Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendations

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BleuPanda
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Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendations

Post by BleuPanda »

Two big questions need to be answered before we begin.

1. How do we plan to break up all the years?

We've been discussing it in the other topic, but I think it's time for everyone to put down their final vote between the two options below. I personally think we should go with option 1, as I really can't get behind shoving the entirety of silent cinema into only two months.

Here's the breakdown of both periods by amount of films in the They Shoot Pictures Top 1000:
-1920: 11
1921-1925: 19
1926-1928: 25
1929-1931: 21
1932-1934: 25
1935-1937: 27
1938-1940: 29
1941-1943: 25
1944-1946: 32
1947-1949: 28

-1925: 30
1926-1929: 29
1930-1933: 37
1934-1936: 24
1937-1939: 28
1940-1941: 17
1942-1943: 17
1944-1945: 17
1946-1947: 20
1948-1949: 23

I really don't think there's anything in those numbers suggesting the 1940s get special treatment. I think the 40s are going to be really boring if we go 2 years at a time, and I especially think that means a lot of weaker films from that era will make the final list while greats from the earlier years will struggle. I think equal treatment of each decade is the best solution, as all three decades were really about the same quality.

2. Should we start in the late 40s and make our way back to the pre-20s or go forward?

I'd support either option, leaning toward starting with the late 40s. If that many people really aren't familiar with the 20s, that should hopefully give people a few extra months to view some.






Also, here are the 39 movies in my personal top 250 for a basic starting list, in order of release year, just to give a general idea of what we're looking at/these are the films I heavily recommend if you're clueless about this era:
Intolerance
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Sherlock Jr.
Greed
The Gold Rush
Battleship Potemkin
The General
Metropolis
Sunrise
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Un chien andalou
The Man With a Movie Camera
City Lights
M
Vampyr
Duck Soup
Modern Times
Grand Illusion
Make Way For Tomorrow
The Rules of the Game
The Wizard of Oz
Stagecoach
Fantasia
The Great Dictator
Citizen Kane
The Lady Eve
The Maltese Falcon
Casablanca
To Be or Not to Be
Meshes of the Afternoon
Double Indemnity
Children of Paradise
A Matter of Life and Death
Black Narcissus
It's a Wonderful Life
Notorious
Bicycle Thieves
The Red Shoes
The Third Man
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by BleuPanda »

Also, this is how I plan to do the 2010s poll in relation to the early 20th century poll, using option 1 as an example:
December 2015: 1947-1949
January 2015: 1944-1946
February 2015: 1941-1943
March 2015: 1938-1940
April 2015: 1935-1937
May 2015: 1932-1934
June 2015: 1929-1931/2010
July 2015: 1926-1928/2011
August 2015: 1921-1925/2012
September 2015: 1893-1920/2013
October 2015: -1950s final list submissions/2014
November 2015: -1950s rollout/2010s final list submissions
December 2015: 2010s rollout

Opinions?
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Jirin »

Also there's a little matter of a certain war that prevented a lot of the best movie making countries from making a lot of movies in the early 40s.

To that list I would add:

He Who Gets Slapped
Napoleon
Dr Mabuse, The Gambler
The Testament Of Dr Mabuse
Pandora's Box
The Kid
Freaks
I Was Born, But...
Partie de Campagne
Story of the Last Crysanthemums
His Girl Friday
The Magnificent Ambersons (Even if the real version of the movie is lost forever, the butchered version is still really good)
Rome, Open City
Brief Encounter
Ivan the Terrible, Pts 1 and 2
Shoeshine
Monsier Verdoux
Letter From An Unknown Woman
Spring In A Small Town
Red River
The Treasure Of Sierra Madre
Late Spring
Kind Hearts And Coronets
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Petri »

BleuPanda wrote:Also, this is how I plan to do the 2010s poll in relation to the early 20th century poll, using option 1 as an example:
December 2015: 1947-1949
January 2015: 1944-1946
February 2015: 1941-1943
March 2015: 1938-1940
April 2015: 1935-1937
May 2015: 1932-1934
June 2015: 1929-1931/2010
July 2015: 1926-1928/2011
August 2015: 1921-1925/2012
September 2015: 1893-1920/2013
October 2015: -1950s final list submissions/2014
November 2015: -1950s rollout/2010s final list submissions
December 2015: 2010s rollout

Opinions?
Sounds great to me. (Maybe there should be a poll about this. Last time 15 people voted for what we do after 50s.)

