At an early age, my traditional, Italian grandfather called me over to his house and together we watched Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather." As a young boy, the themes of the movie resonated with me: violence, redemption, and family values. Immediately, I fell in love. Further visits to my grandfather's house indulged my new found passion for cinema. Other films early in my viewing career would include "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Hustler." Ten years later, I find myself in Film History and Appreciation not because I am an RTF major (Mathematics, if you were wondering) but because I am a fan of film.
Despite opening to weak numbers at the box office and receiving poor reviews from critics, The General, directed by and starring American comedian Buster Keaton, is widely considered a classic of the silent era of movies. Released twelve years after D.W. Griffith's Civil War epic The Birth of a Nation, Keaton's General uses historical parody of the same wartime events to appeal to audiences of the comedic genre. For example, the film takes place from the perspective of the Confederate army, which was incredibly unusual and provocative for the time period. By way of a clumsy lead character played by Keaton, who considered The General his best movie, the narrative uses fast paced train chases and physical shticks to attract and retain viewers. For a comedy, the film showed a tremendous attention to detail replicating Confederate locomotives, war uniforms and scenery with impeccable accuracy. Orson Welles, acclaimed auteur director of Citizen Kane, called the film “the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made.”
Another remarkable feat for The General is that Buster Keaton performed all of his own stunts. In one memorable scene, Keaton's character Johnnie Gray sets fire to the tracks behind him after taking back his stolen locomotive engine:
Filmed in one take, the crew used a real train with a dummy conductor. The accident looked so realistic that many people who were part of the shot screamed in horror. The reactions of the Union soldiers and officers after the stunt were also real since the actors were not told what would be happening in the scene. Townspeople of the local area in Cottage Grove, Oregon were shocked when they heard and saw the staged event. Rumor has it that a few bystanders even fainted. This extraordinary scene would later come to be recognized as the most expensive stunt of the silent era having a budget of $400,000. This consumed much of the film's total budget which was estimated to be only $750,000.
After eighty-seven years, The General, in my opinion is a "cult classic" of sorts. The late film critic Roger Ebert said that The General "is an epic of silent comedy... including an accurate historical recreation of a Civil War episode." Ebert went on to say that like most of Keaton's movies, The General showcases “a graceful perfection, such a meshing of story, character and episode, that they unfold like music.” While under performing at the box office and falling short to critics, the film dug a niche into the heart of viewers. Using quirky characters, exciting, fast paced train chases and a blend of comedy and drama, The General elicits a smile on the face of the viewer and leaves audiences with a sense of wide-eyed wonder.
Throughout early film history, a dominant creative movement was evident coming out of Western Europe, which later became known as German Expressionism. One of the leading contributors to the movement was the cinema. Early expressionist films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu(1922) helped promote silent film in Germany and rivaled Hollywood in symbolism and style. Both of the aforementioned films permeated with themes such as anti-realism. While the sometimes extreme anti-realism was short lived, certain aspects of expressionism remained throughout the decade. The plots and stories of these later Expressionist films often depicted madness, insanity, betrayal along with many other intellectually based and mature topics. Gone were the action, adventure and romance films; make way for the new genres of science-fiction, horror and film noir!
Fritz Lang's science fiction masterpiece Metropolis not only set the standard for filmmakers in the years that followed, but it also paved the way for other horror and science-fiction adaptations both in Europe and the United States. In the years following Metropolis in 1927, film adaptions of Dracula and Frankenstein were released, both capitalizing on the horror/science fiction "gimmick."
Okay... enough with the history lesson. Let's take a closer look at Metropolis:
One of the standout features of Metropolis is the range of elaborate set designs and special effects. In an interview while promoting the film, Fritz Lang said that "the film was born from my first sight of the skyscrapers in New York in October 1924." This translated directly into the film: the size, scope and scale of the city buildings give you a sense of wonder, leaving you in shock and awe.
Working with Lang on the project was special effects expert Eugen Schüfftan. Schüfftan developed many pioneering visual effects for Metropolis. Among the effects used are miniatures to recreate the city, a camera on a swing and most notably the use of mirrors to create the illusion that actors are occupying miniature sets. The new technique now known as (get this!) the Schüfftan process was used multiple times including in Alfred Hitchcock's film Blackmail(1929). Another visual effect, and probably the most important to the film's plot is the creation of the Maschinenmensch (say that five times fast) or "the machine-human" sculpted by artist Walter Schulze-Mittendorf.
The Schüfftan Process
Without Metropolis, where would we be? Considered the best silent film of the era and a key starting point of the science fiction genre, Metropolis gave writers, directors, visual pioneers and viewers a reason to think outside of the box. Not only that, but it also influenced filmmakers for years to come. Star Wars creator/director George Lucas gave the smart and witty droid C-3PO a close resemblance to Maria's robot counterpart:
Maschinenmensch Maria and Lucas' C-3PO
Lucas also went on to say that as a film student, Metropolis was his favorite film. Architectural influences from Metropolis can also be seen in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Hell, could we even have any of the modern science fiction television shows or movies without the existence of the classic film, Metropolis? I'll give you the short answer:
In the late 1920's, the term "Poverty Row" floated around Hollywood all too often, referring to a variety of small and short-lived B movie studios. Very few of these small project studios ever made it big in Hollywood except for a group known as the "Little Three" comprised of CBC Productions (later to become Columbia Pictures), United Artists, and Universal Pictures.
