Napoleon
Michael Cummins
Hi,
I've just got to see Abel Gance's Napoleon, can anyone advise me on the
best version avalibley? and where to get it?
I presume it is not avalible in PAL?
Thanks,
M. Cummins
------------------
Scott Norwood
Michael Cummins <mlcu...@eircom.net> wrote:
>
>
>Hi,
>
>I've just got to see Abel Gance's Napoleon, can anyone advise me on the
>best version avalibley? and where to get it?
There's a very nice 35mm print that was made from restored elements in
the early 1980s. Unfortunately, it gets shown only occasionally, though
I did manage to see it about a year and a half ago. If it plays in your
area, you _must_ go--it's an amazing film.
--
Scott Norwood: snor...@nyx.net, snor...@redballoon.net
Cool Home Page: http://www.redballoon.net/
Lame Quote: Penguins? In Snack Canyon?
JOSEPH BARRY
the longest print of NAPOLEON in existance? I heard there was a 7-hour
print out there, I own the 3 hr 54 min video.
MATT BARRY
JOSEPH BARRY
>
> Unfortunately, the full-length version that was shown in Europe with the Carl
> Davis score was never available on video and only those lucky enough to have
> taped it off of Channel 4 probably have it. I've begged Photoplay for a copy
> and they've never gotten around to it.
>
> The American version was cut by 30-60 minutes (the info is in Kevin's book on
> Napoleon which is still packed away at the moment) to prevent "golden time" for
> the musicians and has the score by Carmine Coppola. I must admit, I never liked
> this version (remarkable parts not making a great whole) and suspect that the
> full-length version with Davis's score is far superior.
>
> I suspect I'll hear from Francis and Universal in the morning...
>
> The good news is that Kevin and the BFI are once again restoring the film and
> there are rumors of a London showing this summer. Anyone have mileage on
> British Airways?
>
> Dennis Doros
> Milestone Film & Video
> email: Mile...@aol.com
Why would they cut it after they went through all that effort to restore
it?
MATT
Christopher Jacobs
Glamour Studios wrote in message <38AB3ED1...@gte.net>...
>As Dennis explained, it was cut to prevent "Golden Time" (expensive
overtime) for the
>musicians, as the film was first toured in big cities with a full
orchestra. Copolla
>was the one who financed the tours, with his father conducting his own (not
terribly
>impressive) score. So this was the version that MCA released to video in
the US. I
>couldn't find anything about the film being released internationally by
anyone else.
>It's interesting that Dennis says he doesn't like this version, and
suspects he would
>like the other (longer) one better, even though he hasn't seen it. In my
experience
>(and this is just me) longer isn't always necessarily better.
>Archie Waugh
>
---------------------------
I don't mind the MCA version of NAPOLEON and actually rather like Coppola's
score, but I'm glad I saw a longer version at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis (actually some time before the famous Telluride screening and
the following theatrical reissue)--even though the print I saw was in B&W
and with a live piano rather than an orchestra and Gance was too exhausted
that night to make a public appearance and all the other shows were sold
out. Also the three-projector triptych was a few frames out of sync but it
was still overpowering with the picture three times wider than the rest of
the picture. Several interesting subplots and some nice imagery that were in
this screening are missing from the video release, but if you don't know
they're gone you don't miss them (sort of like the 10-reel version of
GREED). I would really love to see a full-length version with this footage
restored and all the additional portions that have been found in the past 15
years.
--Christopher Jacobs
http://www.fargoweb.com/hpr/film.html
Glamour Studios
musicians, as the film was first toured in big cities with a full orchestra. Copolla
was the one who financed the tours, with his father conducting his own (not terribly
impressive) score. So this was the version that MCA released to video in the US. I
couldn't find anything about the film being released internationally by anyone else.
It's interesting that Dennis says he doesn't like this version, and suspects he would
like the other (longer) one better, even though he hasn't seen it. In my experience
(and this is just me) longer isn't always necessarily better.
Archie Waugh
Glamour Studios
probably not have had any significant exposure in the U.S. beyond art and revival
houses, so he certainly deserves some credit for exposing a new generation to a truly
magnificent example of silent film art and technology.
As I recall, Gance himself recut and rereleased the film several times over the
years; the IMDB lists the film running from 3700 meters to 11000 meters, depending on
the release! It may be assumed that the Brownlow/Copolla version is somewhere in the
middle; it's main accomplishment was restoring the rarely seen triptych finale in
widescreen; this version accomplished the feat using a 70mm anamorphic (squeezed,
like Panavision) print; the original presentation used three projectors
simultaniously, like Cinerama.
Glamour Studios
composer Arthur Honneger, who was born in 1892, was still actively composing as late
as 1993, and apparently is still alive (he would be 108 years old on March 10th)!
Archie Waugh
Mile Films
he would
like the other (longer) one better, even though he hasn't seen it. In my
experience
(and this is just me) longer isn't always necessarily better.
Archie Waugh >>
Ahhh, Archie, but that's based on your past experience and I would normally
agree that it's based on a wild guess -- but not on the film we're talking
about. My hope is based on everyone who has seen both versions, Kevin's
description in the book of what was cut out and how it affected the US version
(or was this a conversation we had? The book is still packed away...), my
fondness for the Davis score which parts was available on cassette, and most
importantly, Kevin and Patrick swearing to me that this would be the case if I
saw the long version.
At the same time, as the person paying an enormous amount of money for 35mm
prints of all 4 hours and twenty minutes of The Sorrow and the Pity, I will be
glad to say that long films are amazing and everybody should go out and see
them. Especially this year...
Rodney Sauer
Glamour Studios <glam...@gte.net> wrote:
> One more interesting note...the original film had a score by the great French
> composer Arthur Honneger, who was born in 1892, was still actively composing as late
> as 1993, and apparently is still alive (he would be 108 years old on March 10th)!
I keep hearing of the fascination of people with the Carl Davis score for
Napoleon. I like much of Carl Davis' work, but what about the Honegger
score? Does it still exist, and is there a good reason for not using it?
--
Rodney Sauer
rod...@rddconsultants.com
Pianist and Director of
The Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra
Finer Arts Classical recording artists
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Glamour Studios
admit I would prefer a Carl Davis score over that Coppola drivel any day! And
there's no argument that in its ambitiousness alone, Napoleon, rather like
Intolerance, is a one-of-a-kind film.
AW
dmkb
Is Sorrow and the Pity coming out on DVD?
Sorry for the off-topic question, I'll hang up
and take my answer off the air.
Michael Baskett
ChaneyFan
and
there are rumors of a London showing this summer. Anyone have mileage on
British Airways?
Kevin continues to find additional footage on this! Dennis is correct that
about 30+ min was cut for the American release, but even after these cuts, I
believe Kevin came up with another 20 min or so of footage.
I was lucky enough to see the spectacular 35mm presentation with orchestra in
1982, and while some sequences (the snowball fight, the 3-screen finale) are
astounding, I agree with Dennis that it is a film (in the American cut with the
mediocre Coppola score) where the sum is less than the parts.
===============================
Jon Mirsalis
e-mail: Chan...@aol.com
Lon Chaney Home Page: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan
Jon's Film Sites: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan/jonfilm.htm
Hudson10
Glamour Studios <glam...@gte.net> wrote in article
<38AB43A3...@gte.net>...
> One more interesting note...the original film had a score by the great
French
> composer Arthur Honneger, who was born in 1892, was still actively
composing as late
> as 1993, and apparently is still alive (he would be 108 years old on
March 10th)!
Arthur Honegger 1892 - 1955
Luke McKernan
> >>>The good news is that Kevin and the BFI are once again restoring
the film
> and
> there are rumors of a London showing this summer. Anyone have mileage
on
> British Airways?
>
The new BFI/NFTVA restoration of NAPOLEON will be premiered in early
June (during the FIAF congress)at the Royal Festival Hall, London. The
new restoration does not involve extra footage, as I understand it
(I've now left the NFTVA and I'm losing track of these things) so much
as full colour tinting throughout.
Luke
Please visit Charles Urban, Motion Picture Pioneer
http://website.lineone.net/~luke.mckernan/Urban.htm
Glamour Studios
Bernard Herrmann), or he was composing from beyond the grave! Interesting
either way!
Archie Waugh
Michael Gebert
chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan) wrote:
> >>>The good news is that Kevin and the BFI are once again restoring the film
> and
> there are rumors of a London showing this summer. Anyone have mileage on
> British Airways?
>
> Kevin continues to find additional footage on this! Dennis is correct that
> about 30+ min was cut for the American release, but even after these cuts, I
> believe Kevin came up with another 20 min or so of footage.
I thought there were things he left out even back in the early 80s,
because not every scrap of film helped to make it a coherent film.
> I was lucky enough to see the spectacular 35mm presentation with orchestra in
> 1982, and while some sequences (the snowball fight, the 3-screen finale) are
> astounding, I agree with Dennis that it is a film (in the American cut
with the
> mediocre Coppola score) where the sum is less than the parts.
So was I, and I tend to think it would always be less than the sum of its
parts. At its heights it's a spectacular, thrilling exercise in sheer
cinematic bravura. But there is little depth to characterizations, from
Napoleon on down-- at best a nice eye for sharply drawn single dimensions
(by no means the least considerable talent for an artist-- little Charlie
Dickens certainly did all right with it). In some ways I think it
reinforced a view of silent films as grandly unsubtle, and thus did a bit
of a disservice to the art-- even as, obviously, the restoration and its
box office success was a great service to appreciation of silent film and
the cause of film preservation.
___________________________________________________
Michael Gebert, Writer | www.mindspring.com/~mgmax
A Short History of the Internet:
Late 1960s: Invented as Arpanet at Department of Defense
Mid 1980s: Expanded to civilian use under National Science Foundation
Early 1990s: Web browser invented at state University of Illinois
Late 1990s: Mainly used to complain about how nothing good
has ever come from the government
Michael Gebert
<rod...@rddconsultants.com> wrote:
> In article <38AB43A3...@gte.net>,
> Glamour Studios <glam...@gte.net> wrote:
> > One more interesting note...the original film had a score by the great
French
> > composer Arthur Honneger, who was born in 1892, was still actively
composing as late
> > as 1993, and apparently is still alive (he would be 108 years old on
March 10th)!
>
> I keep hearing of the fascination of people with the Carl Davis score for
> Napoleon. I like much of Carl Davis' work, but what about the Honegger
> score? Does it still exist, and is there a good reason for not using it?
To my understanding there was not a full original Honegger score-- there
were a few themes, and lots of padding using pre-existing things (like La
Marseillaise). I believe some of the themes exist, no?
JOSEPH BARRY
total of 20 minutes. That seems awfully short, but I don't know for
sure. Speaking of that book FLICKERS-the author really comes down on
Carl Davis for adding music to NAPOLEON, almost like it was intended to
be seen without any music. Is it just me, or is this author of FLICKERS
completely misunderstanding the concept of how pictures and music work
together?
MATT BARRY
Rodney Sauer
JOSEPH BARRY wrote:
>
> I read in the Gilbert Adair book FLICKERS that Honegger's score ran a
> total of 20 minutes. That seems awfully short, but I don't know for
> sure. Speaking of that book FLICKERS-the author really comes down on
> Carl Davis for adding music to NAPOLEON, almost like it was intended to
> be seen without any music. Is it just me, or is this author of FLICKERS
> completely misunderstanding the concept of how pictures and music work
> together?
Of course it was supposed to be seen with music, and I can't imagine an audience
of anyone other than dedicated film nuts sitting through a four-hour film
silent. The story of the premiere of Honegger's score is told in Brownlow's book
-- and based on the story, it must have been fully scored. (It is possible,
perhaps likely, that only twenty minutes of it was original Honegger
composition, the rest being standard photoplay music, but that does not
necessarily diminish the quality of the score.) Gance apparently sabotaged the
music by rearranging the film the day before the show, forcing the music
director to spend hours on rehearsals the day of a four-hour show, which must
have damaged the players. The score was poorly reviewed, mostly because it was
played so badly.
Susan Hall (Mont Alto's violinist) found a cue sheet for the knocked-down
American release version of the film, but that won't fit the long version.
Rodney Sauer
rod...@rddconsultants.com
Pianist and Director of the Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra
and the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
http://www.ragtime.org/ragtime/MontAlto
sh...@my-deja.com
>
> I was lucky enough to see the spectacular 35mm presentation with
> orchestra in 1982, and while some sequences (the snowball fight, the
> 3-screen finale) are astounding, I agree with Dennis that it is a
> film (in the American cut with the mediocre Coppola score) where the
> sum is less than the parts.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who was disappointed in "Napoleon."
A few bursts of eye candy don't make up for what is otherwise a long,
slow stretch of historical drama.
--Shush--
Paul Penna
Michael Gebert <mg...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> To my understanding there was not a full original Honegger score-- there
> were a few themes, and lots of padding using pre-existing things (like La
> Marseillaise). I believe some of the themes exist, no?
Amazon lists a CD (Solstice 141) with five film music selections by
Honegger, including "Napoleon." Not sure if this is the same one I've
heard references to here and there over the past few years, though.
--
Paul Penna
Reel Drew
"I thought those people who said Gance was crazy were not too bright
themselves."--Annabella, co-star of "Napoleon," quoted in my book, "At the
Center of the Frame: Leading Ladies of the Twenties and Thirties"
I wish to express my utter dismay at the unbelievable trashing of Abel Gance's
masterpiece, "Napoleon," by Bob Birchard and the other cinematic conformists of
his uninformed ilk who are emergng like a plague of locusts. They appear to be
bent on rivalling in insensitive philistinism the Griffith-haters sparked by
the DGA's absurd decision.
In formulating his case against Gance, Birchard stands history on its head by
his incredible argument that the popular revival of "Napoleon" in the early
1980s set back the public acceptance of silent films by many years. On the
contrary, prior to its showings in the USA, silent films in America and pretty
much everywhere else were largely forgotten by the mainstream and were mostly
limited to a few scattered showings here and there. Essentially, silent film
revivals were about the same as they had been since the Museum of Modern Art's
Griffith revivals in the later thirties. Yes, they were shown, there were
venues for them but for most people they were considered to be quaint
artifacts.
To a considerable extent, the screenings of "Napoleon" changed all that.
Despite what Birchard and the others choose to believe, many people were
absolutely enthralled by Gance's epic. I vividly remember DeMille's great
star, Leatrice Joy, saying excitedly to me at the time that Gance's "Napoleon"
"had brought back silent films" and was making them popular again. The
extraordinarily successful reception of "Napoleon" in London enabled Kevin
Browlow and his associates to begin their annual silent film revivals with the
Thames Silent Series. The "Napoleon" revival also probably played a role in
launching the Pordenone Silent Film Festival by so dramatically demonstrating
the power of the silent cinema to capture the attention of the public anew
When "Napoleon" was released to video by MCA in 1986, it seemed to have the
same effect on video releases. Up to that point, apart from the copyrighted
Chaplin titles and the first Oscar winner, "Wings," the major video companies
had resisted making silents available. After "Napoleon" came out, Paramount
released several silent titles in 1987 to commemorate its 75th anniversary,
MGM-UA followed starting in 1988 and Kino began its series of high-quality
silent releases in 1989..
Birchard makes another erroneous assumption in his anti-Gance tirade by
specuating that whatever cinematic qualities "Napoleon" has may be attributable
to Gance's assistants rather than the director himself. This is a familiar
tactic when a critic has an aversion to a particular great director but
concedes there may be something of value in his work. An ancient version of
this (one of the few myths about D. W. that seems to be now mercifully laid to
rest) was that cameraman Billy Bitzer was responsible for anything outstanding
in Griffith's work. In similar vein, Pauline Kael went to great lengths in an
attempt to prove that writer Herman J. Mankiewicz was the true "auteur" of
"Citizen Kane" rather than Orson Welles while Joseph McBride founded a whole
huge hatchet job of a biography on the theory that Frank Capra's screenwriters,
not the director, were the source of anything of value in his films. In point
of fact, Gance's characteristic vision, his extraordinarily cinematic genius
was evident from his work in the 1910s through his great silent epics and his
powerful sound films of the late 1930s. Throughout all this time, Gance had
many different assistants but the overall vision remained consistent. Both the
vision and the techniques were detailed in advance in the screenplays which
Gance wrote himself.
Birchard partly bases his dismissal of Gance's innovative, artistic genius on
the comparative failure of "Austerlitz," wondering how could he have made such
a pedestrian film if he had been all his admirers claimed he was. He chooses
to overlook that, besides battling with the commercial interests financing the
film over its editing, Gance was an old man of 70 when he made it. More often
than not, great filmmakers undergo a sad artistic decline as they get older.
How could anyone associate such a conventional, minor-league, inferior
sprctacle as KIng Vidor's last film, "Solomon and Sheba," with his great silent
classics, "The Big Parade" and "The Crowd?" Chaplin's late films show a
similar falling-off. And when it comes to sheer boredom, few films can rival
Cecil B. DeMille's tedious 1956 "The Ten Commandments" which is far inferior to
his vigorous 1923 silent version as well as his memorable "The King of Kings."
Birchard's complaint about Gance "deifying" the "little dictator" in his film
reveals all too clearly his political motives in dismissing the film. Like the
DGA in their public repudiation of Griffith, he has made content an issue in
his rejection of Gance. This is aesthetically untenable since there is no way
of pleasing everyone if one is to convey in epic and dramatic terms the sweep
and passion of history and the ouitstanding figures who were at the center of
events.