I will recommend only one movie (that I think people haven't seen). Levoton veri by Teuvo Tulio. Very melodramatic thriller with confusing twists.

Also one question about Partie de campagne [A Day in the Country]. Is it a 1936 movie (like IMDB and Wikipedia say) or a 1946 movie (the year it was released officially)?
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

I strongly support Option 1, and the year schedule that Bleu has proposed sounds just fine to me.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by BleuPanda »

And after all this finishes up, I want to do another all-time list but doing it like these individual decades list. I plan to include:
The top 15 or 20 movies from each decade poll (probably counting each decade individually in the pre-50s poll, with the pre-20s and early 2010s getting half as much as the other decades)
Every movie that managed to enter either of our previous all time polls not included in the above category
And possibly, each user chooses two or three films that wouldn't otherwise be included

I like the idea of ranking from the same pool of films, since our previous efforts at an all time list featured many movies making the top 100 with only a couple votes. This way, the films are preselected from a shortlist and everyone who has seen a film can have a say.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Miguel »

My preferences:

1. How do we plan to break up all the years?

Option 2:
-1925: 30
1926-1929: 29
1930-1933: 37
1934-1936: 24
1937-1939: 28
1940-1941: 17
1942-1943: 17
1944-1945: 17
1946-1947: 20
1948-1949: 23

2. Should we start in the late 40s and make our way back to the pre-20s or go forward?

Go forward
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by bonnielaurel »

I'll just follow the majority. Maybe going backwards is better, because that would give us more time to watch some silent movies. For 1947 I want to suggest "Brighton Rock", in honour of the late Richard Attenborough.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Gillingham »

No real preference here. Both for the year schedule and for the sequence.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Charlie Driggs »

Maybe going backwards is better, because that would give us more time to watch some silent movies.
I agree. I am pretty familiar with the forties but have huge gaps in the silent area.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Jirin »

I've seen a lot of silents but I haven't seen a lot of shorts.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by BleuPanda »

The good thing about shorts is they're easy enough to find on youtube and, well, short.

Also, do we need this to run exactly 10 months? I'm all for combining -1920 and 1921-1925, but I prefer the rest of the layout of option 1.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

I'm not sure if I'm okay to rest with the idea shoving the first 3 decades of cinema into the first five years of the 1920s, but oh well. I thought that Bleu's first option was just fine the way it was. If we do it backwards, it will give people time to catch up on all of this, like Bleu said.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

Excellent film recommendations, Jirin and Bleu. I myself have seen a ton of silent to 40s cinema, so I have a meaty list of recommendations for everybody. I have included a lot of somewhat obscure films in these cases, including some not included on the TSPDT1000. I consider a lot of these to be "hidden gems" that some may overlook if they go on the popular lists.

I have also divided my selections up into the monthly time periods that Bleu set up for Option 1, for reference and convenience for others as we do this poll.

1893-1920:

Major Auteurs:

D. W. Griffith films:
A Corner in Wheat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHLfjB7dSyc
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (one of the original gangster films) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2jjTmRclFM
Intolerance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzXYPJAGkg
Broken Blossoms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIiZzc0Ceo
Way Down East http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgYA4jUr4o0
True Heart Susie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2whjaWXlz2g

Georges Melies films:
Voyage to the Moon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLZntSdyKE
The Impossible Voyage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g_yqDsXD4M
Le Tunnel sous la Manche http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-DyGqeevS4

Louis Feuillade films (Feuillade is my all-time favorite of the early pioneers of the cinema. He was the first true master of mise en scene, and greatly influenced the Nouvelle Vague in the 1960s. And, his movies are simply a blast! However, please keep in mind that these movies were serials, so some of them run for 400 minutes combined!):
Fantomas
Judex
Les Vampires http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284EB6FA2CC1EE62 (Divided into the individual 10 episodes)
Tih Minh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Yq-wcCJzQ (Warning: Intertitles are in French, sorry)
So, I do want to emphasize that you should NOT watch these films in one sitting! Instead, take time to watch them like a TV show or mini-series, episode by episode.