Besides Universal, Columbia (now a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment) remains one of the most popular studios in today's society. Founded in 1918 by Harry Cohn, his brother Jack and their friend Joe Brandt, CBC Pictures released its first feature film in August of 1922. In 1924, the trio adopted the Columbia Pictures moniker and went public in 1926. In the early years, Columbia struggled to make a profit but began to grow in the late 1920's and early 1930's due to the contributions of Italian-born film director, Frank Capra. Capra had immigrated to the United States at the age of six in 1903 and over the next 30 years, his rags-to-riches story led film historians to consider Capra the "American dream personified." Between 1927 and 1939, the ambitious Capra bartered with the Cohn brothers and pushed for better material and bigger budgets. Subsequently, Capra released hit after hit and solidified Columbia's status as a major studio in Hollywood.
Enter: It Happened One Night. One of the first screwball romantic comedies, It Happened One Night enjoyed immense success at the Academy Awards. It was the first of three films to win all five top Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. The only other films to do this in history are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs(1991). With its sexy and fresh screenplay by Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night stole the hearts of viewers. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert's initial reproach in the film transformed slowly into an electric chemistry and attraction by the final act. Gable's self reliant, utopian thinking character Peter Warne, embodied not only Capra's American dream but also the Emersonian individualism that was so popular for the time period. The story, both heartwarming and wittingly pleasant, provide an ease of viewing which makes It Happened One Night so appealing to viewers nearly eighty years after its initial release.
It Happened One Night was a huge commercial success for Columbia Pictures and also made back nearly fourteen times its budget in viewings and theatrical rentals for a grand total of 4.5 million dollars earned at the box office. Not only did it impact Hollywood but strangely, the economy as well. For a majority of the film the two main characters are riding via bus across the country. After the movie's release, bus travel became increasingly popular in the United States and abroad. In one particular scene of Peter and Ellie staying at a roadside hotel, Clark Gable removes his shirt and tie to reveal, not an undershirt but his bare skin. Economic research shows that after the film's release, undershirt sales coincidentally went down.
It's the little things about It Happened One Night the make it a classic. It's charming, simplistic, heartwarming, and funny. One may even get so enveloped in the relationship between the two lead characters that they may even forget those five Oscars.
Widely considered the greatest American film of all time, Orson Welles' Citizen Kanechanged the history of film making and Hollywood. Welles, who was 26 years old at the time of the film's release, not only directed the film but also starred as the lead role and co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. I could go on for hours debating why Citizen Kane is considered a classic but I would like to focus on solely the film making innovations Welles and his crew were responsible because they are absolutely fascinating. Citizen Kane changed the way movies could look and how they could be told forever.
Film historians view Citizen Kane as Welles' attempt to create a new style of film making by combining all previous techniques into one. Welles once said that in preparing for Citizen Kane, he watched the John Ford film Stagecoachover forty times. Welles went on to say: "I wanted to learn how to make movies, and that's such a classically perfect one." One of the standout features in Citizen Kane is its cinematography. The most innovative technical aspect is the use of deep focus. In most of the film's scenes the foreground, background, and all elements in between are all in sharp, clear focus. Assisted by cinematographer Gregg Toland, Welles used special lenses and lighting to create the deep focus effect.
Citizen Kane uses a unique storytelling technique by eluding the traditional, linear narrative and tells the story of Charles Foster Kane in overlapping flashbacks using different points of view with different narrators. This was virtually unheard of in Hollywood films. Another story-telling technique used in Citizen Kane was the use of montage to condense time using episodic sequences. In one particular scene, Welles uses montage to show how Kane's first marriage fell apart compiling fifteen years of story into two minutes of screen time.
Welles and company also developed several visual effects to make film less expensive when shooting crowd scenes or large interior spaces. By using miniatures and precise cutting of shots, Susan's opera performance scene looked incredibly well done and fluid. Other scenes using miniatures, such as many shots of Xanadu make the film look more expensive then it actually was. Another phenomenal visual effect was the make-up for the film created by artist Maurice Seiderman. Welles, who played the role of Charles Foster Kane was 26 years old at the time of filming as previously mentioned. Seiderman used a plastic compound to produce the make-up for the old Kane which took six to seven hours to apply on young Welles' face.
Finally, the last innovation of Citizen Kane is the use of music and soundtrack to create moods and emotion. Welles used many radio techniques and pioneered a technique of his own called "lightning-mix" using related sounds to link a complex montage into a cohesive and smooth narrative.
In conclusion, Citizen Kane redefined what film making meant to Hollywood. Not only did Welles impact how movies were made but he also served as a launch point for many other famous people in the business. Composer Bernard Herrmann, editor Robert Wise and cinematographer Gregg Toland enjoyed immense success after working with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane. Welles' masterpiece was made so early in his career that he rarely ever lived up to expectation thereafter. But lucky for us his greatest work defined an era and remains one of the best American films in history to this day.
At an early age, my traditional, Italian grandfather called me over to his house and together we watched Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather." As a young boy, the themes of the movie resonated with me: violence, redemption, and family values. Immediately, I fell in love. Further visits to my grandfather's house indulged my new found passion for cinema. Other films early in my viewing career would include "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Hustler." Ten years later, I find myself in Film History and Appreciation not because I am an RTF major (Mathematics, if you were wondering) but because I am a fan of film.