There is something of an irony in Birchard's attack on Gance in view of his own
championship of DeMille. Of all the great directors who reached artistic
maturity in the silent era, Griffith, DeMille and Gance have probably had the
roughest treatment from many critics and for basically similar reasons.
Despite their highly individual approaches to epic cinema, all three filmmakers
were strongly influenced by the traditions of 19th century theatre and
literature even as they molded their inspirations into the new language of
film. Critics unfamiliar with, or unsympathetic to, the 19th century cultural
forces that helped shape them are all too quick to dismiss their works as so
much melodramatic hokum. Griffith, DeMille and Gance alike blend realism and
romanticism in a manner that purists find disconcerting and which appears to
defy easy categorization. (Traditionally, critics have been kinder to Stroheim
and Vidor who are viewed as realists or Murnau who is considered to be a
romanticist.) Finally, the politics of Griffith, DeMille and Gance, whether on
screen or off, alleged or actual, has also played a major role in their
critical dismissal.
John Ford and Frank Capra who also combined realism and romanticism in their
works have faced similar attacks by critics as evidenced by McBride's
Capraphobic book and recent anti-Ford diatribes by Richard Schickel in The New
York Times and the always-repellent David Thomson in The New Republic. But
since Ford and Capra reached their artistic maturity in the sound era with
their greatest works continually available to several generations, they have
generated the kind of sustained public enthusiasm denied to Griffith, DeMille
and Gance. That public support has enabled Ford and Capra to withstand the
negative critical attacks that have proven so devastating to the artistic
reputations of Griffith, DeMille and Gance.
Perhaps the ultimate and tragic irony is that, while the "Napoleon" revival of
the 1980s was clearly pivotal in reestablishing in the public consciousness the
power and beauty of the silent cinema, it did far less for its creator, Abel
Gance. Whatever his reputation in his native France and other countries like
Japan where he is greatly revered, he had been largely overlooked or dismissed
by the standard English-language film histories like those by Paul Rotha and
Arthur Knight. After the initial praise for "Napoleon" by the daily reviewers
and the genuinely enthusiastic response of the public, the reaction quickly set
in as critics for various journals worked overtime to dismiss the French
upstart. Although Gance's silent epics clearly surpass Fritz Lang's silent
spectacles in their passion, excitement and intensity of vision as well as
their acting (Lang's greatest films IMO were his powerful sound films of social
realism); although Gance rivals Eisenstein as a master of montage while
encompassing a wider view of the human drama; the defenders of cinematic
orthodoxy were not about to admit their error in neglecting Gance. So the
counterattack began carrying with it ugly political overtones with its
insinuations of fascism such as we have seen in Birchard's comments. The
result was enough to chill any sustained enthusiasm for Gance's work. Silent
classics like "The Tenth Symphony," the original "J'accuse" and "La Roue" have
either been seen by a few in the US in incomplete, inadequate versions or not
at all. There has yet to be a retrospective of Gance's work in the USA mounted
by either the Museum of Modern Art or a similar organization. And despite its
video accessility, "Napoleon," even in the Coppola version, is now unknown to
an entirely new generation of silent film enthusiasts who derive their
interests from cable networks like TCM and AMC, stations which have never run
any of Gance's films, silent or sound.
That Gance has been so summarily dismissed by people on a newsgroup that claims
to be devoted to silents is perhaps to be expected. As I have painfully
learned in the years in which I have sought to present an alternative view of
film history to the stultifying standards that prevail, it is well-nigh
impossible to change to any significant degree the conventional perceptions of
the cinematic heritage. The standard approach to film history, like conformist
views of life in general, is not the result of a conspiracy nor was it shaped
or controlled by any one individual. It is simply founded on a belief system
that prefers herd-like regimentation to creative individuality (notice the
lockstep, domino-like attacks on Gance on this newsgroup). And for all its
pretense at egalitarianism under the guise of adherence to political
correctness, it upholds traditional views on race and gender. Hence, Japanese
and Chinese silents, regarded as the creations of an "exotic" culture, will
never be championed and never made available here, no matter how outstanding
their artistic quality. (Cinecon with which I believe Birchard is involved has
yet to show any Chinese or Japanese silents.) Purveyors of the standard
approach to film history also tend to prefer the stereotypical approach to
actresses with the women viewed as either helpless creatures tied to railroad
tracks in need of rescuing by the males or purely sexual creatures languishing
on a couch waiting for their lovers. The men, by the contrast, are celebrated
for their heroism. How often do we read on this newsgroup, year in and year
out, someone gushing about the courageous comic exploits of Buster Keaton and
Harold Lloyd--and how rarely do we ever even see the barest mention of Bebe
Daniels, just as heroic, just as physically courageous, just as comedically
brilliant in her films? Yet Bebe, like others of her silent sisters who
challenged traditional gender roles, is forgotten. Standard film histories
enshrine Doug Fairbanks and Tom Mix (Birchard should know as he's written a
book on the latter) while ignoring equally heroic women like Pearl White and
Nell Shipman.
The standard view of film history is, of course, just as hard on the men who
defy convention. More perhaps than any other filmmaker of the brilliant 1920s,
Gance sought to create a cinema that was radically new in both its scope and
technique as he reshaped the cinema to express a personal vision that exalted
the heroic in humanity. Gance indeed wished to enoble the spectator by making
him or her a virtual participant in the heroic drama on the screen. Although
his achievement on many levels surpassed those of his more admired German
contemporaries, his arrogant disregard of the aesthetic rules proved his
undoing. He demonstrated anew his genius in the sound cinema with such
remarkable works as the heroic "Beethoven," the powerful new "J'accuse," the
poignant "Paradis Perdu." Banished from the cinema in later years, he spent
his last years in poverty and neglect. Only at the end of his life did it seem
that he was finally coming into his own. But sadly, the conformists, those who
seek to crush the individual beneath the weight of blind obedience to dull
convention--they ultimately carried the day with the result that Gance's name
was once again hurled into oblivion. Someday, of course, Gance's genius will
belatedly be recognized--just as the genius of writers like Shakespeare, Hugo,
Melville, Whitman (all of them once dismissed by the literary equivalents of
Bob Birchard) was finally acknowledged by later generations.
To close my remarks, I would like to announce that, thanks to his tireless
effort to destroy the reputation of a great cinema artist, I am awarding Bob
Birchard with the first annual DGA Philistine Award, an award given to those
who show an outstanding capacity to be blindly insensitive to cinematic genius
while using political excuses as a cover for their pathetic ignorance and
conformism.
William M. Drew
Michael Gebert
reel...@aol.com (Reel Drew) wrote:
> I will not bandy words with Michael Gebert. Obviously, HE doesn't hold
Gance's
> film in the highest esteem.
My point, as I recall. But at least we have that out of the way.
I should point out that I saw Napoleon when I was programming films in
college, and as a dedicated Gance-basher, one of the first things I did
was book Murray Glass's version of La Roue (such as it was) for the next
season. Later, I rented J'Accuse and Beethoven for my own viewing
pleasure. Oh, and I bought a book by Norman somebody about Gance. As you
can tell, I'm practically unhinged in my irrational dislike for the guy.
>He alleges Victor Sjostrom has been critically neglected.
> On the contrary, Sjostrom, along with Keaton and possibly Murnau, is one
of the
> few brilliant silent filmmakers who has been accepted virtually unanimously by
> all the established (and unestablished) critics and film historians.
I don't have my copies of Knight or Rotha here, but-- wanna bet he doesn't
get a mention in at least one of them? Even if he does get a mention, his
importance in early film to me is underrated by practically everyone but
David Shipman, who calls him the first great filmmaker-- the first one on
the grownup level of a great playwright or novelist of the same period,
the first for whom you don't have to make apologies for content. That's
an arguable position, to say the least, but I do believe that the
Scandinavians are too often left out of the linear notion of film history
because they don't fit into it very easily (influenced by psychological
theater, not especially interested in montage). But you may have Gance as
your crusade, and I Sjostrom as mine.
> As for Gebert's statement that Louis Delluc called Gance's film "a
Napoleon for
> fascists," he is somewhat in error as Dellic died in 1924 three years before
> Gance's epic was released. He is thinking of the orthodox leftist critic Leon
> Moussinac
I bow to your having your copy of Sadoul in front of you, as I do not (my
books being presently in storage as my house undergoes a Napoleon-level
restoration-- too many Chicago winters with that 9.5mm heating system). I
wonder, though, how you reconcile the notion of the Left enforcing a
monolithic, orthodox antipathy against Gance with the fact that Gance has
enjoyed at least a little sympathy from one avowed anti-Fascist filmmaker
and dedicated socialist... named Kevin Brownlow?
David Pierce
I first saw NAPOLEON at the 1989 revival at
Radio City Music Hall. Some friends of friends
didn't make it past the intermission, but I
enjoyed the film, and the experience, greatly.
For me, the glaring weakness of this version
of the film is the intertitles. Most of them
are poorly written, and read like they were
translated from French to Russian to Polish
and then English.
Some examples, chosen almost at random:
While the Beggars of Glory, their
stomachs empty but their head filled
with songs, leave history to pass into
legend...
and
The idlers, among them Josephine de
Beauharnais, were looking that morning
for the famous palmist, Lenormant.
and
The assembly was thunderstruck.
Intertitles can make or break a film, and titles
like these broke this one. Their weakness was most
apparent in Double Storms Montage when some well-
written titles appeared. These titles were
incorporated from the U.S. release version
(because the titles were superimposed over
action).
These titles were terrific!
Thus all the giants of the Revolution
were swept, one after the other, into
the raging whirlpool of the Reign of Terror.
and
And a man, the defiant sport of the Ocean,
his Tricolor sail opening to the wind of the
Revolution, was being triumphantly carried to
the Heights of History.
Ralph Spence, Katherine Hilliker and H.H. Caldwell
would be proud!
While I like the film, you have to admit that the
even though the picture runs four hours, the producers
of the laserdisc fit all the scenes you would want
to show your friends on a 30 minute CAV side
with seven minutes left over!
David Pierce
Silent Film Sources
http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm
The Silent Film Bookshelf
http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf
Robert Birchard wrote:
>
> When Napoleon played in Los Angeles at the Shrine Auditorium I saw it twice
> and was astonished to see over 4,000 in the theater on both occasions, because it
> was unbelievable to see so many siting down to watch a silent film.
>
> I agree with others here that Napoleon has a half a dozen of the greatest
> sequences in movies, but I'd have to say that overall it is a turgid bore and very
> much ersatz Griffith. I freely admit that with my ancestral background (English,
> Scottish, Irish and German) I find deifying the little dictator of France to be a
> serious lapse in judgement on Gance's part--but I do understand that the French
> feel somewhat differently. Still, the visual pyrotechnics in some scenes are so
> vivid they really grab you.
>
> But the dull parts predominate in Napoleon, and I sometimes wonder if Gance
> didn't have some rather brilliant collaborators on Napoleon, because I must say in
> his later work the dull predominates. Austerlitz, for example, is Napoleon in
> color and widescren with all the exciting parts cut out; and Gance's several
> recuts of Napoleon certainly suggest that he had no idea of what was good about
> the original movie.
>
> The year after Napoleon screened in L. A. the Filmex festival could not sell
> enough tickets to their "silent with orchestra" presentation of "New Babylon" to
> be able to put on the show and the screening was cancelled. (this was after
> several years of previous silents with orchestra sellouts). I always felt that
> Napoleon betrayed the cause of silents somewhat in that it became a tremendous
> event and drew audiences that might never have come otherwise; but that those who
> came and saw went away with the noble feeling that they had done their part for
> the cause of culture and didn't choose to do any more. I think old Nappy set the
> cause back by 10 to 15 years and lost us a generation who refused to look on
> anather silent after the four plus hours of tedium that dominates Napoleon.
>
> --
> Bob Birchard
> bbir...@earthlink.net
> http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/Guest/birchard.htm
Michael Gebert
reel...@aol.com (Reel Drew) wrote:
> I referred to Leon Moussinac as an ORTHODOX leftist (in later years, I believe
> he became a Stalinist). Kevin is an independent thinker with sympathies that
> could be consudered left but is strongly anti-Stalinist.
Okay, we started at Napoleon, then at people whose dislike must be the
result of their politics (there oculdn't be ANY other reason for less than
total obeisance to the cult of Napoleon), and now we're defining who is
and isn't a Stalinist by whether or not they like Gance. And this is
where I get off-- at the point where anyone who doesn't agree with a
right-winger has personal responsibility for the millions killed by Stalin
(I believe Chaplin has been convicted of that here several times).
Maybe I just don't like the damn movie as much as you do!
> As for David Shipman, besides dismissing Gance, he also trashed Griffith,
> Strroheim, Stiller, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko and Dreyer. For this reason, I take
> him no more seriously as a critic than I do David Thomson.
I'd love to see you quote chapter and verse on him actually "trashing"
Griffith, Stroheim, Stiller, Pudovkin and Dreyer. I think the only one of
which you can fairly say that is Dovzhenko (and I happen to agree with him
there). He found Griffith sentimental and melodramatic-- imagine!
Stroheim a fetishist-- no, really? Stiller lesser than Sjostrom (few are
not). I can't think of anything uncomplimentary he said about Pudovkin,
but it's very possible that he was less than utterly reverent toward some
of Dreyer's work.
He also revered (besides Sjostrom) Keaton, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Capra, Sturges,
the Road movies and an utterly obscure German director named Werner
Hochbaum. All of which suggests that he had an open and interesting mind,
not hemmed in by an ORTHODOXY about who you are and are not supposed to
like, and which assumes that your motives for not agreeing with its
diktats must be political and malign.
Glamour Studios
Reel Drew wrote:
They appear to be bent on rivalling in insensitive philistinism the Griffith-haters sparked by the DGA's absurd decision.
Which Griffith-haters are those? None I have observed in this group, which pretty roundly abhorred the DGA decision.
In formulating his case against Gance, Birchard stands history on its head by
his incredible argument that the popular revival of "Napoleon" in the early
1980s set back the public acceptance of silent films by many years.
Only in the sense that there were many people who went to Napoleon simply as a "Black-tie event" and were probably bored out of their minds. Those people probably wouldn't watch another silent film if their life depended on it, anyway. But from what I remember, the buzz that Napoleon created for silent films lasted only about 1 year.
On the contrary, prior to its showings in the USA, silent films in America and pretty much everywhere else were largely forgotten by the mainstream and were mostly limited to a few scattered showings here and there.
Really? And Napoleon changed that somehow? It's been 20 years, and the only thing that has increased the interest in silents of film buffs has been their increased availability on video. The general public then and now still couldn't care less, and silent film showings on TV (at least in the U.S.) continue to be a midnight-movie affair. The audience for silent films has been a niche audience at best since the thirties, and is likely to stay that way, just as there are niche audiences for ballet, opera and ballroom dancing. None of these art forms ever will achieve mainstream status.
To a considerable extent, the screenings of "Napoleon" changed all that.
No they didn't; see above.
I vividly remember DeMille's great star, Leatrice Joy, saying excitedly to me at the time that Gance's "Napoleon" "had brought back silent films" and was making them popular again.
Are you sure that quote wasn't from Norma Desmond?
The extraordinarily successful reception of "Napoleon" in London enabled Kevin Brownlow and his associates to begin their annual silent film revivals with the Thames Silent Series. The "Napoleon" revival also probably played a role in launching the Pordenone Silent Film Festival by so dramatically demonstrating the power of the silent cinema to capture the attention of the public anew.Again, a very limited public.
When "Napoleon" was released to video by MCA in 1986, it seemed to have the same effect on video releases. Up to that point, apart from the copyrighted Chaplin titles and the first Oscar winner, "Wings," the major video companies had resisted making silents available.
What, for the six whole years that home video had existed? Silent films begain leaking out on video no faster or slower than other ancient (read pre-1970) films did. It was just a matter of time. The home video market began, like any business, by appealing to the broadest possible demographic, with popular recent films. As VCR penetration increased, niche markets began to open up.
After "Napoleon" came out, Paramount released several silent titles in 1987 to commemorate its 75th anniversary, MGM-UA followed starting in 1988
And these were financial disasters.
and Kino began its series of high-quality silent releases in 1989..
Ask David Shepard what Kino considers a good seller...a thousand copies? Two thousand?
Birchard makes another erroneous assumption in his anti-Gance tirade--------- Gance had many different assistants but the overall vision remained consistent. Both the vision and the techniques were detailed in advance in the screenplays which Gance wrote himself.Agreed, I didn't buy that argument either.
And when it comes to sheer boredom, few films can rival Cecil B. DeMille's tedious 1956 "The Ten Commandments" which is far inferior to his vigorous 1923 silent version...Hold on there! Whatever it is, the '56 Ten Commandmants AIN'T boring! Corny, overwrought and melodramatic, perhaps, but also loaded with amazing spectacle that has kept it a television favorite for forty years. I don't know anyone who hasn't been disappointed by the silent version, especially the hokey modern story; while the Biblical scenes are beautifully done, the moralizing and compare/contrast elements between the Biblical and modern stories come off as a half-assed Intolerance rip-off.
Birchard's complaint about Gance "deifying" the "little dictator" in his film
reveals all too clearly his political motives in dismissing the film. Like the
DGA in their public repudiation of Griffith, he has made content an issue in
his rejection of Gance.
Birchard made clear that perhaps this was his own personal peccadillo, and I can agree that it is hard to work up a lot of sympathy for Napoleon himself. I think it's a stretch to view that aversion as "political". We are, after all, discussing someone dead roughly 200 years.