Alice Guy (One of the first ever female directors):
Life of Christ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3DPbXyLj4k

Oscar Micheaux (The First African-American director, his work serves as the refutation of the messages in The Birth of a Nation):
Within Our Gates http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1E0NrcnwAE

Erich von Stroheim:
Blind Husbands http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YntYV3ty-UU

Charles Chaplin:
One AM https://archive.org/details/CC_1916_08_07_One_A_M (horrible print, I apologize)

Maurice Tourneur:
The Wishing Ring
The Last of the Mohicans http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1JDtEtCCsQ

Ernst Lubitsch:
The Oyster Princess http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmtu8o ... shortfilms
The Doll

Raoul Walsh:
Regeneration

Carl Dreyer:
The Parson's Widow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_r85-PL-vk

Other Films Worth Mentioning:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (the first German Expressionist film) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLI
Arrival of the Train and Workers Leaving the Factory by the Lumiere Brothers (basically the very first films ever made) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQeIRLxaM4
The Great Train Robbery and Life of an American Fireman (Edwin S. Porter) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc7wWOmEGGY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4C0gJ7BnLc
The Cheat (DeMille) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBKj0W1JylU
Cabiria (This Italian epic inspired Griffith to make Intolerance, and proves that Hollywood did not invent the blockbuster as a matter of fact) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJcb-bMgoCg
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

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1921-1925:

Major Auteurs:

Buster Keaton (honestly greater than Chaplin IMO, though they're both amazing):
Cops
Sherlock Jr.
Three Ages (great parody of Intolerance)
Our Hospitality
The Navigator
Seven Chances

Erich von Stroheim:
Foolish Wives
Greed (simply one of the greatest American films ever made)

Charles Chaplin:
The Kid
The Gold Rush

Sergei Eisenstein:
Strike
Battleship Potemkin

Victor Sjostrom (The main actor from Bergman's Wild Strawberries):
He Who Gets Slapped
The Phantom Carriage

Raoul Walsh:
The Thief of Bagdad

F. W. Murnau:
Nosferatu
The Last Laugh
Tartuffe

King Vidor:
The Big Parade

Fritz Lang:
Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
Destiny
Die Nibelungen

Robert Flaherty:
Nanook of the North

D. W. Griffith:
Orphans of the Storm
Isn't Life Wonderful?

Carl Dreyer:
Michael
Master of the House

Lubitsch:
Lady Windermere's Fan

Other Noteworthy Films:
Coeur fidele (Epstein)
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Ingram) (This film's visual style is truly amazing!)
Haxan (Christensen) (As is this film's!)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

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1926-1928:

Major Auteurs:

Buster Keaton:
The General
Steamboat Bill Jr.
The Cameraman

Fritz Lang:
Metropolis
Spione

Abel Gance:
Napoleon (Warning: Long-ass film)

F. W. Murnau:
Sunrise (Truly one of the most beautiful films ever made)
Faust

Carl Dreyer:
Passion of Joan of Arc (Though this comes in virtually tied for beauty...)

Erich von Stroheim:
The Wedding March

Victor Sjostrom:
The Wind

King Vidor:
The Crowd (Another amazingly beautiful film)

John Ford:
3 Bad Men

Frank Borzage (Borzage was one of the great silent film masters, and even in his talkies, which I will recommend several of in the later years, he demonstrates a very natural skill at depicting lovers intimately, and elevating them to an almost spiritual level. Martin Scorsese is a big fan of his work, and I actually became interested in this criminally overlooked filmmaker because of his comments in one interview, as well as his American cinema documentary):
Seventh Heaven
Street Angel

