks and get shot by a
Teddy Roosevelt-type hunter, who spares the life of the baby bear. The
obvious but surprising political message and other aspects of the
production are thoroughly discussed in Tom Gunning's commentary.
A collection of early color film experiments running 12 minutes
includes a two-tone 1916 clip entitled "Concerning $1,000," showing a
woman talking to a man at a work table and then strolling in a garden;
a two-tone potpourri from 1929 that includes animation segments and
documentary footage (including New York City as seen from the East
River) and ads; and a 1926 clip of a dance choreographed by Martha
Graham, "The Flute of Krishna." The commentary on all three pieces, by
Paolo Cherchi Usai, discusses the different methods of color
production on film and gives as much background on the shorts as is
known.
A complete silent Hearst newsreel from 1926 runs 13 minutes and
includes footage of the third Macy's Christmas parade, a couple of
sporting events, Mussolini, a bad flood in Wales, a bicycle cart race
in Paris, a dog that had nineteen puppies and a look at Britain's new
tanks. There is a commentary track.
Also included is a five-minute collection, with commentary, of
documentary footage shot on the streets of New York City in 1901 and
1903; a 13-minute film from 1912 entitled "Children Who Labor," about
a rich kid who falls off a train and ends up working in a factory
before her factory owner parents can find her (with commentary); the
only surviving footage from a 1921 feature, "Lotus Blossom," the
12-minute reel coming from a major and immediately involving turning
point in the dramatic tale about a Tartar invasion of China,
accompanied by a commentary from Stephen Gong, who identifies it as
the first feature film to be directed by an Asian-American; a very
amusing minute-long sound vaudeville clip from 1925 with the
self-explanatory title, Gus Visser and His Singing Duck, which will
give your friends a good giggle (the commentator, Donald Crafton,
compares it to the AFLAC commercials); a silent Max Fleischer cartoon
from 1927 entitled "Now You're Talking," which runs nine minutes and
is about using the telephone (with commentary); a terrific 19-minute
Charlie Bowers silent comedy from 1928 with elaborate special effects,
"There It Is," in which Bowers is a Scottish detective called to
investigate a haunted mansion; and a striking Jay Leyda 'city poem'
piece, "A Bronx Morning," from 1931, running 11 minutes (with
commentary).
The centerpiece of Program 3 is a more commonly disseminated film, but
one that represents the penultimate of cinematic artistry, Ernst
Lubitsch's outstanding adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's
Fan." Running 89 minutes, the 1925 feature eliminates what was assumed
to be one of its strongest assets -- virtually all of Wilde's
memorable dialog (Lubitsch also improves the punchline to the final
act) -- while sustaining a taut, compelling narrative and exposing the
story's rich emotional vitality. Ronald Coleman is among the stars in
the tale about the young wife of a wealthy man who discovers that her
husband has been writing checks to another woman, but does not know
that the woman is actually her mother. The complications that arrive
place several innocent people in compromising positions, and it takes
a sacrificial act of social heroism to rescue them. The film has
enough dramatic power to bring a viewer to tears, but it also sustains
Lubitsch's delightful visual wit in virtually every scene, and
features rich performances that bring a full humanity to the upper
class characters.
There doesn't seem to be anything too special about the picture
transfer. It is reasonably sharp, but there are plenty of scratches
and speckles. A very sparse commentary track is also included.
A segment entitled "Trailers for Lost Films" runs 10 minutes and
covers about a half dozen movies that were made between 1923 and 1928,
some of which look so tantalizingly enjoyable that it is heartbreaking
to realize that this is all that remains of them. For Paramount's
"Beau Sabeur," a follow up to "Beau Geste," for example, an army
appears along the top of a sand dune stretching from one side of the
screen to the other, and then there are explosions in the sand in
front of them, so great that they disappear in clouds of dust. There
is also a trailer for a silent production of "The Great Gatsby," which
looks possibly like the sharpest and liveliest of all the adaptations.
A fascinating trailer for Lubitsch's "The Patriot" is included, too.
As fun as these trailers are, the segment is also enriched by the
group commentary track from Bean, Crafton and Gunning. They talk about
the lost films (only 20% of American movies from the 1920s survive,
and only 10% from the previous decade) and also get into the art of
the movie trailer. "Even in the 1960s, there was still a lot of text
on the screen, whereas today, trailers and previews I think have
almost none. It's almost all voiceover, which they had as soon as
sound came in, but they also still used, as almost one of the main
survivals of the intertitle on the screen, a lot of text, and that's
something that really I think, in the last 15, 20 years, has
disappeared." "The trailer's status is interesting because it's almost
like it's giving you a free sample, and for that you really want the
images, and the text is sort of the come on, the spiel. The images are
a free sampler, literally a preview of coming attractions."