Finally, the politics of Griffith, DeMille and Gance, whether on
screen or off, alleged or actual, has also played a major role in their
critical dismissal.
Partly political, perhaps, and partly just changing times. I think in particular DeMille suffered critical dismissal for the same reasons that Hitchcock and Spielberg have been rejected by the intelligensia...too popular!
John Ford and Frank Capra who also combined realism and romanticism in their works have faced similar attacks by critics as evidenced by McBride's
Capraphobic book and recent anti-Ford diatribes by Richard Schickel in The New York Times and the always-repellent David Thomson in The New Republic.
There are always idiots who hope to make a reputation for themselves by trashing the genuinely talented and popular...the same thing happens with "celebrity biographers' who trash long-dead stars with no hope of defending themselves...remember the "Errol Flynn was a Nazi" nonsense some years back?
Perhaps the ultimate and tragic irony is that, while the "Napoleon" revival of
the 1980s was clearly pivotal in reestablishing in the public consciousness the
power and beauty of the silent cinema, it did far less for its creator, Abel
Gance. Whatever his reputation in his native France and other countries like
Japan where he is greatly revered, he had been largely overlooked or dismissed by the standard English-language film histories like those by Paul Rotha and Arthur Knight.
There is also a long-standing American dislike for all things French. Except Fries of course, which aren't really French.
That Gance has been so summarily dismissed by people on a newsgroup that claims to be devoted to silents is perhaps to be expected-----(notice the lockstep, domino-like attacks on Gance on this newsgroup).I read every single post on the subject, and the reviews seemed about a 50/50 split to me. Hardly a herd mentality. The disagreement seemed to center more on the merits of the Brownlow restoration versus the original 6 hours+ version.
Newsgroup that "Claims" to be devoted to silents?
And for all its pretense at egalitarianism under the guise of adherence to political correctness, it upholds traditional views on race and gender blah blah blah while ignoring equally heroic women like Pearl White and Nell Shipman.
Kinda went off on a tangent here, didn't you?
...those who show an outstanding capacity to be blindly insensitive to cinematic genius while using political excuses as a cover for their pathetic ignorance and conformism.Unfortunately, I tend to agree with those who found fault with Napoleon; despite some individually satisfying sequences, I also found it overlong and uninvolving for much of its running time. I have no political excuses, and I tend to be a non-conformist about pretty much everything; so I guess that just leaves me plain ol' ignorant. But thanks for the lecture, anyway.William M. Drew
Archie Waugh
"It's only a movie." - Alfred Hitchcock
Reel Drew
I will not bandy words with Michael Gebert. Obviously, HE doesn't hold Gance's
film in the highest esteem. I will, however, point out two areas where he is
quite inaccurate. He alleges Victor Sjostrom has been critically neglected.
On the contrary, Sjostrom, along with Keaton and possibly Murnau, is one of the
few brilliant silent filmmakers who has been accepted virtually unanimously by
all the established (and unestablished) critics and film historians. Indeed,
Sjostrom's present high (and undeniably deserved) standing with the critics is
far less likely to be challenged than his fellow Swede Mauritz Stiller not to
mention such other great filmmakers as Chaplin, Vidor, Stroheim, Eisenstein,
Pudovkin and Dreyer. If Gebert can tell me of one film critic or historian who
has dismissed Sjostrom as an artist as, for example, the late James Card
attempted to do with Stroheim (and using the same kind of fallacious arguments
as Bob Birchard does with Gance) , I would be interested in knowing who he is.
As for Gebert's statement that Louis Delluc called Gance's film "a Napoleon for
fascists," he is somewhat in error as Dellic died in 1924 three years before
Gance's epic was released. He is thinking of the orthodox leftist critic Leon
Moussinac who similarly trashed another great epic film, King Vidor's "The Big
Parade," for failing to conform to his view of the world.
William M. Drew
norm...@pacbell.net
It is just being subjected to a great deal of informed criticism.
I saw it first in the early '80s at the late, lamented Avenue Theater here
in S.F. The side projectors for the tryptich sequences were set up in the
rear corners of the auditorium and temporary screens were erected.
Bob Vaughn provided a score on the Avenue's Wurlitzer. I thought it a
dazzling experience at the time. But the picture does have a large number
of reels that seem to unspool more slowly than others.
A couple of years later, I saw it at the S.F. Opera House with Coppola in
the pit. Later, in a radio interview, Coppola remarked that the printed
score weighed in at about 40 pounds. I observed (on the same radio station)
that that sounded about right.
I have the LP of the Coppola score and it is unimpressive. The ad-lib organ
score seemed much more suitable--even though I thought Bob's choices of
themes, at this and other performances, a little naive.
"Napoleon" is a landmark. And Gance's creative use of the triple screen has
not been matched. But I agree with those who think four hours is a little
too much of Napoleon.
Incidentally, for those in the Bay Area who may not know, Bob Vaughn, whose
organ career began in Long Beach just before some bozo taught the movies to
talk and ended just a year or two ago as he approached 90, has moved to
Visalia to be near his family.
I was one of those "wonderful people out there in the dark" at his
performances at the Avenue and other Bay Area theaters, as well as in his
own 'Basement Bijou' on Rivera Street. Also, sometime in the '70s, I
interviewed him for National Public Radio.
He is already missed.
Norm (Howard) Lehfeldt
reel...@aol.com (Reel Drew) wrotf:
>I wish to express my utter dismay at the unbelievable trashing of Abel
Gance's
>masterpiece, "Napoleon," by Bob Birchard and the other cinematic
conformists of
>his uninformed ilk who are emergng like a plague of locusts.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
etc.
etc.
Reel Drew
I referred to Leon Moussinac as an ORTHODOX leftist (in later years, I believe
he became a Stalinist). Kevin is an independent thinker with sympathies that
could be consudered left but is strongly anti-Stalinist.
As for David Shipman, besides dismissing Gance, he also trashed Griffith,
Strroheim, Stiller, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko and Dreyer. For this reason, I take
him no more seriously as a critic than I do David Thomson.
William M. Drew
Frank Wylie
<repro...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Robert Birchard wrote:
>> But the dull parts predominate in Napoleon, and I sometimes wonder if Gance
>> didn't have some rather brilliant collaborators on Napoleon, because I must say in
I have the greatest respect for the opinions of Mr. Birchard, but...
It always amuses me when people jump in and out of the auteur theory
when it suits them.
Cinema is collaboration, period. The only true auteurs are some
experimental filmmakers who do EVERYTHING and the solitary home image
maker who only collaborates with the local drug store processing lab.
How can you accuse Gance of possibly having brilliant collaborators,
and then call it ersatz Griffith? Griffith had Bitzer and Brown and
even (if you want to stretch the point) Charles Dickens!
If Griffith can make "Drums of Love" and retain his high standing,
then I think Gance can make "Austerlitz" and retain his credit as
being one of the greats of cinema history.
Reel Drew
As I said in an earlier post, I have no wish to continue this war of words with
Michael Gebert. But when he misrepresents my views or makes statements that
are inaccurate, I feel it necessary to respond. I never said that everyone who
dislikes "Napoleon" necessarily has a political agenda. Nor would I claim that
they are all Stalinists. But when someone includes as part of their reason for
despising the film frankly political reasons as Bob Birchard did, I personally
disagree with that as being valid aesthetic criteria. As for Leon Moussinac,
it is a matter of historic record that he was coming from a certain political
perspective which colored his judgment. I feel that should be pointed out just
as when a political bias of a slightly different type led Mussolini's Fascist
regime to censor "Napoleon" when it was screened in Italy.
Now with respect to my statement that David Shipman in his book, "The Story of
Cinema," trashed a number of great filmmakers of the silent era, as it happens,
I CAN quote Shipman chapter and verse. Since Gebert acknowledges that Shipman
dismissed Dovzhenko and Gance, I will not waste people's time with his
statements on them. But I can assure you he does far more than call Griffith
"sentimental and melodramatic," Stroheim a "fetishist," or Stiller merely
"lesser" than Sjostrom. He alleges that Griffith's reputation was "inflated"
and that he "never advanced beyond a basic level of competence." He dismisses
"The Birth of a Nation" as "a throwback to the days of animated tableaux" and
"Broken Blossoms" as "barren and emotionally naive" and an example of "how
little was expected of the cinema" in the silent era. He concludes his
assessment of DWG by asserting that "Hollywood. . .knew better than its
critics" in retiring the "old-fashioned Griffith."
Shipman is equally hard on von Stroheim. He says that, compared to Sjostrom,
"the much-praised originality of 'Greed' is slight, and indeed von Stroheim is
revealed again as opportunistic since he has managed 'realism' but to no
discernible end. There is no point of view to be found in the film, other than
that people are not very nice." As with Griffith, Shipman again defends the
Hollywood industry's treatment of the artist. He finds no genius in von
Stroheim but rather "the classic example of filmmakers so in awe of their own
talents that nothing was too expensive and no footage too long." He concludes
that von Stroheim "lost simply because he was too arrogant to work other than
in a recklessly extravagant manner."
Shipman derides Stiller's films as being "stilted and melodramatic" and "mostly
ordinary." He argues that "Song of the Scarlet Flower" is "merely another
melodrama about a headstrong, dissolute youth" and "Sir Arne's Treasure" "a
hysterical melodrama." Gebert says he can't think of "anything
uncomplimentary" Shipman said about Pudovkin. Well, how's this? The critic
finds "Mother" "too calculated to be stirring" and "The End of St. Petersburg"
merely "academic film-making" and "propaganda" which "need not bear any
relation to the truth." He calls Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" a
"disaster" and finds its acclaim a "mystery" since in his view it is a "boring"
film "without a single intellectual fibre" made in "that pompous ascetic way
often associated with religious art."
To complete my citation of Shipman's absurdly philistine attitude IMO towards
most of the silent cinema, while he is somewhat better in his treatment of
silent comedy, here, too, his views are often ill-informed and insensitive.
Indeed, he is sometimes harsh on Lubitsch and Chaplin. He asserts that
Lubitsch's silent American comedies "lack the sparkle of both the earlier and
later ones" with "lengthy explanatory intertitles and talking heads." He is
decidedly mixed in his assessment of Chaplin and puts the word "genius" in
quotes when describing him. He dismisses "City Lights" as "a hugely
manipulative film" and "Modern Times" as "no longer either pointed or funny."
Contrary to what Mr. Gebert has said, I don't find any particularly political
reason in Shipman's equally harsh judgment of Gance's "Napoleon." He makes no
attempt to characterize the film in ideological terms and I would never impute
to him such motivations in light of how he chose to approach it. I don't think
Shipman had any especially discernible political bias in his overall approach
nor could he be in the least described as a theorist. I think he was basically
just a very limited critic who saw too many films and who, for the most part,
had very little use for most of the silent era. It would be rather like having
a rock music devotee who can't stand most classical music review a performance
of an opera or a symphony orchestra. Shipman's opinions are doubtless
interesting in the same sense as those of a hypothetical literary critic who
loathed Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Mark Twain,
Joyce et al.
I think it is clear from the above quotes that David Shipman trashed a number
of silent artists, not out of any bold unorthodox approach, but essentially due
to his fundamental aesthetic insensitivity to the silent cinema. He was
certainly entitled to express his views just as I have the right to state why I
find them critically and historically untenable. And I find it most unfortunate
that, whatever their own motivations, too many posters on this newsgroup
dismissing Gance are sounding the same tone as Shipman in his
misrepresentations of the silent era.
William M. Drew
Robert Birchard
> I wish to express my utter dismay at the unbelievable trashing of Abel Gance's
> masterpiece, "Napoleon," by Bob Birchard and the other cinematic conformists of
> his uninformed ilk who are emergng like a plague of locusts. They appear to be
> bent on rivalling in insensitive philistinism the Griffith-haters sparked by
> the DGA's absurd decision.
I will cite only portions of ReelDrew's comments as reference in order to
save space.
Mr. Drew apparently did not read my spirited criticism of the DGA over their
decision on the DWG award on this newsgroup several weeks ago.
> In formulating his case against Gance, Birchard stands history on its head by
> his incredible argument that the popular revival of "Napoleon" in the early
> 1980s set back the public acceptance of silent films by many years. On the
> contrary, prior to its showings in the USA, silent films in America and pretty
> much everywhere else were largely forgotten by the mainstream and were mostly
> limited to a few scattered showings here and there.
I cannot speak for the rest of the country, but here in Los Angeles I believe
the evidence would tend to support my statement. In the years immediately
preceding the Shrine Auditorium screening of Napoleon, we had seen quite a number
of silents with live orchestra. It was at least ten years after Napoleon screened
before another silent with orchestra played in Los Angeles. Several were
announced, but ticket presales were so feeble all were cancelled. I attribute this
at least in part to the taste Napoleon left in people's mouths.
> When "Napoleon" was released to video by MCA in 1986, it seemed to have the
> same effect on video releases. Up to that point, apart from the copyrighted
> Chaplin titles and the first Oscar winner, "Wings," the major video companies
> had resisted making silents available. After "Napoleon" came out, Paramount
> released several silent titles in 1987 to commemorate its 75th anniversary,
> MGM-UA followed starting in 1988 and Kino began its series of high-quality
> silent releases in 1989.
Well, I can't speak for MGM-UA or Kino, but I do know something about the
Paramount silent releases, and they had nothing to do with Napoleon. The Paramount
silent releases were designed to coincide with the Paramount 75th anniversary, as
Reel Drew says, but they were a pet project of Paramount Home Video executive Tim
Clott, who was an avid film enthusiast and a collector. They were strictly
prestige releases and sales were scant.
> Birchard makes another erroneous assumption in his anti-Gance tirade by
> specuating that whatever cinematic qualities "Napoleon" has may be attributable
> to Gance's assistants rather than the director himself. This is a familiar
> tactic when a critic has an aversion to a particular great director but
> concedes there may be something of value in his work.
I think you weight this comment of mine too highly. At the same time, I would
point out that Gance is clearly influenced by both DeMille and Griffith in his
work, and this influence seems to remain throughout his filmmaking career. But the
pyrotechnic virtuosity displayed in La Roue and Napoleon is nowhere to be seen in
his later work. True enough, many filmmakers opted for simpler styles as they
matured. This could be said of Griffith, Capra, Milestone, Ford and others; but
when I think of Gance I think of William Beaudine. Beaudine was a fine filmmaker
in his early career, but he churned out totally artless things like the Eastside
Kid pictures for Monogram later in his career. Late in his life I attended a
screening where Baudine saw one of his silents and afterwatds he commented: "I was
good once." I don't think it would be a stretch to imagine Gance saying the same
thing in his later years.
> Birchard partly bases his dismissal of Gance's innovative, artistic genius on
> the comparative failure of "Austerlitz," wondering how could he have made such
> a pedestrian film if he had been all his admirers claimed he was. He chooses
> to overlook that, besides battling with the commercial interests financing the
> film over its editing, Gance was an old man of 70 when he made it. More often
> than not, great filmmakers undergo a sad artistic decline as they get older.
> How could anyone associate such a conventional, minor-league, inferior
> sprctacle as KIng Vidor's last film, "Solomon and Sheba," with his great silent
> classics, "The Big Parade" and "The Crowd?" Chaplin's late films show a
> similar falling-off. And when it comes to sheer boredom, few films can rival
> Cecil B. DeMille's tedious 1956 "The Ten Commandments" which is far inferior to
> his vigorous 1923 silent version as well as his memorable "The King of Kings."
And yet I would argue that despite the relative decline of these filmmakers,
their work still retained much of the vision they had projected earlier in their
careers. I think this is true of Gance as well, but I guarantee you Austerlitz
would not have been improved if Gance had been given final cut. It was beyond
repair. His various recuts of Napoleon--the first sound reissue in the 1930's and
the disatrous "Napoleon and the Revolution" offer further evidence that whatever
skills Gance had as a filmmaker in the silent era were long gone by the mid 1930's.
> Birchard's complaint about Gance "deifying" the "little dictator" in his film
> reveals all too clearly his political motives in dismissing the film. Like the
> DGA in their public repudiation of Griffith, he has made content an issue in
> his rejection of Gance. This is aesthetically untenable since there is no way
> of pleasing everyone if one is to convey in epic and dramatic terms the sweep
> and passion of history and the ouitstanding figures who were at the center of
> events.
There is some merit in what you say, on the other hand I am a staunch defender
of The Birth of a Nation even though I find it's politics repugnant. But in your
righteous indignation you totally missed the point of my comment which was not to
complain about Gance or his motives, but merely to suggest that my negative
feelings toward Napoleon might in some part be based on my own lack of regard for
the subject matter and to warn the reader that my comments may not be entirely
objective.
> There is something of an irony in Birchard's attack on Gance in view of his own
> championship of DeMille. Of all the great directors who reached artistic
> maturity in the silent era, Griffith, DeMille and Gance have probably had the
> roughest treatment from many critics and for basically similar reasons.
> Despite their highly individual approaches to epic cinema, all three filmmakers
> were strongly influenced by the traditions of 19th century theatre and
> literature even as they molded their inspirations into the new language of
> film. Critics unfamiliar with, or unsympathetic to, the 19th century cultural
> forces that helped shape them are all too quick to dismiss their works as so
> much melodramatic hokum. Griffith, DeMille and Gance alike blend realism and
> romanticism in a manner that purists find disconcerting and which appears to
> defy easy categorization. (Traditionally, critics have been kinder to Stroheim
> and Vidor who are viewed as realists or Murnau who is considered to be a
> romanticist.) Finally, the politics of Griffith, DeMille and Gance, whether on
> screen or off, alleged or actual, has also played a major role in their
> critical dismissal.