Tod Browning:
The Unknown

Vsevelod Pudovkin:
Mother

Sergei Eisenstein:
October

Other Notable Films:
Lonesome (Has that same magical quality to it that Murnau and Borzage's work has, which only silent cinema ever achieved)
Menilmontant (Amazing film, like Lonesome, a great discovery from this period for me)
A Page of Madness (Kinugasa) (Crazy movie for its time, Bunuel didn't do surrealism first as we discover)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

1929-1931:

Major Auteurs:

Luis Bunuel:
Un chien andalou
L'Age d'or

Dziga Vertov:
Man with a Movie Camera (This is the great silent Russian film, not Potemkin)

Charles Chaplin:
City Lights (Such a beautiful yet heartbreaking film)

Fritz Lang:
M

G W Pabst:
Pandora's Box
Diary of a Lost Girl

Raoul Walsh:
The Big Trail (Pioneering widescreen film and Western)

F. W. Murnau:
Tabu
City Girl (honestly rivals Sunrise in Murnau's filmography to me, Terrence Malick MUST have been inspired by this film when he made Days of Heaven)

Alexander Dovzhenko (unlike so much Stalin-era Russian cinema, the works of Dovzhenko feel like pure beautiful poetry, truly singing hymns of praise to the "people", not just spewing party line propaganda):
Earth
Arsenal

Josef von Sternberg:
Docks of New York
The Blue Angel
Morocco

Frank Borzage:
Lucky Star

Rene Clair:
Le Million
A nous la liberte

Jean Renoir:
La Chienne

Other Notable Films:
People on Sunday (This landmark German film featured Robert Siodmak, Edgar G Ulmer, Billy Wilder, and Fred Zinnemann all working on it... that's a filmmaking team I must say!)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Milestone)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

1932-1934:
(This list is a little longer than the others; the period just before the production code came into effect was actually a really fascinating time for American cinema in particular, as you will see)
Major Auteurs:

Carl Dreyer:
Vampyr

Leo McCarey:
Duck Soup (Also the quintessential Marx Bros. film, and possibly the quintessential war satire, only rivaled by Dr. Strangelove)

Tod Browning:
Freaks (How this film even got made in Hollywood is beyond me)

Yasujiro Ozu:
I Was Born, But...
A Story of Floating Weeds

Howard Hawks:
Scarface
Twentieth Century

Jean Vigo (This man's cinema is another that is simply pure poetry):
Zero for Conduct
L'Atalante

Ernst Lubitsch:
Trouble in Paradise

Josef von Sternberg:
Shanghai Express
The Scarlet Empress

Boris Barnet:
Outskirts

Frank Borzage:
Man's Castle
A Farewell to Arms

Fritz Lang:
Testament of Dr. Mabuse

James Whale:
The Invisible Man
Frankenstein
The Old Dark House

Edgar G. Ulmer:
The Black Cat

Mikio Naruse:
Apart from You

Frank Capra:
Bitter Tea of General Yen
It Happened One Night

Jean Renoir:
Boudu Saved from Drowning

Alexander Dovzhenko:
Ivan

Luis Bunuel:
Land without Bread

Raoul Walsh:
Me and My Gal

John Ford:
Judge Priest

Max Ophuls:
La signora di tutti

Other Notable Films:
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (LeRoy)
Wild Boys of the Road (Wellman)
The Public Enemy (Wellman)
The Goddess (This Chinese film starred the great Ruan Lingyu, the "Chinese Garbo", she is amazing, learned about her from Mark Cousins "The Story of Film")
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (Very politically interesting film for its time, and not what I expect from an Al Jolson vehicle)
Laurel and Hardy classics: The Music Box and Sons of the Desert
W. C. Fields Classic: It's a Gift
King Kong
Baby Face (Stanwyck was such an amazing actress)
Love Me Tonight (This is a movie musical of the day that chose to break away from the static camera, and instead utilize fluid camera movement and mise en scene)
Or Neighbor Miss Yae (Shimizu)
The Busby Berkeley Musicals (Particularly 42nd Street and The Gold Diggers of 1933)
The Thin Man (a guilty pleasure, no real cinematic value to it, but William Powell and Myrna Loy were one of the great screen couples)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