Zora Neale Hurston, whose literary reputation has been on a constant
upswing for the past decade, is best known for having recorded
folktales in the Deep South, but as is revealed in a seven-minute clip
from 1928, she also took a camera along on her field expeditions,
preserving a visual heritage to accompany the oral heritage she was
documenting. There are three segments in the clip, one looking at
loggers in the Florida swamps, one depicting children playing games
and one capturing an open water baptism. The segment is aided
significantly by Carla Kaplan's commentary, which uses the time to
present a solid profile of Hurston and what she was up to.
More examples of films with sound, which began well before Al Jolson
proclaimed, "You ain't heard nuthin' yet," are collected in an
11-minute segment. There is a 1923 clip of Jolson's greatest rival,
Eddie Cantor, delivering a very politically incorrect joke-and-song
act for the camera, followed by a sleep-inducing Calvin Coolidge
speech about taxes. A commentary is included.
The 1912 silent one-reeler, "Falling Leaves," running 12 minutes, is
about a little girl who is told by a doctor that her sister, who is
ill, will probably die by the time the leaves fall off the trees
outside her window. She then goes outside to tie them onto the
branches so they won't fall off. Another doctor, his curiosity aroused
by her actions, asks what she is doing and ends up curing the sister.
It seems like a typical, early film, but it turns out to have been
made by a female director, Alice Guy Bleche, who also founded her own
film studio. Bean supplies a commentary that is deceptive in quality.
At first it seems like some of the other commentaries, a bland
retelling of what is obvious on the screen, but as she begins to point
out the consistencies within the image compositions from one shot to
the next, you realize that a lot more is going on, subliminally, and
that both the movie and the commentary have a lot to offer.
Also featured is a four-minute adaptation of "Rip Van Winkle" from
1896 (it's mainly about him falling asleep and then waking up); a
30-second clip of Thomas Edison in what is said to be his laboratory,
from 1897; a 1903 film running six minutes entitled "Life of an
American Fireman" that shows a fire brigade going out on a call --shot
in New Jersey, the original film does not make use of intercutting and
shows the people being rescued from inside the house before it shows
the firemen going in to rescue them (a commentary is included); a
six-minute overhead tracking shot of an enormous, bustling
Westinghouse factory from 1904, with commentary; a 14-minute
collection of what is listed as "Hollywood Promotional Films,"
including uncovered newsreel footage from the shooting of the desert
sequence in "Greed" from 1923, a 1926 promotion for a daily theater
contest, and what in essence is a 1918 promotional documentary for a
Ruth Roland serial entitled "Hands Up" (all accompanied by
commentaries); a six-minute animated Fleischer short from 1925
identified as "Inklings, Issue 12," which depicts metamorphosis in pen
drawings -- baby faces growing into old men, objects deconstructing
into other objects, and similarly impressive art tricks; a pretty cool
three-minute clip of double exposure and split frame tricks entitled
"Cockeyed," from 1925, perhaps the most memorable effect being a shot
of the East River that shows its edge as a waterfall (with
commentary); an 18-minute opening 'prolog' to a 1926 feature entitled
"The Passaic Textile Strike" that shows workers (played by workers)
trying to maintain their livelihoods with diminishing salaries and
unhealthy working conditions (with commentary); and a Fleischer
sing-along from 1926, "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," running four minutes
(with commentary).
The complete database of Doug Pratt's DVD-video reviews is available
at http://dvdlaser.com. A sample copy of the DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter
can be obtained by calling (516) 594-9304.
Stephen Cooke
On 6 Oct 2004, Bruce Calvert wrote:
> "craig" <sle...@infionline.net> wrote in message news:<%NH8d.6091$gs1...@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>...
> > Long review
> >
> http://199.249.170.186/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000652957
>
> Treasures from American Film Archives
>
> By Doug Pratt
>
> Bottom line: Fascinating scraps of otherwise lost films such as "The
> Flute of Krishna" are featured in this eye-opening DVD release.
Weird...he slips into a review for the first Treasures collection halfway
through...must have been some weird flashback.
swac
William Hooper
> 1896 (it's mainly about him falling asleep and then waking up);
Heck, it's only Joseph Jefferson, one of the biggest boxoffice draws &
most important performers of the 19th century, & a film of the most
famous & successful dramatization of the story.