I agree that the aesthetic of each of these filmmakers is rooted in 19th
century theater. With Griffith it was both varnstorming melodrama and the
psychological dramas of Ibsen and others. With DeMille it was the Broadway theater
of David Belasco.
I think Grifith's critical reputation has always been secure, even if his
political correctness has been questioned. Still, it is hard to rationalize that
the creator of TBOAN, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East, Orphans of the
Storm, Isn't Life Wonderful? and The Battle of the Sexes is also the seemingly
incompetent hand behind such pictures as One Exciting Night, The Greatest Question,
Sally of the Sawdust and The Struggle.
DeMille's career has fewer peaks and valleys. It was the DeMille style
Hollywood adopted moreso than the Griffith style, and his virtues and innovations
became so accepted and absorbed by the industry as to become commonplace. It is
doubtful whether his work will ever find wide critical acceptance again, even
though I think it is deserving of such, and this seems to be largely independent of
the relative popularity (or lack thereof) ofhis political positions.
> John Ford and Frank Capra who also combined realism and romanticism in their
> works have faced similar attacks by critics as evidenced by McBride's
> Capraphobic book and recent anti-Ford diatribes by Richard Schickel in The New
> York Times and the always-repellent David Thomson in The New Republic. But
> since Ford and Capra reached their artistic maturity in the sound era with
> their greatest works continually available to several generations, they have
> generated the kind of sustained public enthusiasm denied to Griffith, DeMille
> and Gance. That public support has enabled Ford and Capra to withstand the
> negative critical attacks that have proven so devastating to the artistic
> reputations of Griffith, DeMille and Gance.
While the definitive book about Capra may not have been written yet, I think
Joe's approach grew from his research as he came to realize that uch of the Capra
myth was self-created and largely false. I don't find Joe's book all that
negative. Ford is an interesting case. He is undergoing a revival based on the
interest of filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, but the critical reaction, as you
note, has been highly negative.
But, I don't think there is any real similarity to the critical reaction to
Gance, which has been overwhelming laudatory in recent years even when his overall
body of work does not support such uncritical praise.
> Perhaps the ultimate and tragic irony is that, while the "Napoleon" revival of
> the 1980s was clearly pivotal in reestablishing in the public consciousness the
> power and beauty of the silent cinema, it did far less for its creator, Abel
> Gance.
My reaction to the Napoleon phenomenon is exactly 180 degrees from yours. I
think it did much to restore Gance's critical reputaton, and little to advance the
cause of silent film.
> the defenders of cinematic
> orthodoxy were not about to admit their error in neglecting Gance. So the
> counterattack began carrying with it ugly political overtones with its
> insinuations of fascism such as we have seen in Birchard's comments. The
> result was enough to chill any sustained enthusiasm for Gance's work.
Again, I would disagree. Napoleon, despite its legendary status, was largely
unseen in anything approaching its original form from soon after its initial
release until the 1980's. Gance was easy to overlook, because his work was not
widely seen. By the time Arthur Knight was writing, Gance would have seemed a mere
footnote in film history no mater how unfair such an assessment might have been.
Rotha, on the other hand, was writing at a time when he might have recently seen
Gance's best work. But, this said, does anyone take Rotha seriously these days.
His pro-communist anti-Hollywood bias so clouded his ability to make objective
observations that his opinons are laughable today. While his book was highly
regarded in its day, but his judgements have simply not stood the test of time.
> Silent
> classics like "The Tenth Symphony," the original "J'accuse" and "La Roue" have
> either been seen by a few in the US in incomplete, inadequate versions or not
> at all. There has yet to be a retrospective of Gance's work in the USA mounted
> by either the Museum of Modern Art or a similar organization. And despite its
> video accessility, "Napoleon," even in the Coppola version, is now unknown to
> an entirely new generation of silent film enthusiasts who derive their
> interests from cable networks like TCM and AMC, stations which have never run
> any of Gance's films, silent or sound.
This is certainly true, and I would applaud a full Gance retrospective; but I
am not certain Gance's reputation would swell or suffer to any appreciable extent.
His position in the pantheon is secured by Napoleon, despite what I or anyone else
might think of it.
> That Gance has been so summarily dismissed by people on a newsgroup that claims
> to be devoted to silents is perhaps to be expected. As I have painfully
> learned in the years in which I have sought to present an alternative view of
> film history to the stultifying standards that prevail, it is well-nigh
> impossible to change to any significant degree the conventional perceptions of
> the cinematic heritage. The standard approach to film history, like conformist
> views of life in general, is not the result of a conspiracy nor was it shaped
> or controlled by any one individual. It is simply founded on a belief system
> that prefers herd-like regimentation to creative individuality (notice the
> lockstep, domino-like attacks on Gance on this newsgroup). And for all its
> pretense at egalitarianism under the guise of adherence to political
> correctness, it upholds traditional views on race and gender.
I beg to differ. I believe the conformist view since the 1980's places
Napoleon on a critical pedestal that it only partially deserves.
> Hence, Japanese
> and Chinese silents, regarded as the creations of an "exotic" culture, will
> never be championed and never made available here, no matter how outstanding
> their artistic quality. (Cinecon with which I believe Birchard is involved has
> yet to show any Chinese or Japanese silents.)
And your point is? We have certainly run German, French, Danish, Swedish,
Italian, English and Russian films. That may make us Amero-Eurocentric, but I
don't think there is any prejudice against Chinese or Japanese silents and if you
have aby suggestons on titles and availability I'd be happy to look into them along
with the rest of the Cinecon committee.
Far from being orthodox, Cinecon champions the work of truly neglected
filmmakers like John S. Robertson, Roy William Neill, Roy Del Ruth, Irvin Willat,
George Fitzmaurice, Rex Ingram, Lois Weber, Clarence Brown and the like. In fact
if you came to Cinecon you might learn something about movies (not to suggest that
you don't already know a great deal about them).
> Purveyors of the standard
> approach to film history also tend to prefer the stereotypical approach to
> actresses with the women viewed as either helpless creatures tied to railroad
> tracks in need of rescuing by the males or purely sexual creatures languishing
> on a couch waiting for their lovers. The men, by the contrast, are celebrated
> for their heroism. How often do we read on this newsgroup, year in and year
> out, someone gushing about the courageous comic exploits of Buster Keaton and
> Harold Lloyd--and how rarely do we ever even see the barest mention of Bebe
> Daniels, just as heroic, just as physically courageous, just as comedically
> brilliant in her films? Yet Bebe, like others of her silent sisters who
> challenged traditional gender roles, is forgotten. Standard film histories
> enshrine Doug Fairbanks and Tom Mix (Birchard should know as he's written a
> book on the latter) while ignoring equally heroic women like Pearl White and
> Nell Shipman.
This is simply the ranting of someone who's trying to sell his own books on
silent actresses, and it is not supported by aything but your vivid imagination.
While I have written a book about Tom Mix, I have also written articles about Grace
Cunard and Gene Gauntier. I don't share your enthusaism for Bebe Daniels (though I
enjoy her work); but I think Constance Talmadge is the most under-rated (make that
virtually unknown) of all the great silent comics. There seems to be no shortage
of admirataion for the life and work of Lillian Gish, Mabel Normand, Gloria
Swanson, Mary Pickford, et. al. And there has been at least one book about Pearl
White, and of course Nell Shipman's autobiography. How many books have you seen
about Walter Miller or Richard Talmadge--actors who might qualify as similar in
stature to White and Shipman?
> The standard view of film history is, of course, just as hard on the men who
> defy convention. More perhaps than any other filmmaker of the brilliant 1920s,
> Gance sought to create a cinema that was radically new in both its scope and
> technique as he reshaped the cinema to express a personal vision that exalted
> the heroic in humanity. Gance indeed wished to enoble the spectator by making
> him or her a virtual participant in the heroic drama on the screen.
I would suggest that Gance's intentions were not matched by his execution
much of the time. I'll simply agree to disagree with you on this.
> Someday, of course, Gance's genius will
> belatedly be recognized--just as the genius of writers like Shakespeare, Hugo,
> Melville, Whitman (all of them once dismissed by the literary equivalents of
> Bob Birchard) was finally acknowledged by later generations.
Again, I would say that gance's genius is already recognized, and Melville is
the only one of those writers who ever went into a really serious eclipse with the
critics. Since his rediscovery in the 1920's, however, his literary reputation has
been secure.
> To close my remarks, I would like to announce that, thanks to his tireless
> effort to destroy the reputation of a great cinema artist, I am awarding Bob
> Birchard with the first annual DGA Philistine Award, an award given to those
> who show an outstanding capacity to be blindly insensitive to cinematic genius
> while using political excuses as a cover for their pathetic ignorance and
> conformism.
And I'll return the favor by honoring you with the "Rex" award--or at least
the appropriate anatomical portion of the King of the Wild Horses that you so
markedly resemble.
Robert Birchard
>
> As for Gebert's statement that Louis Delluc called Gance's film "a Napoleon for
> fascists," he is somewhat in error as Dellic died in 1924 three years before
> Gance's epic was released. He is thinking of the orthodox leftist critic Leon
> Moussinac who similarly trashed another great epic film, King Vidor's "The Big
> Parade," for failing to conform to his view of the world.
Of course, William Drew would never trash anyone who did not conform to his
own view of the world ;-}
Robert Birchard
> As for David Shipman, besides dismissing Gance, he also trashed Griffith,
> Strroheim, Stiller, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko and Dreyer. For this reason, I take
> him no more seriously as a critic than I do David Thomson.
Just to rub your nose in it, Bill, I would agree with Shipman on Dovzhenko
and Dreyer--mostly dull stuff (and definitely all of Dreyer's best work was made
outside Denmark). I'd also agree with Shipman on late Pudovkin--Stalinist drivel.
I have always found Stroheim somwhat problematic. I understand his place in
the cinema, but he has a godawful tendency to wrap up his stories with some of the
hoariest melodrama, completely undermining the more mature aspects of his art. How
'bout that big fire scene in "Foolish Wives" ? (p.u.)
Robert Birchard
> In article <38AB43A3...@gte.net>,
> Glamour Studios <glam...@gte.net> wrote:
> > One more interesting note...the original film had a score by the great French
> > composer Arthur Honneger, who was born in 1892, was still actively composing as late
> > as 1993, and apparently is still alive (he would be 108 years old on March 10th)!
>
> I keep hearing of the fascination of people with the Carl Davis score for
> Napoleon. I like much of Carl Davis' work, but what about the Honegger
> score? Does it still exist, and is there a good reason for not using it?
>
I believe a substantial portion of the score survives and at least parts of it have
been recorded. The main reason it wasn't used, however, probably had more to do with the
vested interests of Coppola and Brownlow. And I don't mean this as a criticism in any
way, merely an observation. I actually like both scores for different reasons.
Richard M Roberts
(SNIP) Lots of nonsense.
I must say I always enjoy being a cultural philistine. They seem to
have the best parties, and they don't have to watch pretentious movies
santioned by the Cahiers Duh Cinema crowd who seem to run by the old
adage that Wilde or Shaw once said about people who go to opera not
because they like it, but because they think they should like it.
As for Mr Birchard and his ilk, whom certainly for this arguement I will
consider myself one of, I think the weight of the sheer number of films
seen and studied by that group validates their opinions.The work of a
touted "master" such as a Griffith or a Gance( and I am not denigrating
either filmakers reputation, although I do believe Gance's is overrated)
does begin to pale slightly when one begins to immerse oneself in their
contemporaries. There were so many talented people working in films that
are forgotten, or whose work merits rediscovery that to slap the word
"genius" on the chosen few and ignore the others is to do a real
injustice.Also, the more silent films one sees, the more one realizes
that the development of cinema was definitely a group process, and that
credit for innovation must be far spread. Nobody who has ever worked on
a film takes the Auteur theory seriously.
Back to Gance: In my opinion, while Gance created some individually and
visually powerful sequences in his films, he had definite problems in
the realm of depth of characterization and storytelling. He also seemed
to have a kitchen-sink approach to style that lacked the discipline to
make a film that worked as a cohesive whole. I think the fact that
NAPOLEON never seemed to have a definite length and he continued to
retool and tinker with it endlessly attests to that. It also seems to me
that his influence on cinema outside the borders of France(and perhaps
within) was not any where near as persuasive as so many others one could
mention, and certainly the reissue of NAPOLEON in the 1980's did little
to spawn new interest in silent films in general for reasons allready
mentioned by others(Brownlow's Thames silent series had been going on
for some time at that point, his wonderful HOLLYWOOD series in the
seventies had done far much more to spark momentum in the interest in
silent films, and that was what allowed him to reissue NAPOLEON in the
first place).While the scope and length of NAPOLEON makes it an
important film that needs to be seen(preferably from a very comfortable
chair), to call it a masterwork is to stretch the meaning of that word
to it's limits and beyond.
Bebe Daniels the comic equal of Buster Keaton? Hey, I love Bebe, but
let's talk reality here.
And Bob, if you're reading, No Japanese silents at
Cinecon------PLEASE!!!!
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Mile Films
silent releases in 1989..
>>
a) not true. David S' contract might have begun then, but Kino started silents
on video earlier than that.
b) Had nothing to do with Napoleon, but a wonderful combination of Don Krim's
"mandate" to release silent films since the day he bought Kino, his contract
with David who is obviously equally enthusiastic and Lawrence Lerman, the video
salesman, who could sell anything to anybody.
Dennis Doros
Milestone Film & Video
email: Mile...@aol.com
Michael Gebert
> As I said in an earlier post, I have no wish to continue this war of
words with
> Michael Gebert.
I guess I'll take that as a victory? I have no idea what arguing your
position on Usenet is if not a war of words...
>But when someone includes as part of their reason for
> despising the film frankly political reasons as Bob Birchard did, I personally
> disagree with that as being valid aesthetic criteria. As for Leon Moussinac,
> it is a matter of historic record that he was coming from a certain political
> perspective which colored his judgment. I feel that should be pointed out just
> as when a political bias of a slightly different type led Mussolini's Fascist
> regime to censor "Napoleon" when it was screened in Italy.
And I feel it should be pointed out that Gance got in bed with the
Fascists. I'm just floored that you are shocked, shocked to discover a
political tinge to arguments about a power-hungry nationalistic dictator.
Or that people feel smeared when your response to opinions they cite is
merely, "Oh, well, he was a known Stalinist" and "His political biases are
well known"-- especially when you let Brownlow off the Stalinist hook
because he agrees with you. I consider that intellectually dishonest--
and if I may now throw a charged noun in return at being tarred with
Stalinism, it strikes me as distinctly McCarthyist.
> He alleges that Griffith's reputation was "inflated"
> and that he "never advanced beyond a basic level of competence." He dismisses
> "The Birth of a Nation" as "a throwback to the days of animated tableaux"
Okay, but where are the attacks as opposed to the bald statements of fact?
> Shipman is equally hard on von Stroheim. He says that, compared to Sjostrom,
> "the much-praised originality of 'Greed' is slight, and indeed von Stroheim is
> revealed again as opportunistic since he has managed 'realism' but to no
> discernible end. There is no point of view to be found in the film,
other than
> that people are not very nice."
I happen to disagree with this, but I would grant a Sjostrom partisan this
license.
>He finds no genius in von
> Stroheim but rather "the classic example of filmmakers so in awe of their own
> talents that nothing was too expensive and no footage too long." He concludes
> that von Stroheim "lost simply because he was too arrogant to work other than
> in a recklessly extravagant manner."
Good god, no! No one's ever suggested that before.
I concede that he dislikes some of the other people you say he dislikes--
but I don't even know what the point of this is any more. Shipman is a
rather idiosyncratic, perhaps cranky, critic who nevertheless writes very
well about what he loves, which is a lot of stuff; and he saw enough
movies and saw them well enough to earn his right to his cranky opinions.
Other than that, what does he have to do with the price of tea in China?
All you've done is attempt to prove the following: David Shipman dislikes
Dovzhenko, I like Dovzhenko, therefore Shipman MUST be mad. You're
entitled to think that, but I've long since lost whatever the hell it had
to do with Gance.
> I think it is clear from the above quotes that David Shipman trashed a number
> of silent artists, not out of any bold unorthodox approach, but
essentially due
> to his fundamental aesthetic insensitivity to the silent cinema.'
As demonstrated by his superb and appreciative chapter on Sjostrom and his
compatriots.
Eric Grayson
sniping because of their disagreements on the merits of a particular film.
Bob Birchard is NOT a mean or vindictive person. I watched him be calm and
nice to a fellow at Cinecon this year who I would have tried to throttle.
He is absolutely entitled to his opinions and we may well disagree with
them. Bob is one of the most well-educated people on cinema in the world.
And, no, that's not just idle praise. It's really true.
I often felt that Bill Everson, one of the greats, was watching different
films from the ones I saw. His praise of some films--especially those of
obscure Britishers like The Crazy Gang--was beyond my comprehension. That
did not diminish my respect for Bill a bit.
I happen to really dislike all of Chaplin's work and find it mightily sappy
and boring. On the other hand, I really LIKE Tod Browning's work,
repetitive though it is. Does that make me an uneducated philistine?
Maybe. But it's just an opinion. I see the art in Chaplin's work but I
don't care for it.