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1935-1937:

Major Auteurs:

Charles Chaplin:
Modern Times

Jean Renoir:
La Grande illusion
Toni
The Crime of Monsieur Lange

Leo McCarey:
Make Way for Tomorrow (That Hollywood would produce such a devastating and politically charged film a this is mind-blowing for its time, as well as preceding and inspiring a certain great Japanese filmmaker and his masterpiece...)
Ruggles of Red Gap (This is a very touching and humane film, with a great performance by Charles Laughton, offering a European immigrant's perspective on a certain aspect of American society. Jean Renoir once said that, on the basis of this film, "Leo McCarey is the only director in Hollywood who truly understands people".)
The Awful Truth

Fritz Lang:
Fury
You Only Live Once

William Wyler:
Dodsworth

Sadao Yamanaka (overlooked Japanese filmmaker):
Humanity and Paper Balloons

George Cukor:
Sylvia Scarlett (extremely daring gender-bending and transgressive film which is still fascinating to this day, let alone revolutionary, and a box office failure because of it)

Boris Barnet:
By the Bluest of Seas

King Vidor:
Stella Dallas

James Whale:
Bride of Frankenstein
The Great Garrick

Kenji Mizoguchi:
Osaka Elegy
Sisters of Gion

Yasujiro Ozu:
The Only Son

Alexander Dovzhenko:
Aerograd

Alfred Hitchcock:
The 39 Steps

Other Notable Films:
My Man Godfrey (delightful screwball comedy featuring the great William Powell)
Stage Door (An amazing cast of leading ladies)
Pepe le moko (Great proto-noir from France, featuring the superb Jean Gabin)
Libeled Lady (a guilty pleasure, pretty much anything with Powell and Loy, like I said, I'm a sucker for)
Things to Come
Two Astaire and Rogers classics: Swing Time and Top Hat
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

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1938-1940:

Major Auteurs:

Jean Renoir:
The Rules of the Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M21zSPlgi10
La Bete humaine

John Ford:
Stagecoach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEuCMRRLts8
Young Mr. Lincoln https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJKWguqabUU
The Grapes of Wrath
The Long Voyage Home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhyKB6sA8fU

Charles Chaplin:
The Great Dictator http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2046r ... shortfilms

Kenji Mizoguchi:
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums

Howard Hawks:
His Girl Friday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0sgTkRSljA
Bringing Up Baby https://swarm.tv/t/bNh
Only Angels Have Wings (This is one of Hawks' most poetic works, with a touching look at male friendship that would become one of his hallmarks)

Leo McCarey:
Love Affair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKYZzcc1qVI

Preston Sturges:
Christmas in July

Ernst Lubitsch:
The Shop Around the Corner

Alfred Hitchcock:
The Lady Vanishes (my favorite of Hitchcock's British films) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1J0pUURCj8
Rebecca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cf0-GsXDzI

Raoul Walsh:
The Roaring Twenties

Sergei Eisenstein:
Alexander Nevsky

George Cukor:
The Women (daring film that chose to feature a cast exclusively of women, and even with the pets referred to as females only!)
The Philadelphia Story
Holiday (this came earlier than The Philadelphia Story, but it is in my opinion a better film. It touches on political and societal themes that most Hollywood films shunned at the time)

Frank Borzage:
Three Comrades
The Mortal Storm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezBGqhpVsF0

Marcel Carne:
Le Jour se leve (Another great Gabin performance)

Other Notable Films:
The Wizard of Oz
Two Disney classics: Pinocchio and
Fantasia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e_pbpmzczI
Angels with Dirty Faces (a great Cagney gangster film)
The Thief of Bagdad (a delightful Technicolor fantasy movie, featuring Michael Powell co-directing!)
The Bank Dick (another W C Fields classic)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

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1941-1943:

Orson Welles:
Citizen Kane
The Magnificent Ambersons (Like Jirin said, this butchered film is a masterpiece in the making. If only the full version could be found one day...)

Preston Sturges (This man's films are easily the funniest of the 1940s overall, as well as serving as both a damning critique and personal homage to American society of the time):
The Lady Eve
Sullivan's Travels
The Palm Beach Story

John Huston:
The Maltese Falcon

Ernst Lubitsch:
To Be or Not to Be
Heaven Can Wait

Maya Deren:
Meshes of the Afternoon

John Ford:
How Green Was My Valley (Despite having a reputation as the film that beat Citizen Kane at the Oscars, funny considering Welles was a huge Ford fan, this beautiful, poetic film is in my opinion, one of the few truly great Best Picture winners. A film that could not be more different than Kane, but Ford at his lyrical best nonetheless, with his usual elegiac themes of the passing of time)

Powell & Pressburger, the Archers (You will be seeing quite a lot of these guys and their films for the 1940s. Along with the Ealing comedies, they are my favorite films made in Britain for this time period.):
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Carl Dreyer:
Day of Wrath

Val Lewton Horror Films (I strongly recommend watching a documentary by Kent Jones and Martin Scorsese on his films if you can as well):
Cat People
I Walked with a Zombie
The Leopard Man
The Seventh Victim

Alfred Hitchcock:
Shadow of a Doubt

Raoul Walsh:
High Sierra
The Strawberry Blonde

Kenji Mizoguchi:
The 47 Ronin

Luchino Visconti:
Ossessione (Forerunner to Neo-Realism and Film Noir, and definitely a better adaption of the Postman Rings Twice than the cheesy Lana Turner vehicle that Hollywood produced, in spite of the great John Garfield being in that one)

Humphrey Jennings:
Listen to Britain
Fires Were Started

Howard Hawks:
Air Force
Ball of Fire (like a hilarious 1940s American culture version of Snow White, actually)

William Wyler:
The Little Foxes

Henri-Georges Clouzot:
Le Corbeau

Disney Films:
Bambi
Dumbo
The great short "Der Fuehrer's Face"

And, of course, Casablanca!
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

1944-1946 (Now we get into one of my favorite periods, American Film Noir For this reason, I will list auteurs who didn't work in Noir, then devote a special section to Noir for this and the following post):

Major Auteurs:

Marcel Carne:
Les Enfants du paradis

Powell and Pressburger:
A Canterbury Tale
I Know Where I'm Going!
A Matter of Life and Death

Frank Capra:
Arsenic and Old Lace
It's a Wonderful Life

David Lean:
Brief Encounter

Roberto Rossellini:
Rome Open City
Paisan

Sergei Eisenstein:
Ivan the Terrible

Vittorio De Sica:
Shoeshine

John Ford:
They Were Expendable
My Darling Clementine

William Wyler:
The Best Years of Our Lives

Preston Sturges:
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
Hail the Conquering Hero

Vincente Minnelli:
Meet Me in St. Louis (Whats interesting in this film is the undercurrents of sadness beneath the surface MGM gloss, as if foreboding the dark times of industrialization as America enters the 20th Century, kind of like the Ambersons by Welles)

Jean Cocteau:
Beauty and the Beast

King Vidor:
Duel in the Sun (Over the top as all hell, but its campiness and blatant luridness for its time makes it weirdly compelling)

Maya Deren:
At Land

Kenji Mizoguchi:
Five Women Around Utamaro

Noir:

Double Indemnity (Wilder)
Notorious (Hitchcock)
To Have and Have Not (Hawks)
The Big Sleep (Hawks)
Scarlet Street (Lang)
Detour (Ulmer)
The Killers (Siodmak)
Laura (Preminger)
Gilda
Mildred Pierce
Leave Her to Heaven (First ever color noir)

Two more films worth noting:
Dead of Night
Jammin' the Blues
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

1947-1949:

Major Auteurs:

Powell & Pressburger:
Black Narcissus
The Red Shoes

Vittorio De Sica:
Bicycle Thieves

Charles Chaplin:
Monsieur Verdoux (Such a daring film on Chaplin's part, also proving that he wasn't always a sentimental director like his detractors say he was)