I'd like to finish by challenging the assumption that Gance was somehow
entitled to make a dull film as a 70 year old because he was then an old,
weak man. I find it interesting that he lived for another 20 or so years
after that...
There have been a great number of excellent films made by people over 70.
Hitchcock was over 70 when he made Frenzy. Kurosawa was..., even Charles
Crichton was 80 when he made A Fish Called Wanda, and that film has a zippy
energy to it totally missing in the followup film, Fierce Creatures, made
by a younger director.
I would find it easier to say that when Gance made his later film, it was
marked by weak economic conditions and budgetary problems that did not
exist when Napoleon was made.
Let's keep this dialogue civil and leave the sniping to the rest of the
morans.
Eric
Glamour Studios
Williams score.
Archie Waugh
Michael Gebert wrote:
> In article <38ae1f49...@news.siscom.net>, fwy...@siscom.net (Frank
> Wylie) wrote:
>
> > If Griffith can make "Drums of Love" and retain his high standing,
> > then I think Gance can make "Austerlitz" and retain his credit as
> > being one of the greats of cinema history.
>
> Or Hawks Rio Lobo or Ford Seven Women or Hitchcock Family Plot or Cukor
> Rich and Famous or Lang The Testament of Dr. Mabuse...
>
Michael Gebert
> The work of a
> touted "master" such as a Griffith or a Gance( and I am not denigrating
> either filmakers reputation, although I do believe Gance's is overrated)
> does begin to pale slightly when one begins to immerse oneself in their
> contemporaries.
Good point. And why should readjusting Intolerance's position in regards
to Regeneration, Cabiria or The Cheat be regarded as an attack on
Griffith? It's still an impressive film-- some of it more impressive than
other parts.
> He also seemed
> to have a kitchen-sink approach to style that lacked the discipline to
> make a film that worked as a cohesive whole. I think the fact that
> NAPOLEON never seemed to have a definite length and he continued to
> retool and tinker with it endlessly attests to that.
Although I think there's some truth to this, it's also fair to say that
tinkering with films during release was quite common in his time (as it's
gotten to be again, with all these "Director's Cuts" on video of movies
that the director already cut to his satisfaction once), so it's perhaps
unfair to draw psychological conclusions about Gance from that.
> And Bob, if you're reading, No Japanese silents at
> Cinecon------PLEASE!!!!
Hey, if you've had a bad experience with Japanese silents, I have one
piece of advice: go rent the recently released tape of I Was Born, But.
Even if you've snoozed through later Ozu, I think you'll find it quite
charming and impressive.
Whilst Archie said:
>Hey! I LIKE Family Plot! Think of it as "Hitchcock Lite"; also a nice
John Williams score.
True, it's not the disgrace that some of the others I cited are. But it
still would have been a far neater end to go out with Frenzy, the return
to Britain and to the plot, basically, of The Lodger.
Michael Cummins
>
> I agree with others here that Napoleon has a half a dozen of the
greatest
> sequences in movies, but I'd have to say that overall it is a turgid bore
and very
> much ersatz Griffith. I freely admit that with my ancestral background
(English,
> Scottish, Irish and German) I find deifying the little dictator of France
to be a
> serious lapse in judgement on Gance's part--but I do understand that the
French
> feel somewhat differently. Still, the visual pyrotechnics in some scenes
are so
> vivid they really grab you.
Please scratch the "Irish" bit, he is more the hero than the villan here,
firstly he was an enemy of Britain, super, secondly he inspired our 1798
rebellion, great and thirdly he actually on more than one occasion sent
troops and ships to aid us in our struggle, albeit selfishly and
unsuccesfully, marvellous.
But please we love him.
On topic, I think i'll try to get hold of the BBC version, it's so painful
that there can't be one nearest to complete version, instead of some with
this and some with that.
M. Cummins
Robert Birchard
> Is this the place to defend The Struggle? Perhaps not. Anyway, I think
> there is a certain sort of artist who only has peaks and valleys-- is
> remarkable when when lightning strikes, but finds it hard to be merely
> competent. For example, Francis Coppola and David Lynch are two current
> filmmakers who seem to only be either very very good-- or horrid. Gance
> is clearly in this camp-- J'Accuse ('38) is pretty tough to sit through,
> or even follow, until the climactic sequence, at which point it is one of
> the most powerful movies you'll ever see.
I personally find The Struggle to be a very interesting film--but not a good
one. Griffith clearly made an artistic decision to stage his 1931 film when is set
ca. 1910 in the visual style of a 1910 Biograph. It is probably an exact record (or
as exact as anything could be) of what whay one might have heard coming from actors
at Biograph in 1910. It was a brave, daring and obviously deliberate decision. It
just didn't work.
I can think of several pictures (The Bowery, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Singin'
in the Rain, and You're My Everything for example) that do a much better job of
recreating the recent past in the mind of the audeince without being technically
accurate in period detail. I'd have to say Griffith won the battle and lost the war
on The Struggle.
Glamour Studios
everyone and everything. From now on, I will only revere the films of the great
Clyde Bruckman, and the acting of Snitz Edwards...all else is virulent Marxist
propaganda and cultural effluent! To hell with you all!
:-)
Archie Waugh
Michael Gebert wrote:
> In article <20000219231914...@ng-fp1.aol.com>,
> reel...@aol.com (Reel Drew) wrote:
>
> > With respect to Jon Mirsalis' comments, I consider it a badge of honor
> to be on
> > the side opposite him along with Kevin Brownlow, David Robinson, James Welsh
> > and scores of film historians and devotees throughout the world who, unlike
> > Mirsalis, share my admiration for David Wark Griffith, Erich von
> Stroheim, Abel
> > Gance and the other great filmmakers of the silent era who created a new art.
>
> There's still one difference between you and them.
>
> They don't do it uncritically. (Or shall I get out Robinson on Griffith
> or Stroheim to start pulling critical comments on certain films out of
> context, and thus prove that Robinson hates Griffith and is therefore as
> worthless as Shipman?)
Michael Gebert
Michael Gebert
> I agree with YOU vis a vis the DGA and the DWG award. I even agree
with YOU
> that "Napoleon" is a great film--but to my mind it is a flawed work--and those
> flaws have nothing to do with Gance's politics or the politics of "Napoleon"
> himself.
I, on the other hand, think its flaws do have to do with the "politics" of
Napoleon-- at least, the politics of hero-worship, of the near-deification
of a dictator (what is that eagle if not a sign from Providence?), of the
use of cinema to whoop up nationalistic fury at a particular moment in
history when we were especially vulnerable to such things. That doesn't
make it Triumph of the Will, by a good little ways, but it does make you
wonder about the intellectual coherency of the artist who sandwiches this
appeal to world conquest in between two versions of the same powerful
antiwar story. Anyway, at the end of the day I do reserve a little higher
place for some other kinds of movies, dedicated to things other than the
glory of conquering generals, such as the satire of same (The General, Dr.
Strangelove, Apocalypse Now). And if that means my politics color my
aesthetics, so be it.
Michael Gebert
wrote:
> I've decided to become the ultimate silent film snob and just hate pretty much
> everyone and everything. From now on, I will only revere the films of
the great
> Clyde Bruckman, and the acting of Snitz Edwards...all else is virulent Marxist
> propaganda and cultural effluent! To hell with you all!
> :-)
> Archie Waugh
This from a known Bruckmanite (later turned Snitzialist). I think it
speaks for itself. Or at least I do for myself.
Robert Birchard
> I've decided to become the ultimate silent film snob and just hate pretty much
> everyone and everything. From now on, I will only revere the films of the great
> Clyde Bruckman, and the acting of Snitz Edwards...all else is virulent Marxist
> propaganda and cultural effluent! To hell with you all!
> :-)
> Archie Waugh
Of course, you know that Snitz Edwards trashed the work of that father of cinema
Max Davidson claiming that "Pass The Gravy," while funny, was not in the same league
any Ton O' Fun short in an essay he would have posted on alt.movies.silent if only
such a thing had existed in 1927. ;-}
Robert Birchard
> As for Mr Birchard and his ilk, whom certainly for this arguement I will
> consider myself one of . . .
B.P.O.I. -- The Benevolent and Protective Order of Ilks!
> And Bob, if you're reading, No Japanese silents at
> Cinecon------PLEASE!!!!
Come now, Richard, one might assume from this statement that you are
somehow down on "exotic" culture. ;-}
Robert Birchard
> . . . as the person paying an enormous amount of money for 35mm
> prints of all 4 hours and twenty minutes of The Sorrow and the Pity, I will be
> glad to say that long films are amazing and everybody should go out and see
> them. Especially this year...
It has been years since I've seen this film. I worked in the theater where it
premiered in Los Angeles. If you have not seen it, by all means do so if you get
the opportunity. It is a truly great documentary exploration of the French
collaboration with the Nazis.
Somewhat crude in its assembly (it shows its television origins in its
editing, I think), The Sorrow and the Pity overcomes this shortcoming by building
constantly to the end and it is ultimately a riveting film experience.
Support Dennis and the cause. Go see it!
SilentsAreGolden
Maybe if you posted with greater regularity, and covered a wider array
of subjects, you wouldn't get the kind of reaction you get. It seems
that you only post when you come up with another excuse to write
dissertations defending the honor of D.W. Griffith. Now it seems that
you are switching to a defense of Gance, but the tone and structure
appears to be the same.
Can't you participate without being the headmaster? It was this kind of
thing that drove several of us from the Tuesday night silent chat. You
have a great deal of knowledge and much to offer a discussion, too bad
you don't seem to want to use it more productively.
Mike
Reel Drew wrote:
>
> With respect to Jon Mirsalis' comments, I consider it a badge of honor to be on
> the side opposite him along with Kevin Brownlow, David Robinson, James Welsh
> and scores of film historians and devotees throughout the world who, unlike
> Mirsalis, share my admiration for David Wark Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, Abel
> Gance and the other great filmmakers of the silent era who created a new art.
>
> William M. Drew
MARGARITA LORENZ
Brownlow and Mr. Stansbury. Yes, they are in the midst of restoring yet another
version of " Napoleon" and adding an extended score by Carl Davis. I'm sure once
they read some of the comments they will stop immediately in the interest of future
silent film exhibition. I wasn't aware that they had hurt silent films so
greatly.When "Napoleon" first played at Radio City, I remember the Napoleon posters
all over the Reading Terminal in Phila. back in the late 70's. Of course there had
been many other silent films publicized like that in public places before this now
let me think.....um none come to mind right now......
I went with my parents and had the experience of sitting in a 7,000 seat theater
(Radio City) with the image of a triptych that opened wider than my imagination and
I seem to remember tumultuous applause applause when a single horse crossed across
the three screens. I remember the mighty Wurlitzer shaking the house and I remember
saying this is a silent film what have I been missing. I also recall an audience
up to the rafters that primarily had never seen a silent film enwrapped in
enthralled with those incredible images for four hours.....That to most it seemed
like four minutes. True even with Carmine Coppola's average score the film's impact
could not be hindered. But I realize now that I have heard your comments what a
waste of time it was. :(
Margarita
Lloyd Fonvielle
> (Is there, I wonder, any such thing as an absolutely perfect work of
> art in any medium?)
"She Loves You" by the Beatles.
Michael Gebert
> I will also say that the Japanese silents I have seen were nowhere as
> dreadful as the Eastern Indian silents I have seen.
Well, I'll grant that anybody who can make that statement at least can't
be accused of not having tried. I think anyone would like I Was Born, But
(which is quite a bit better than I Was Flunked, But); it's on my 10 best
silents list. I haven't seen any Eastern Indian silents....
Do you suppose somewhere in Japan, people are having this same heated
discussion-- but instead of over Napoleon, over whether Page of Madness is
brilliant and wonderful or a colossal bore?
George Shelps
>I, on the other hand, think its flaws do
>have to do with the "politics" of
>Napoleon-- at least, the politics of
>hero-worship, of the near-deification of a
>dictator
Napoleon was not a dictator in the film but a general. He is not
deified. The end titles define him as "the Tempter."
> (what is that eagle if not a sign from
>Providence?), of the use of cinema to
>whoop up nationalistic fury at a particular
>moment in history when we were
>especially vulnerable to such things.
The late 20s were not a period of vulnerabilty. America was still
experiencing an economic boom, the Weimar Republic was still intact, and
Hitler was still quiescent.
>That doesn't make it Triumph of the Will,
Nor was Napoleon comparable to Hitler.
> by a good little ways, but it does make
>you wonder about the intellectual
>coherency of the artist who sandwiches
>this appeal to world conquest in between
>two versions of the same powerful
>antiwar story.
It is not "an appeal to world conquest."
It is, if anything, an awestruck look at the forces of history as they
play out in
the biography of an extraordinary man.
Gance is not going to devalue that history
with the paltriness of political partisanship, no matter what his
personal beliefs.
>Anyway, at the end of the day I do
>reserve a little higher place for some
>other kinds of movies, dedicated to
>things other than the glory of conquering
>generals,
Again, the whole style of the film suggests
broader forces at work in the world besides mere generalship and
territorial
conquest.
> such as the satire of same (The
>General, Dr. Strangelove, Apocalypse
>Now). And if that means my politics color
>my aesthetics, so be it.
And so it should be. But your right to
express those opinions has been paid for by the blood of men willing to
die for that right, beginning with the events recorded
in the Bible through Gettysburg to
one lone protestor standing up to a tank in China.
The Napoleonic era was of such enormous consequence, its effects are
still being felt today. I think Gance's film captures the essence of
this virtual "force of nature."
Appropriately, the heart of the film is the
Double Storm sequence in which even
Napoleon is caught up in the maelstrom
of history.
---------------------------------
"You take Abyssinia and I'll take a hot butterscotch sundae on rye
bread."
----Capt. Jeffrey T. Spaulding
Michael Gebert
reel...@aol.com (Reel Drew) wrote:
> Although there were some early messages on the newsgroup expressing
> appreciation for "Napoleon," as Margarita Lorenz has indicated, the discussion
> became quickly dominated by some who argued that the film was tedious and
> boring and undeserving of the acclaim it received.
Actually, I resent being misinterpreted in that way. I don't think
there's anyone-- okay, maybe one-- who said they thought it was a snooze
from start to finish. Nearly everyone who has been critical, myself
included, has said something to the effect of "less than the sum of its
sometimes admittedly spectacular parts." That's hardly the same as
"tedious and boring and undeserving of the acclaim it received"--
undeserving of uncritical adulation, perhaps, but that's not quite the
same thing.
> Simply because they also
> criticize the DGA's being affected by political motives in rejecting Griffith
> cannot hide the fact that they are being swayed in part by similar factors in
> condemning Gance.
I have never attempted to hide that fact, although again, all I am
"condemning" Gance of is the very common misdemeanor of making a film with
some ups and downs. Let me state it plainly:
Griffith is a key figure in film history, his attitudes were scarcely
unusual for their time, and the action to remove his name from an award
reflects only upon the historical blindness of the people who took that
action, not on his stature which will remain as it is a century from now,
when 99% of them are as forgotten as William Beaudine.
Napoleon is a dazzling film about a dictator. It rouses nationalistic
passions and glorifies war in spectacular fashion. Two consequences of
that are, one, that it throws into doubt the sincerity of the extremely
powerful pacifist leanings of its maker in the two versions of J'Accuse
before and after it; and two, that a character who is treated like a god
is rarely developed with the three-dimensionality that marks the very best
and subtlest filmmaking, which is why Napoleon is considerably more
impressive as spectacle than as drama.
> Had they based their aversion to "Napoleon" solely on
> aesthetic grounds without reference to the film's alleged politics or had they
> argued they preferred Charles Boyer's portrayal of Napoleon in "Conquest"
Okay. I prefer Charles Boyer because a fricking bird from God doesn't
tell him how to conquer the world!
> there would have been no need to mention
> any political motivations on the part of these posters. And politics, in this
> sense, has nothing to do with whether they are right, left or center, Democrat
> or Republican, Communist or Fascist, but rather their apparent belief that, in
> matters of historical interpretation, art must conform to their ideas
(whatever
> they are) of how societies and governments should be organized. As applied to
> literature, such criticism would condemn Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare and many
> others.
Can't someone rescue poor Bill from the stake to which we have tied him?
Honestly!
>In my view, any
> perspective that is dismissive of artists of the stature of Griffith, Gance,
> von Stroheim and Eisenstein is no more supportive of film as an art than a
> music newsgroup whose members regularly would deride Mozart, Beethoven,
> Schubert or Tchaikovsky or a literary newsgroup that regarded Shakespeare,
> Dickens, Hugo or Tolstoy as minor-league, boring or overrated.
That's not orthodoxy, even though you're setting the ground rules for who
can and can't be criticized up front? Okay, let's talk about your
literature group. Would you say that Sir Walter Scott can't be
criticized? 100 years ago he stood with Shakespeare and well above
Dickens. Yet somehow history has revised him downward-- as it has film
artists such as Robert Flaherty (who was certainly the equal in stature of
Griffith, Eisenstein and Stroheim just 50 years ago). You claim to decry
political correctness, yet here you are telling us who we absolutely dare
not touch. As applied to literature, such criticism would condemn
Whitman, Poe and many others-- because there never would have been the
chance to revise the accepted opinions on their work.
Michael Gebert
G-H...@webtv.net (George Shelps) wrote:
> Napoleon was not a dictator in the film but a general. He is not
> deified.
Then why does he have a magic eagle from Heaven? What is Napoleon if not
a French version of Lang's Nibelungen myths? And we know which future
German leader LOVED those.