Max Ophuls:
Letter from an Unknown Woman

Fei Mu:
Spring in a Small Town

Howard Hawks:
Red River

John Huston:
Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Yasujiro Ozu:
Late Spring

Ealing Comedy:
Kind Hearts and Coronets

John Ford:
Fort Apache
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

Preston Sturges:
Unfaithfully Yours

Roberto Rossellini:
Germany Year Zero

Luchino Visconti:
La Terra trema

Alfred Hitchcock:
Rope
Under Capricorn

Raoul Walsh:
Colorado Territory
White Heat

Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly:
On the Town

George Cukor:
Adam's Rib (The best and most daring of the Tracy and Hepburn comedies)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz:
A Letter to Three Wives

Noir:

The Third Man (Reed)
Out of the Past (Tourneur)
They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray's amazing debut film)
Criss Cross (Siodmak)
Moonrise (Borzage)
Brute Force (Dassin)
Pitfall (De Toth)
The Set Up (Wise)
Nightmare Alley (Goulding) (Tyrone Power was always a dashing swashbuckler, the original Zorro, but in this film, he proves he could actually act)
T-Men (Mann)
Raw Deal (Mann)
The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
Force of Evil (Polonsky)
Secret Beyond the Door (Lang)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

Phew, well that is done. I hope my large list of recommendations will serve useful to everybody who is unfamiliar with the early years of cinema! If anybody wants to know where they can find a film they are interested in, let me know and I will try to find and send a link to it on the net, or at least recommend a home video version to you. :greetings-waveyellow:

To fans of animation, and comedy, I also strongly recommend the shorts of Tex Avery from the period.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by BleuPanda »

Any idea where to find Napoleon?
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Michel »

I support option 2 :
-1925: 30
1926-1929: 29
1930-1933: 37
1934-1936: 24
1937-1939: 28
1940-1941: 17
1942-1943: 17
1944-1945: 17
1946-1947: 20
1948-1949: 23


Some other recommandations (not ever mentioned but among my favorites):

Lubitsch:
Lady Windermere's Fan (1925)

Pabst:
Tagebuch einer Verlorenen [Diary of a Lost Girl] (1929)

Hawks:
Ball of Fire (1941)

Wyler:
The Little Foxes (1941)

Clouzot :
Le corbeau [The Raven] (1943)
Quai des Orfèvres [Jenny Lamour] (1947)

Preminger:
Laura (1944)

Capra:
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Lang:
Secret Beyond the Door… (1947)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

BleuPanda wrote:Any idea where to find Napoleon?
Oops! Truth be told, I was actually one of the lucky people who got to see the recent restoration, in a theater! However, for that same reason, I will probably take it off my recommendation list, because I also know that it is practically nowhere to be found, unless you want to shell out a bunch money for a laserdisc player and the old 80s laserdisc on Amazon, and that version is the flawed restoration furthermore. So, unfortunately, I can't recommend where to see this film specifically, that was me jumping the gun. I can assure everyone, however, that it is a true masterpiece of the cinema.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

Michel wrote:I support option 2 :
-1925: 30
1926-1929: 29
1930-1933: 37
1934-1936: 24
1937-1939: 28
1940-1941: 17
1942-1943: 17
1944-1945: 17
1946-1947: 20
1948-1949: 23


Some other recommandations (not ever mentioned but among my favorites):

Lubitsch:
Lady Windermere's Fan (1925)

Pabst:
Tagebuch einer Verlorenen [Diary of a Lost Girl] (1929)

Hawks:
Ball of Fire (1941)

Wyler:
The Little Foxes (1941)

Clouzot :
Le corbeau [The Raven] (1943)
Quai des Orfèvres [Jenny Lamour] (1947)

Preminger:
Laura (1944)

Capra:
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Lang:
Secret Beyond the Door… (1947)
Great recommendations, Michel! I will add them to my larger list actually.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

If you want to blame someone for the inability to actually see Gance's masterpiece, blame Coppola. His legal battles with historian Kevin Brownlow, who has spent virtually all his life trying to resurrect this great film, are truly stupid.