> The late 20s were not a period of vulnerabilty. America was still
> experiencing an economic boom, the Weimar Republic was still intact, and
> Hitler was still quiescent.
Except for that little Beer Hall Putsch thing. You ARE aware that
Mussolini was already in power in Italy, not to mention various other
nationalistic governments of every political stripe scattered around
Europe? I agree 1925 was not 1933... but it wasn't exactly 1989 either.
> >That doesn't make it Triumph of the Will,
>
> Nor was Napoleon comparable to Hitler.
Uh... Guys Who Tried To Conquer The Whole World In The Last 1000 Years,
Starting By Invading Russia. My short list has both of their names on
it.
> Gance is not going to devalue that history
> with the paltriness of political partisanship, no matter what his
> personal beliefs.
Quite right. There's nothing paltry about a man who fights the oceans
singlehanded as others fight the political tide of revolution. He must
truly be the son of God (no wait, that was John Wayne in some other
greatest story ever told).
Incidentally, did anyone else think the cardboard wings on a stick casting
a shadow over the Polyvision sequence was up there, realism-wise, with the
octopus in Bride of the Monster? More Gance-Wood parallels!
> Again, the whole style of the film suggests
> broader forces at work in the world besides mere generalship and
> territorial conquest.
Yeah, the personal hand of God (and his son Jesus's pet eagle).
> And so it should be. But your right to
> express those opinions has been paid for by the blood of men willing to
> die for that right, beginning with the events recorded
> in the Bible through Gettysburg to
> one lone protestor standing up to a tank in China.
Not to mention Wellington standing up against that mad world conqueror and
dictator, Bonaparte, and putting an end to his insane reign. Glad to see
you come to your senses there, I was starting to worry.
William Hooper
>>whoop up nationalistic fury at a particular
>>moment in history when we were
>>especially vulnerable to such things.
>The late 20s were not a period of vulnerabilty. America was
>still experiencing an economic boom, the Weimar Republic was
>still intact, and Hitler was still quiescent.
..the Klan was marching on Washington, Aimee Semple McPherson
was just being exposed as a hypocritical money sponge, Hearst's
papers were on a rising tide, & Hitler was quiescent because
his message & methodology were gestating.
It was a point of the very beginnings of mass media, & gaps in
personal knowledge could produce "A chicken in every pot" & "I
can cure cancer" claims, with wide, but ultimately unimportant,
variability in the degree to which those who did the claiming
believed their own words.
I've got to go with Mr. Mirsalis that it was the moment when
folk were most vulnerable in their impressions.
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
Richard M Roberts
>
> Richard M Roberts wrote:
>
> > As for Mr Birchard and his ilk, whom certainly for this arguement I will
> > consider myself one of . . .
>
> B.P.O.I. -- The Benevolent and Protective Order of Ilks!
>
> > And Bob, if you're reading, No Japanese silents at
> > Cinecon------PLEASE!!!!
>
> Come now, Richard, one might assume from this statement that you are
> somehow down on "exotic" culture. ;-}
>
>
Okay, I think I can cop to that , Japanese culture has never really
spoken to me. I'm an American-European Anglophile who just has never
found the spark that turned me on to Oriental Culture. I appreciate
directors like Kurosawa, but I don't find the burning need to see his
films again and again. To answer Connie K and Mike Baskett, I've run
into a few Japanese silents at film festivals and traded videotapes over
the years. I've seen two of Ozu's silents:the comedy I FLUNKED,BUT that
I did not find particularly hilarious, and another I think was known as
WALK CHEERFULLY. It was interesting to get a look at late twenties
Japan, but I did not see any particular flair that made them stand out.
I ran another at a Classical Film Society showing years ago called
CROSSWAYS or CROSSROADS but I don't remember who directed that.And I
have seen THE DOWNFALL, which I believe is directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
and it also struck me as unremarkable. What I did find interesting about
the ones I remember is that the Japanese filmmakers seemed to be
developing a noirish type of approach to filmmaking. They seemed to have
an interest in underworld characters and the trappings.
I have heard that Ozu's I WAS BORN,BUT is an excellent film, but I have
not come across that one. Perhaps that night be an interesting Cinecon
showing afterall. Any suggestions as to other good ones?
I will also say that the Japanese silents I have seen were nowhere as
dreadful as the Eastern Indian silents I have seen.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Reel Drew
I would like to respond to several things Mike said regarding the classic film
chatline I hosted as well as the messages I have posted on this newsgroup.
First of all, I was asked in 1997 to host the chatline by the theater with
which I was then associated in order to promote their local revivals of silent
films. It was never a question of my coming in and trying to take over or
dominate the chatline. As it happens, we soon attracted people from all over
the country and for nearly two years, we had many lively, informative sessions.
Unfortunately, at some point last year, participation began to drop. Partly,
I became so heavily involved in readying my book for publication that it didn't
leave me as much time as I would have liked to devote to the chatline. Another
factor may have involved declining public interest. As some may have noticed,
apart from "Silents Are Golden," "Taylorology" and David Pearson's site, most
of the silent film websites like The Silents Majority are no longer putting up
new articles with the same regularity as before. To what extent that is
indicative of a slackening of enthusiasm, I don't know. But I do know from the
history of the silent series with which I was involved in recent years that it
is a continual challenge to try to sustain public interest in the silent
cinema, no matter how much interest may have increased since the 1970s (before
the "Napoleon" revival).
With respect to Mike's view that I seem to be active on this newsgroup only
when it comes to defending Griffith and I have suddenly switched to Gance, I
feel that the controversies are closely related. In fact, last year, when it
was Eisenstein who was under attack, I contended that Griffith, Gance and
Eisenstein alike should be respected as great artists whether or not one agrees
with everything in their interpretations of history. Far from ignoring other
topics, within the last year, I have also discussed on this newsgroup such
matters as Japanese silents which I feel have been unfairly neglected in this
country and the safety of the Yugoslav archive during the bombing of Belgrade
by NATO. I also commented on the newly-reconstructed version of Erich von
Stroheim's "Greed" when news of its preparation was first announced. I had
hoped there would be more discussion about it with people posting their
impressions once it was finally screened on TCM. But for whatever reason,
while there was considerable discussion about it in advance, it sparked very
little comment here after it was shown. Having expressed some skepticism about
the project at the start, I'd like to go on record here that, in my view, Rick
Schmidlin's reconstruction of "Greed" is indeed remarkable, an awesome
achievement of restoration with a marvelous score by Robert Israel. It does
not replace the 10-reel "Greed" since, unlike MGM's mutilated travesty of
"Napoleon," the 1924 released version of "Greed" was (and still is) a film of
great artistic power and integrity with perhaps a more concentrated force. But
Schmidlin's amazing work in restoring much of von Stroheim's original vision
and narrative results, in my view, in a work of art with even greater stature
and depth, a film more truly tragic with what I see as a genuine compassion for
its characters. This is one case, I believe, where both Schmidlin's version
and the 10-reel MGM release should remain permanently in public circulation as
both are in their individual ways unforgettable artistic experiences.
Unfortunately, the showing of the new version of "Greed" in December coincided
with the DGA's decision to drop the D. W. Griffith Award. As might have been
expected, this elicited a lot of comments on the newsgroups and having written
a book on "Intolerance," I felt I should add my two cents' worth to the
discussion here. That and the new flak over Gance's "Napoleon" on this
newsgroup--just look at the number of posts under this thread--have put any
comments of mine on other cinema-related topics on the back burner for a while.
Although there were some early messages on the newsgroup expressing
appreciation for "Napoleon," as Margarita Lorenz has indicated, the discussion
became quickly dominated by some who argued that the film was tedious and
boring and undeserving of the acclaim it received. That is certainly their
right to believe if they so choose. But they then went on to claim that the
bulk of the public who went to see it across the country were so equally bored
by Gance's film that they stayed away in droves for subsequent silent revivals.
Absent some kind of poll, I really do not know how they can presume to get
into the minds of thousands of spectators nearly two decades ago and represent
today what they really felt about the film then. All the recorded information
in press reports and daily reviews as well as the testimony of many witnesses
like Margarita Lorenz concur that the film had an electric effect on audiences
who were held enthralled by the film throughout its unusual four-hour length.
(That had been my own impression when it was shown at the Avenue Theatre in the
1970s in a longer version at a slower projection speed for a total of five
hours.) Lillian Gish who before the film started, confided she was not certain
if the four hours would seem more like ten,said afterwards, "I felt I was there
for 20 MINUTES! It is silent film as it was meant to be. . .Immediacy."
Anyone who doubts the reality of the film's remarkable hold over audiences is
welcome to check the newspaper descriptions in 1981.
As for an allegation made maintaining that audience dissatisfaction with the
"Napoleon" screening in Los Angeles caused them to avoid a similar revival of
"The New Babylon" with a live orchestra, I must first of all refer back to my
own experiences when I was involved in helping program silents on a monthly
basis for San Jose's Towne Theatre. As we found out over the years, the level
of attendance there was decidedly uneven. The screening of a Buster Keaton
film would attract a large audience one month whereas the next silent
presentation would bring in very few spectators. This hardly means, however,
that the public was so bored with Keaton they decided to stay home the next
time. In the particular case of "The New Babylon," great film though it is, it
simply does not have the built-in commercial appeal or familiarity to
automatically attract a large house for such an ambitious presentation. Its
co-directors are not widely known in the US, it does not have any well-known
stars or popular subject matter nor is the title really a familiar one here
like "Potemkin," for example. "Napoleon" had in advance the double-barrelled
appeal of an extremely popular historical topic and the fact that, for well
over a decade, people had been reading the detailed descriptions of the film in
Kevin Brownlow's widely-read, highly-respected "The Parade's Gone By" and were
eager to see it. Had the screening of "Napoleon" in Los Angeles soon been
followed by a similar presentation there of say, "Wings," "The Thief of Bagdad"
or "Intolerance" with its depiction of the OLD Babylon, "Napoleon"'s attendance
levels in the LA area might have been duplicated or at least approached.
While I speculated but did not state as an absolute that MCA's release of
"Napoleon" seemed to have some effect on other silents becoming available
through major companies, I will defer to the information of Dennis Doros and
others who were involved in the decision-making process that led to such
releases. However, I do believe that had MCA's video release of "Napoleon" not
been commercially successful, it might have had a chilling effect on subsequent
high-profile silent video releases becoming available. In addition, I am
convinced that the original popular theatrical revival of "Napoleon" in 1981,
by bringing silents back so dramatically into the public consciousness, had
some sort of effect on many silent film-related events in the 1980s including
the fact that silent video releases became much more common during the course
of the decade.
In their response to my belief that some of "Napoleon"'s detractors are
decidedly being colored by a political assessment, it seems to me that several
of these posters are trying to have it both ways. In one sentence, they assert
they dislike the film purely because they find it boring and tedious and that
politics has nothing to do with their view. Then in the very next sentence,
they will contradict themselves and say that it glorifies this evil dictator
(surely, a response to the perceived politics of the film) and admit the film's
point of view partly affects their judgment. Simply because they also
criticize the DGA's being affected by political motives in rejecting Griffith
cannot hide the fact that they are being swayed in part by similar factors in
condemning Gance. Had they based their aversion to "Napoleon" solely on
aesthetic grounds without reference to the film's alleged politics or had they
argued they preferred Charles Boyer's portrayal of Napoleon in "Conquest" to
Albert Dieudonne's in Gance's epic, there would have been no need to mention
any political motivations on the part of these posters. And politics, in this
sense, has nothing to do with whether they are right, left or center, Democrat
or Republican, Communist or Fascist, but rather their apparent belief that, in
matters of historical interpretation, art must conform to their ideas (whatever
they are) of how societies and governments should be organized. As applied to
literature, such criticism would condemn Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare and many
others.
As for allegations by some on this newsgroup that I believe filmmakers like
Griffith, Gance and von Stroheim should be totally immune to criticism, I have
never said that. I have never claimed that they were capable of producing only
transcendant masterpieces or that even their greatest films might not contain
flaws. (Is there, I wonder, any such thing as an absolutely perfect work of
art in any medium?) Gance himself said he made a number of his films "with his
eyes shut" while Griffith more humorously commented, "I've made some lemons,
too." But it does seem to me that when we have posters in all apparent
seriousness saying that Gance, the man who developed rapid montage, the
hand-held camera, the wide-screen and stereophonic sound, the artist who
inspired filmmakers from Eisenstein to Kurosawa and Truffaut, can be compared
to Ed Wood or a competent but decidedly minor talent like William
Beaudine--then I feel I have to question the degree to which they have a true
appreciation of the development of film art. There are regular posters on this
newsgroup like Christopher Jacobs who do have a genuine feeling for cinema
history. Another one is Tom Moran who, however strongly he may express himself
at times, is truly sensitive to silent cinema. It seems to me, however, that
some other participants on this newsgroup, despite their devotion to certain
genres, do not appear to have a comparable sensitivity to the silent film as a
whole and the seminal artists who developed its language. In my view, any
perspective that is dismissive of artists of the stature of Griffith, Gance,
von Stroheim and Eisenstein is no more supportive of film as an art than a
music newsgroup whose members regularly would deride Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert or Tchaikovsky or a literary newsgroup that regarded Shakespeare,
Dickens, Hugo or Tolstoy as minor-league, boring or overrated. That's not
orthodoxy OR anti-establishment. It's simply the basic historic groundwork
upon which we establish whether any medium has fairly earned the right to be
seriously considered as an art in its own right.
William M. Drew
Richard M Roberts
>
>
> Although there were some early messages on the newsgroup expressing
> appreciation for "Napoleon," as Margarita Lorenz has indicated, the discussion
> became quickly dominated by some who argued that the film was tedious and
> boring and undeserving of the acclaim it received. That is certainly their
> right to believe if they so choose. But they then went on to claim that the
> bulk of the public who went to see it across the country were so equally bored
> by Gance's film that they stayed away in droves for subsequent silent revivals.
> Absent some kind of poll, I really do not know how they can presume to get
> into the minds of thousands of spectators nearly two decades ago and represent
> today what they really felt about the film then. All the recorded information
> in press reports and daily reviews as well as the testimony of many witnesses
> like Margarita Lorenz concur that the film had an electric effect on audiences
> who were held enthralled by the film throughout its unusual four-hour length.
So what makes Margarita Lorenz's testimony any more valid than any of
the people here who witnessed showings of the film that were less than
spectacular. The Filmex showing at the Shrine Auditorium that I attended
was packed at the beginning, and I may add that by the interval, there
were many empty seats that were not there at the beginning. I saw the
same thing happen at the showing of the MCA wide release at the Cine
Capri in Phoenix I attended.
>
> In their response to my belief that some of "Napoleon"'s detractors are
> decidedly being colored by a political assessment, it seems to me that several
> of these posters are trying to have it both ways. In one sentence, they assert
> they dislike the film purely because they find it boring and tedious and that
> politics has nothing to do with their view. Then in the very next sentence,
> they will contradict themselves and say that it glorifies this evil dictator
> (surely, a response to the perceived politics of the film) and admit the film's
> point of view partly affects their judgment.
Since when did hating a totalitarian dictator become a political issue?
Evil is evil no matter what party or country you belong to.
>
> As for allegations by some on this newsgroup that I believe filmmakers like
> Griffith, Gance and von Stroheim should be totally immune to criticism, I have
> never said that. I have never claimed that they were capable of producing only
> transcendant masterpieces or that even their greatest films might not contain
> flaws. (Is there, I wonder, any such thing as an absolutely perfect work of
> art in any medium?) Gance himself said he made a number of his films "with his
> eyes shut" while Griffith more humorously commented, "I've made some lemons,
> too." But it does seem to me that when we have posters in all apparent
> seriousness saying that Gance, the man who developed rapid montage, the
> hand-held camera, the wide-screen and stereophonic sound,
All by his widdle ownsome? I think he missed out on some patent
lawsuits.
he artist who
> inspired filmmakers from Eisenstein to Kurosawa and Truffaut, can be compared
> to Ed Wood or a competent but decidedly minor talent like William
> Beaudine--then I feel I have to question the degree to which they have a true
> appreciation of the development of film art.
No more than one should question your appreciation of film history,
especially if you think Gance developed rapid montage, the hand-held
camera, wide-screen and stereophonic sound.
There are regular posters on this
> newsgroup like Christopher Jacobs who do have a genuine feeling for cinema
> history. Another one is Tom Moran who, however strongly he may express himself
> at times, is truly sensitive to silent cinema.
Need we say more?
It seems to me, however, that
> some other participants on this newsgroup, despite their devotion to certain
> genres, do not appear to have a comparable sensitivity to the silent film as a
> whole and the seminal artists who developed its language.
In my view, any
> perspective that is dismissive of artists of the stature of Griffith, Gance,
> von Stroheim and Eisenstein is no more supportive of film as an art than a
> music newsgroup whose members regularly would deride Mozart, Beethoven,
> Schubert or Tchaikovsky or a literary newsgroup that regarded Shakespeare,
> Dickens, Hugo or Tolstoy as minor-league, boring or overrated. That's not
> orthodoxy OR anti-establishment. It's simply the basic historic groundwork
> upon which we establish whether any medium has fairly earned the right to be
> seriously considered as an art in its own right.
>
And you don't believe that groundwork ever changes? History and Art is
as living and changing a thing as anything else. Just as an artist can
be ahead of his or her time, time can also pass the artist and his work
by. What you seem to be saying is that as far as your concerned, we
accept your definition of great art or nothing. That attitude does
neither you, nor the artists you admire any service.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
> William M. Drew
ChaneyFan
Napoleon-- at least, the politics of hero-worship, of the near-deification
use of cinema to whoop up nationalistic fury at a particular moment in
history when we were especially vulnerable to such things.
This is exactly what I found bizarre about NAPOLEON...the deification of a nut
case.
===============================
Jon Mirsalis
e-mail: Chan...@aol.com
Lon Chaney Home Page: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan
Jon's Film Sites: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan/jonfilm.htm
ChaneyFan
on
> the side opposite him along with Kevin Brownlow, David Robinson, James Welsh
> and scores of film historians and devotees throughout the world who, unlike
> Mirsalis, share my admiration for David Wark Griffith, Erich von Stroheim,
Abel
> Gance and the other great filmmakers of the silent era who created a new art.
>
> William M. Drew
And of course snotty-nosed replies like the above are the reason I put Mr. Drew
in my kill file some months ago. I only saw this because someone else chose to
quote it. I assure you that I have considerable admiration for Griffith and
Gance, as indicated by my many posts in the past on this subject. And Kevin
Brownlow (who called me last week when he was in L.A.) and I clearly are on
the same side of many silent film issues. Mr. Drew likes to levy personal
attacks against anyone who doesn't share his exact views, which is precisely
why he made it in my killfile in the first place.
Again a reminder...if someone in this group bugs you, check your ISP for info
on filtering newsgroups. It is usually as simple as selecting Preferences, and
setting, for example, Author=Reel...@aol.com, to improve your enjoyment of
this newsgroup. :-)
ChaneyFan
>>>Napoleon was not a dictator in the film but a general. He is not deified.
Most of George's comments are right on the mark, but I would argue that the
ending certainly glorifies Napoleon. What Grandeur! What Majesty! Gosh he
must be a Great Hero! I think it would have been a more interesting film if
Gance would have continued to follow Napoleon's life to its ignominous
conclusion instead of ending on such a high note. Sort of like making a film
about the life of Richard Nixon and ending it with his trip to China!
ChaneyFan
discussion-- but instead of over Napoleon, over whether Page of Madness is
brilliant and wonderful or a colossal bore?
It's funny you mention this. I found PAGE OF MADNESS to be one of the worst
silent films I've ever seen. A friend of mine who is an avid film buff went to
Japan and lived there for several years and was involved in a variety of silent
film activities. I asked her if the Japanese considered this to be one of the
great classics and she responded that while some Japanese film scholars point
to this as a milestone in Japanese cinema, most silent film fans in Japan find
it slow and boring. She added, "They prefer Buster Keaton!"
AllenGaryK
>> Napoleon. I like much of Carl Davis' work, but what about the Honegger
>> score? Does it still exist, and is there a good reason for not using it?
>>
>
> I believe a substantial portion of the score survives and at least parts
>of it have
>been recorded.
There is also a Marco Polo CD (8.223134) which includes Adriano conducting the
Czech-Slovak RSO in an Orchestral Suite from Napoleon, along with suites from
his film scores to Les Miserables, Mermoz and La Roue.
Stephen Cooke
On Sun, 20 Feb 2000, Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
> Reel Drew wrote:
>
> > (Is there, I wonder, any such thing as an absolutely perfect work of
> > art in any medium?)
>
> "She Loves You" by the Beatles.
Let's Face the Music and Dance by Fred Astaire (and Irving Berlin, of
course)
Stephen Cooke
On Sun, 20 Feb 2000, Michael Gebert wrote:
> Incidentally, did anyone else think the cardboard wings on a stick casting
> a shadow over the Polyvision sequence was up there, realism-wise, with the
> octopus in Bride of the Monster? More Gance-Wood parallels!
SH!
George Shelps
>I think it would have been a more
>interesting film if Gance would have
>continued to follow Napoleon's life to its
>ignominous conclusion instead of ending
>on such a high note. Sort of like making
>a film about the life of Richard Nixon and
>ending it with his trip to China!
I believe that Gance did indeed intend a series of Napoleon films, but
the failure
of this one killed that plan.
George Shelps
>Except for that little Beer Hall Putsch
>thing. You ARE aware that Mussolini
>was already in power in Italy, not to
>mention various other nationalistic
>governments of every political stripe
>scattered around Europe? I agree 1925
>was not 1933... but it wasn't exactly 1989
>either.
>And so on....
Clearly, Michael, you're making Bill Drew's point about the political
nature of the antipathy towards Gance's film.
As I said, the movie does not exalt a dictator, it attempts to situate
Napoleon
as an expression of the forces of history, the flow of which he seizes
with the brilliance of his intellect and the force of his will.
By contrast, Hitler was a shrewd political manipulator who exploited the
economic misery of his country and the weakness
of his opponents to seize power by
an internal coup d'etat.
Every step of the way in NAPOLEON,
Bonaparte earns his way to the next step
of his ascendancy by feats of expertise
and daring leading up to his masterful
leadership in the legitimate context of
defending his country in war.
You can deplore some of the consequences of his conduct, but you'd have
to end up deploring the whole
history of Europe from the late 1700s
to 1945.
Maybe you do.
Robert Birchard
> But it does seem to me that when we have posters in all apparent
> seriousness saying that Gance, the man who developed rapid montage, the
> hand-held camera, the wide-screen and stereophonic sound,
Uh, I think the earliest recorded (meaning surviving) incidence of "rapid
montage" is in the John Collins film The Cossack Whip (Edison, 1916), and one can't
forget Griffith's "Intolerance" in its climactic chase through the centuries.
These films were made at a time when Gance was making films like "Mater
Dolorosa," which seems to be very heavily influenced by DeMille's "The Cheat."
There was an American process as early as 1922 called WideScope that utilized
two projectors to create a panoramic image. I doubt that it was commercially used
to any extent, but it is evidence that the idea of multiple screen images was not
unique to Gance in this period.
> the artist who
> inspired filmmakers from Eisenstein to Kurosawa and Truffaut, can be compared
> to Ed Wood or a competent but decidedly minor talent like William
> Beaudine--then I feel I have to question the degree to which they have a true
> appreciation of the development of film art.
While no one would compare Gance's work "toe-to-toe" with Ed Wood's, there is
a certain parallel, I think (and I was not the one who made the original allusion),
in that Gance, like Wood, seemed ultimately to lack a self-critical eye for his own
work. I did make the Beaudine analogy, and I still think it is appropriate in that
neither director made much of anything worth watching in their later careers, while
both had been leading cinematic figures in the 1920's.
> There are regular posters on this
> newsgroup like Christopher Jacobs who do have a genuine feeling for cinema
> history. Another one is Tom Moran who, however strongly he may express himself
> at times, is truly sensitive to silent cinema. It seems to me, however, that
> some other participants on this newsgroup, despite their devotion to certain
> genres, do not appear to have a comparable sensitivity to the silent film as a
> whole and the seminal artists who developed its language.
I repeat. You arrogant twit!
All you have said is that there are a number of posters on this group who
don't share YOUR "sensitivity" to the silent film. And frankly, I see no
"sensitivity to the silent film as a whole" in your postings, rather what I find is
a devotion to a rather narrow, proscribed and somewhat conventional "A" list of
"pantheon" directors, and dismissal of everything that you choose not to
recognize. Then you proceed to rate critics with regard to how closely they
conform to your view--Browlow is in because he agrees with you, others are out
because they don't.
Of course Kevin has long been a champion of neglected filmmakers, and in fact
Gance was one of those neglected filmmakers before Kevin turned his light on Gance.
One is tempted to ask if you would be championing the cause of Gance if you were
lacking the authority provided by other critics. I don't know how old you are, but
I know that ever since I first read about "Napoleon" in the book "Classics of the
Foreign Film" in the early 1960's I wanted to see a complete version of
"Napoleon." And, I also sought out fragments to view--those fragments amouned to
about four reels of 9.5 to 16mm blow-ups in the hands of a private collector--and
no I did not have the single minded dedication of Kevin Brownlow to track down all
the footage and reassemble it--but I did have a general interest in the picture and
the filmmaker long before it was "fashionable."
And I applaud Kevin's efforts. I am glad that the film has been reassembled
and made available for screening and video viewing.
The point I was trying to make in my original "blasphemous" comments (and
perhaps I did not express myself as well as I could and should have) is that the
heavy promotion for "Napoleon" occasioned by the Coppola tour of the film did
attract a new wider audience to the screenings. I don't dispute the cheers in the
audience when "Napoleon" screened. I was there cheering myself. What I am saying
is that those cheers were for individual sequences--the snow fight, the two storms,
the tryptych and not for the film as a whole. And I submit, others may well have
feel differently.
But the truth is that some 35,000 people saw the picture in L. A. on its
initial run, and I would bet that by and large only those people who were already
interested in silents before the "Napoleon" screening came away with a continuing
interest in silents. The bulk of these people came to participate in a one-time
cultural event--an event that they may even have enjoyed--but it was the type of
event that most chose not to repeat in the future.
To phrase it more simply: IMHO "Napoleon" is not the film to introduce an
uninitiated audience to the art of silent film. This is not to say that it is not
a great film, an important film, an influential film, a film worth seeing, etc.
> In my view, any
> perspective that is dismissive of artists of the stature of Griffith, Gance,
> von Stroheim and Eisenstein is no more supportive of film as an art than a
> music newsgroup whose members regularly would deride Mozart, Beethoven,
> Schubert or Tchaikovsky or a literary newsgroup that regarded Shakespeare,
> Dickens, Hugo or Tolstoy as minor-league, boring or overrated. That's not
> orthodoxy OR anti-establishment. It's simply the basic historic groundwork
> upon which we establish whether any medium has fairly earned the right to be
> seriously considered as an art in its own right.
You insist on saying that we have no regard for Gance, Stroheim, or
Griffith, et. al. when we have repeatedly stated that this is not the case. You
choose to know our own minds better than we do ourselves.
And yet, as you have pointed out there have been times when critical opinions
have moved and changed.
Tchaikovsky, for example, might be compared to a Howard Hawks. He was generally
dismissed as a creator of light popular entertainments of little originality or
consequence in his day. But critical opinion has changed.
William Dean Howells was considered the major American novelist of his day. I
don't think anyone shares that view today.
Similarly the view of Griffith as the "father of cinema" grew out of the
writings of Eisenstein and the efforts to make his films available through the
Museum of Modern Art (a movement that Griffith participated in directly). It takes
nothing away from Griffith to say that now a wider sample of films from the era is
available for reappraisal and the critical agenda is not longer strictly set by
communist-leaning critics in the way that it once was and so his position is
undergoing reevaluation. However, as I've said, his critical reputation seems to
be secure.
Stroheim is an example of a filmmaker whose reputation swelled largely because
his films were taken out of his hands and recut by others. It suited the critical
tenor of the times to use Stroheim's fall as an attack against Hollywood and the
capitalist studio heads.
Gance is in a similar boat. The cry is that because of his innovative use of
cinema, the forces of convention would not allow him to work. It may not be
charitable (and I would not even claim it to be accurate) but based on the
evidnence, one might independently come to the conclusion that Gance was a man of
vivid but limited ideas and that when he exhausted those ideas he kept going back
to the well to remake "J'Accuse" or re-cut "Napoleon" for the third time, for
example.
You rail against my political reading of Gance and his work, and yet I would
submit that politics also played and continues to play a role in creating the
critical reputations of Griffith, Stroheim, and Gance.
Michael Cummins
I don't like this facistication of Napoleon, he didn't go in for mass
extermenation, was basically a decent man, a soldier who fought soldiers
and not civilians, did what he felt was best for France and not in the
Hitler manner and provided for his mother and family form when he was a
boy.
He was a basically decent genius not and evil lunatic like later men.
M. Cummins
Robert Birchard
He tried to impose his political will on all of Europe through the use
of military force. Whatever mitigating circumstances (i. e. the Napoleonic
code), that still makes him a dictator in my book. Ande certainly enough
other European countries felt stringly enough about it to set about
deafeating him.
Bebede58
film I have been writing a book on the life and career of silent star Bebe
Daniels-another forgotten talent from the days of the silents! So at least I'm
not wasting my valuable time doing nothing at the computer!
As for the others who like to insult the true talents of silent film whether
star, director, producer or writer, if it weren't for them you wouldn't have a
job! So say something nice next time and drop the insults!
Michael Gebert
G-H...@webtv.net (George Shelps) wrote:
> Jon Mirsalis wrote:
>
> >I think it would have been a more
> >interesting film if Gance would have
> >continued to follow Napoleon's life to its
> >ignominous conclusion instead of ending
> >on such a high note. Sort of like making
> >a film about the life of Richard Nixon and
> >ending it with his trip to China!
>
> I believe that Gance did indeed intend a series of Napoleon films, but
> the failure
> of this one killed that plan.
Yes, a series of I believe six films, each running of approximately that
same length (give or take an hour or two). As you can see, the parallels
with Stroheim are not inapt.
Michael Gebert
> Clearly, Michael, you're making Bill Drew's point about the political
> nature of the antipathy towards Gance's film.
Given that Bill's powers of selective reading and misinterpretation are so
formidable, I'm not overly concerned about it. I've made my point: it's a
hero-worshipping film, of someone I happen to regard as a megalomaniac,
but even if you don't, the very fact of hero-worship means that it is not
a particularly nuanced or three-dimensional characterization. If someone
wants to throw "Stalinism" at that all they've done is close their own
mind.
> Every step of the way in NAPOLEON,
> Bonaparte earns his way to the next step
> of his ascendancy by feats of expertise
> and daring leading up to his masterful
> leadership in the legitimate context of
> defending his country in war.
See: hero-worship, above.
> You can deplore some of the consequences of his conduct, but you'd have
> to end up deploring the whole
> history of Europe from the late 1700s
> to 1945.
>
> Maybe you do.
Gee... I don't find EVERYTHING deplorable since then. But a lot of the
things Napoleon gets direct or indirect credit for are certainly
deplorable-- his trail of slaughter scared Europe out of total war for
most of a century. While the undeplorable things (the germ theory,
Impressionism, Bismarck's old age pensions) don't seem to have a whole
hell of a lot to do with him to me.
In article <20000221121254...@ng-cm1.aol.com>,
rpalm...@aol.com (RPalmer151) wrote:
> But to further add fuel to the fire - I find the Napoleon film
impressive in
> many ways, and I also find it somewhat boring, due to length, mostly.
Stalinist!
In article <38B2546D...@earthlink.net>, bbir...@earthlink.net wrote:
> > But it does seem to me that when we have posters in all apparent
> > seriousness saying that Gance, the man who developed rapid montage, the
> > hand-held camera, the wide-screen and stereophonic sound,
>
> Uh, I think the earliest recorded (meaning surviving) incidence of
"rapid
> montage" is in the John Collins film The Cossack Whip (Edison, 1916)
Bob, don't confuse us with facts!
I have often wondered whether the origins of extreme rapid cutting as a
style might not be lost in the lost work of Gance's assistants (who were
quite prominent directors in their own right), the White Russian emigres
Alexander Volkoff and V. Tourjansky. I have no proof of this, but they
leave Russia for France and in no time rapid cutting appears
simultaneously in a) their pal Gance's films, b) their own films (such as
Volkoff's Kean), and c) in the cinema of Russians they had worked with who
stayed behind. An interesting coincidence, no? More plausible than the
conventional explanation, which is that Gance invented it for La Roue and
oh by the way, it also got invented separately (with a whole theoretical
apparatus behind it) in Russia by people who watched Intolerance over and
over.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I don't like this facistication of Napoleon, he didn't go in for mass
> extermenation, was basically a decent man, a soldier who fought soldiers
> and not civilians, did what he felt was best for France and not in the
> Hitler manner and provided for his mother and family form when he was a
> boy.
>
> He was a basically decent genius not and evil lunatic like later men.
I hope you are being ironic here. There was very little about Napoleon
that could be called "decent". He did what he thought was best for France
only when it didn't conflict with his utterly self-centered ambition and he
enriched his family (and himself) to fantastic proportions by robbing the
treasury of France and stripping conquered lands of their wealth. He did
not massacre civilians, but he destroyed their countries in wars initiated
only to increase his personal power, and was not above slaughtering
unarmed prisoners if they proved inconvenient.
MARGARITA LORENZ
ChaneyFan wrote:
> I think Bob has probably steered slightly more to the negative than I would,
> but it's all a matter of taste. I think NAPOLEON is a fine film, but not
> worthy of the title of The Greatest Silent Ever Made or even One of The
> Greatest Silents Ever Made. If Gance had trimmed a little, made it less
> historically inept, but left in some of the eye-popping cinema, we might indeed
> have a great 2 hr movie.
>
> But Bob, having Bill Drew on the opposite side of the fence from you is indeed
> a badge of honor, and you should wear it proudly!
I think this entire group is overrated. Tell me Jon what gives you the right to
give such petty shots. I for one am glad not to be on the same side as Bob Birchard
about anything. I won't go into detail but enough said. What are you another
synchophant. You are all talking about men of accomplishment. If you want to get
the word out about Chaney let's say why don't you finish your book. M. Blake has
done three by now. Speaking of Irving Willat whom you say is a lost director Mr.
Birchard where is that book you promised to write about him to his face over twenty
years ago..If you want to expose true genius write about. And where is the DeMille
book you have touted and boasted that you were writing for the past fifteen years.
Instead of calling Bill Drew a twit and taking away from the accomplishments of men
like Gance and Brownlow why don't you finish your own books and stop taking up
your time with trivial pursuit on the internet and the rest of the" good old boy"
network.
Glamour Studios
that one can generally gauge the level of a poster's apoplexy by the number of
rambling, overwrought sentences sorely lacking the punctuation necessary for clarity.
This looks like about a 4.5.
Archie Waugh
Alas, since everyone's getting their 2 cents in, I must admit to sitting through the
tape of Napoleon over the weekend. A very hot and cold affair; occasionally dazzling,
but just as often incoherent and tedious. And yes, I had difficulty holding Napoleon
in much sympathy beyond the boyhood sequences, nor was I particularly moved by the
nationalistic fervor the film was designed to engender.
Call me a pinhead (and no doubt some already have), but I found far more genuine
artistry in Raoul Walsh's Thief of Bagdad yesterday than in Gance's mega-epic.
Robert Birchard
> Speaking of Irving Willat whom you say is a lost director Mr.
> Birchard where is that book you promised to write about him to his face over twenty
> years ago.
For the record, his name was Irvin (not Irving) and I never promised Irvin Willat
I would write a book about him. I have, however, written several articles over the
years based on my AFI-Louis B. Mayer Foundation oral history with him. One of these
articles was reprinted in Leonard Maltin's compilation volume "The Hollywood Dream
Factory" (I think that was the title, I don't have it in front of me at the moment). A
substantial portion of that interview is also scheduled to be published soon in an
upcomung issue of "Film History."
In case anyone's interested, here is what Willat, who began directing in 1916, had to
say about D. W. Griffith.
BIRCHARD: Did you have any favorite directors?
WILLAT: I thought D.W. Griffith's work was tremendous. He didn't know how to make
pictures technically--but he did know how to direct scenes. Now, you ask me: What are
you talking about? He couldn't put a picture together to run smoothly. Well, there's a
lot
of people today making pictures who don't know the elementary laws of cutting a
picture.
--
By the way, read any good books about Allan Jones lately?
Richard M Roberts
>
> ChaneyFan wrote:
>
> > I think Bob has probably steered slightly more to the negative than I would,
> > but it's all a matter of taste. I think NAPOLEON is a fine film, but not
> > worthy of the title of The Greatest Silent Ever Made or even One of The
> > Greatest Silents Ever Made. If Gance had trimmed a little, made it less
> > historically inept, but left in some of the eye-popping cinema, we might indeed
> > have a great 2 hr movie.
> >
> > But Bob, having Bill Drew on the opposite side of the fence from you is indeed
> > a badge of honor, and you should wear it proudly!
>
> give such petty shots. I for one am glad not to be on the same side as Bob Birchard
> about anything. I won't go into detail but enough said. What are you another
> synchophant. You are all talking about men of accomplishment. If you want to get
> the word out about Chaney let's say why don't you finish your book. M. Blake has
> Birchard where is that book you promised to write about him to his face over twenty
> book you have touted and boasted that you were writing for the past fifteen years.
> Instead of calling Bill Drew a twit and taking away from the accomplishments of men
> like Gance and Brownlow why don't you finish your own books and stop taking up
> your time with trivial pursuit on the internet and the rest of the" good old boy"
> network.
>
Of course Margarita, the unasked question then is, if you feel that way
about alt.silent.movies and the people who post, what are you doing
here?
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Paul Penna
<mslo...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I think this entire group is overrated.
I'm primarily a lurker here, but of the newsgroups I follow, this has
always been one of the most interesting, informative and, for the most
part, civil. Its signal-to-noise ratio is also well above average for
Usenet.
I've also been following this group long enough to be able to spot
those who only seem to participate in order to vent their spleen over
some personal grievance they feel have with some of the other
participants. Frankly, everything I've ever seen from you fits this
pattern.
--
Paul Penna
Frank Wylie
<mslo...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>your time with trivial pursuit on the internet and the rest of the" good old boy"
speaks volumes for itself...
ChaneyFan
As someone who has done restoration work on several silent films, and donated
money and films to several archives, I take great offense at the notion that
because you are writing a book you are doing something for film restoration,
and that because I happen to express an opinion about Griffith or Gance or
anyone else, that I am doing nothing. If you think people hang out in this
newsgroup because they hate silent films you need to check out this week's
specials at Lobotomies 'R Us.
ChaneyFan
> inspired filmmakers from Eisenstein to Kurosawa and Truffaut, can be compared
> to Ed Wood or a competent but decidedly minor talent like William
> Beaudine--then I feel I have to question the degree to which they have a true
> appreciation of the development of film art.
This discussion would be more interesting if people would actually read the
posts before responding to them. I made the Ed Wood analogy and this was in
response to the statement that "NAPOLEON is Gance's masterpiece." Well big
deal. *Everyone* has there own masterpiece. For Harry Langdon it's THE STRONG
MAN (let's not debate this one thought). For Ed Wood it's BRIDE OF THE
MONSTER. My point was that saying NAPOLEON is better than everything else
Gance did isn't saying a whole heck of a lot.
pre...@my-deja.com
mg...@mindspring.com (Michael Gebert) wrote:
>
> Whilst Archie said:
>
> >Hey! I LIKE Family Plot! Think of it as "Hitchcock Lite"; also a
nice John Williams score.
>
> True, it's not the disgrace that some of the others I cited are. But
it
> still would have been a far neater end to go out with Frenzy, the
return to Britain and to the plot, basically, of The Lodger.
> ___________________________________________________
> Michael Gebert, Writer | www.mindspring.com/~mgmax
>
Well, do what I do: think of FRENZY as the end of the scheduled
performance and FAMILY PLOT as the encore.
Mike S.
"Well, after all that prison food, I expect he'd eat about
anything."--Alec MacCowen (re his wife's cooking) in FRENZY
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
pre...@my-deja.com
<3797CDBBFEF64A62.9DCC20F6...@lp.airnews.net>,
cha...@airmail.net wrote:
> RD,
>
> Maybe if you posted with greater regularity, and covered a wider array
> of subjects, you wouldn't get the kind of reaction you get. It seems
> that you only post when you come up with another excuse to write
> dissertations defending the honor of D.W. Griffith. Now it seems that
> you are switching to a defense of Gance, but the tone and structure
> appears to be the same.
> Can't you participate without being the headmaster? It was this kind
of
> thing that drove several of us from the Tuesday night silent chat.
You
> have a great deal of knowledge and much to offer a discussion, too bad
> you don't seem to want to use it more productively.
>
Well, all I can say is, thank God Harry Langdon didn't play Napoleon or
Mr. Drew would have this newsgroup in TOTAL meltdown!
Mike S.
David B. Pearson
>From: chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan)
>> From: bebe...@aol.com (Bebede58)
>>To answer Roger Pee's response to what have I been doing to help restore
>>silent film I have been writing a book on the life and career of silent star
>>Bebe Daniels-another forgotten talent from the days of the silents! So at least
>>I'm not wasting my valuable time doing nothing at the computer! As for the
>>others who like to insult the true talents of silent film whether star,
>>director, producer or writer, if it weren't for them you wouldn't have a job!
>>So say something nice next time and drop the insults!
>As someone who has done restoration work on several silent films, and donated
>money and films to several archives, I take great offense at the notion that
>because you are writing a book you are doing something for film restoration,
>and that because I happen to express an opinion about Griffith or Gance or
>anyone else, that I am doing nothing. If you think people hang out in this
>newsgroup because they hate silent films you need to check out this week's
>specials at Lobotomies 'R Us.
I think people, particularly writers, lose perspective on what is hard and
what isn't.
Anything worthwile is usually hard work. Writing a book is hard. Collecting
is hard. Scoring a film is hard. Hell, scanning a bunch of stuff and putting
it online is hard. (If you don't believe me, try putting a hundred or so
images on the web and you'll see what I mean.)
But film restoration, on a frame by frame basis, is VERY hard -- sometimes
hellish -- work. And expensive. The very THOUGHT of film restoration is
intimidating to me, and I deeply respect anybody involved in it.
Comparatively, writing a book is a tea party.
David B. Pearson
Michael Gebert
"StormChaser" <golg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> The rapid cutting in NAPOLEON pre-dates MTV
> by 66 years but is just as contemporary as anything
> MTV has to offer.
It's not, however, unique to Napoleon. It's in Gance's earlier La Roue as
well as other French films such as Alexandre Volkoff's Kean (1926, and
starring Ivan Mosjoukine, first choice of Gance for Napoleon; Volkoff did
second unit work for Gance as well).
___________________________________________________
Michael Gebert, Writer | www.mindspring.com/~mgmax
A Short History of the Internet:
SUQKRT
In article <210220001947582990%tter...@sonic.net>, Paul wrote:
>
>
>In article <38B1D0D4...@earthlink.net>, MARGARITA LORENZ
><mslo...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> I think this entire group is overrated.
>
>I'm primarily a lurker here, but of the newsgroups I follow, this has
>always been one of the most interesting, informative and, for the most
>part, civil. Its signal-to-noise ratio is also well above average for
>Usenet.
>
i enjoy it too, besides being very informative, its one of the most civilized.
despite arguements :o)
suz #5A
macmoosette
patch free
50-60 wu!
StormChaser
sound or talkie. It is true that there are lagging moments
in the film, but they may be there to help the audience
catch its' breath. Remember, we are looking at the
celluloid equivalent of a patchwork quilt. A film assembled
from many different print sources. For
it to have that technical shortcoming and still dazzle
an audience today is a feat unto itself.
What caught my attention the most however was
the rapid cutting. I was totally caught off-guard by
this technique in the film. Accustomed to silent films
flowing gingerly from scene to scene, I gasped at
the rapid sucession of images moving across the
screen. There only other time I had seen
such rapid cutting was in INTOLERANCE
during the murder scene in the Modern Story
(Film historians have surmised that Billy Bitzer
accidently undercranked the footage, so it had to
be "correctly" projected for the action to move
normally. I believe, however, that the murder scene
was deliberately undercranked and cut so the scene would
move rapidly and place a little doubt in the audience's
mind as to who the killer was)
The rapid cutting in NAPOLEON pre-dates MTV
by 66 years but is just as contemporary as anything
MTV has to offer.
Gance to the Cinematheque Francais in 1958. It
consisted of hostages being killed by a firing squad.
The camera becomes the bullets in the rifles and rushes
toward one victim and then another and another and
another until the victims skulls are entered and then a superimpositon
of these victims falling and dying. Does this scene survive?
dmkb
have given you have such a violent reaction, Rick.
My experience has always been that most people
(although not all of them) who don't like Japanese
silents probably haven't seen very many of them.
Granted, they're not that easy to see, and you seem
to have seen a few that don't always get shown, such
as CROSSROADS by Kinugasa Teinosuke (director of
A Page of Madness).
> To answer Connie K and Mike Baskett, I've seen two of Ozu's silents:
> the comedy I FLUNKED, BUT and another I think was known as
> WALK CHEERFULLY. I ran another called CROSSROADS and I
> have seen THE DOWNFALL, which I believe is directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.
> I have heard that Ozu's I WAS BORN, BUT is an excellent film, but I have
> not come across that one. Perhaps that might be an interesting Cinecon
> showing afterall. Any suggestions as to other good ones?
I think in terms of availability and audience accessibility,
I Was Born But...is probably one of the best to start
with. It always gets the best reaction from classes.
Other comedy titles you might try include TOKYO CHORUS,
(Tokyo Koshinkyoku), PASSING FANCY (Dekigokoro),
TOKKAN KOZO (A Helluva Kid [fragment] cute Ozu short
loosely based on O. Henry's Ransom of Red Chief), TENGOKU
NO HIGAERI (Heaven and Back) and the film that almost always
leaves them laughing is KODAKARA SODO (Much Ado About
Kids)
More serious period-film fare would include OROCHI (Bloodbath),
SOULS ON THE ROAD (Rojo no Reikon, this is an interesting
adaptation of Griffith's INTOLERANCE), and POLICE(Keisatsukan).
It's not surprising that you drew the parallel with Film Noir
considering the titles you saw, but if you really want to see
that tradition, check out DRAGNET GIRL (Hijosen no Onna)
and the early talkie JORIKU NO DAIIPPO (His First Step on Land-
which is an intriguing adaptation of von Sternberg's DOCKS OF
NEW YORK).
> I will also say that the Japanese silents I have seen were nowhere as
> dreadful as the Eastern Indian silents I have seen.
>
> RICHARD M ROBERTS
I'll have to take your word on that, I've only seen
clips from Indian silents and never saw one all the
way through. Although you didn't mention them,
I think Chinese silents are some of the most interesting
films (especially 1920s/1930s Shanghai films) cinema
going. You might want to give them another try!
I for one would like to see more silent films from other
under-represented cinemas such as Japan, China, and
India at Cinecon and other events. Silent cinema isn't
only Europe and the United States, you know :)
MICHAEL BASKETT
Michael Baskett
dmkb
Most of the people who were studying Japanese film
(especially pre-1945) when I was at the film program
at Waseda University were not even Japanese. Many
were from China, Korea, or North America. Most of
the Japanese film students were studying French or
American film.
For those interested, there is a listserve called KineJapan
that discusses many of the debates in Japanese film.
You can access info about it at
http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
However, my impression is that very few of the people
I know who teach or research in Japanese film would find
PAGE OF MADNESS a bore. But you never know, these
things are based to a large degree on personal taste.
Michael Baskett
> Do you suppose somewhere in Japan, people are having this same heated
> discussion-- but instead of over Napoleon, over whether Page of Madness is
> brilliant and wonderful or a colossal bore?
>
> Michael Gebert
Michael Gebert
gypsy...@aol.com (Carole Bennett) wrote:
> Since you mention film restoration, I thought maybe this would be a good
> time to ask a question that I've been wondering about.
> Just how does one get involved in the restoration of films? (silent films
> in particular). I'm a sophomore in high school, and my main interest is film
> history. I'd like to be an actress, but I realize that one simply can't
> graduate high school, go into a Broadway theatre and say "give me a
role!" <g>.
> Since films have been my main interest since I've been old enough to HAVE a
> main interest, I would dearly love to some how be involved in this.
> I know that one can always donate money, but, well, that can be awfully
> expensive! I'd like to work (or even volunteer) somewhere where I'm actually
> involved with the restoration of the films itself (a job which calls for a lot
> of blood, sweat and tears..well, maybe not blood, but a helluva lot of tears
> when you see some films turn to dust!)
> Anyway, I figure somebody here could tell me something about how one could
> go about getting involved with this type of work. Anyone?
Someone else can answer that, but I congratulate you on your youthful
interest in silent films, especially since you have a name that sounds so
much like a silent movie actress.
Actually, that raises an interesting question: based on their names here,
who regularly posting here could have made it in silent film? My initial
list of candidates (apologies to anyone who feels unjustly ignored-- or
insulted):
SUREFIRE SILENT STARS: Constance Kuriyama, Robert Birchard, Tom Moran,
Luke McKernan (both in westerns), Joseph Barry (I see a kindly preacher
type), Archie Waugh (a child star or a prizefighter turned actor), William
Drew, Eric Grayson (silent era turned droll comedian after sound), Frank
Thompson, Lloyd Fonvielle, Rodney Sauer (all square-jawed juveniles).
SLIGHT NAME CHANGE NEEDED: The Shepard Brothers, T. David and Hobart Bond
Shepard; Count Eugene von Stavitz; Mickey "The Imp" Blake; Jessica
Rosepetal; J. Barton Calvert.
Michael Gebert
Lon Mirsalis!
David P. Hayes
>Richard M Roberts wrote:
>> And Bob, if you're reading, No Japanese silents at
>> Cinecon------PLEASE!!!!
>
> Come now, Richard, one might assume from this statement that you are
>somehow down on "exotic" culture. ;-}
Might I suggest "I Was Born, But..." (1932), a delightful Japanese silent
short feature that's much like an Our Gang comedy?
--
David Hayes
To respond privately, excise the first underscore from address. (If your
news reader does not allow you to edit an email address within the send
fields, my address consists of "davidp" then an underscore ("_") then
surname "hayes", followed by: atsign earthlink dot net.)
Carole Bennett
time to ask a question that I've been wondering about.
Just how does one get involved in the restoration of films? (silent films
in particular). I'm a sophomore in high school, and my main interest is film
history. I'd like to be an actress, but I realize that one simply can't
graduate high school, go into a Broadway theatre and say "give me a role!" <g>.
Since films have been my main interest since I've been old enough to HAVE a
main interest, I would dearly love to some how be involved in this.
I know that one can always donate money, but, well, that can be awfully
expensive! I'd like to work (or even volunteer) somewhere where I'm actually
involved with the restoration of the films itself (a job which calls for a lot
of blood, sweat and tears..well, maybe not blood, but a helluva lot of tears
when you see some films turn to dust!)
Anyway, I figure somebody here could tell me something about how one could
go about getting involved with this type of work. Anyone?
>
>As someone who has done restoration work on several silent films, and donated
>money and films to several archives, I take great offense at the notion that
>because you are writing a book you are doing something for film restoration,
>and that because I happen to express an opinion about Griffith or Gance or
>anyone else, that I am doing nothing. If you think people hang out in this
>newsgroup because they hate silent films you need to check out this week's
>specials at Lobotomies 'R Us.
>===============================
>Jon Mirsalis
Carole
" The crowd laughs with you always,
but it'll cry with you only for a day"--"The Crowd" (1928)