Basically, the story is this: In the early 1980s, the first restored version of Napoleon premiered, and was even put out on Laserdisc. This version was as close to the film as they could get with the materials at the time. Coppola's composer father, Carmen, was chosen to write the score to accompany it. Coppola, the good old nepotist...

Years later, in early 2010s, Brownlow works to restore newfound elements of the film and incorporate it into a new, true restored version. This version runs longer than the 1980s one. By the very obvious reason, Carmen Coppola's score could no longer be used, as his score wold have cut short and not fit certain elements of the new restoration. Brownlow, who collaborated with Coppola on the 80s restoration, chose Carl Davis, one of the go-to composers for silent film scores to place on home video releases, to create a new score for the restoration. This score was used for the 2012 screenings, including the one I attended.

However, Coppola was so infuriated about his daddy's work being removed, that he has continually blocked the film from being released with the new Davis score. So this film will probably never be released on the Internet, home video, or even screened on places like Turner Classic Movies, who sponsored the screenings. All because Coppola is a narcissistic little daddy's boy.

The best hope the dedicated film buff can have is either to try to attend another screening sometime, or when Coppola kicks the bucket it can finally be released.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Jirin »

You could also find a VHS version on the web. I was able to see it on Youtube, but that was before 2012.

How can Coppola block somebody from just sticking it on Youtube? Isn't it public domain by now?
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Jirin »

Voyage to the Moon is kind of disturbing from a modern perspective.

Let's go to the moon, and immediately start murdering the people who live there.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Rob »

JimmyJazz wrote: Oops! Truth be told, I was actually one of the lucky people who got to see the recent restoration, in a theater! However, for that same reason, I will probably take it off my recommendation list, because I also know that it is practically nowhere to be found,
Does it matter? I mean, it matters that it is hardly available, but keeping it on the recommendation list keeps it in people's minds, if the opportunity arrives to actually see it.

I actually had the chance to see it last June on the big screen. An amazing film, as visionary as Sunrise, Metropolis or the films of Buster Keaton. Even the simplification of history and the rather unsubtle propagandist nature of the film do nothing to diminish it's power (whereas it does with most of Eisenstein for me). It's unavailability is pretty much a cultural crime.

These are some thorough lists I see here. I still have some films I'd like to add to them, but that will have to wait until hopefully this weekend.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Charlie Driggs »

JimmyJazz wrote:
BleuPanda wrote:Any idea where to find Napoleon?
Oops! Truth be told, I was actually one of the lucky people who got to see the recent restoration, in a theater! However, for that same reason, I will probably take it off my recommendation list, because I also know that it is practically nowhere to be found, unless you want to shell out a bunch money for a laserdisc player and the old 80s laserdisc on Amazon, and that version is the flawed restoration furthermore. So, unfortunately, I can't recommend where to see this film specifically, that was me jumping the gun. I can assure everyone, however, that it is a true masterpiece of the cinema.
Here in Germany , the eighties version of „Napoleon“ ist available on VoD from the provider Maxdome.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by BleuPanda »

Though I guess one argument for going forward would be that those of us who have seen many silent films can vote, and then those who haven't will at least have another 10 months to see the films that end up moving on.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

You're right, Rob. I'll place Napoleon back on the big list.

To Jirin: where is this version on YouTube? I can't find it anywhere. Like you said, it was before 2012 of course. So, like everything on YT, it could have been taken down, thanks to the subsequent Coppola controversy. Could you at least provide a link to that VHS info?

As for Coppola blocking the film, it is clear that some versions of the 80s Napoleon are still out there, and that works because that was the one with his father's score. You see, while the FILM is in public domain, the accompanied SCORE is actually owned, in this case, by Coppola. If the Carl Davis scored restoration was being sold, screened on TCM, etc., then Coppola would file suit, for not using his father's score, owned by him, thus losing a profit in his eyes.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by Jirin »

It looks like even the VHS costs $42 minimum on Amazon right now. I guess I looked for it at the right time.

How does Coppola have a legal leg to stand on here? If he's not currently attempting to profit off his father's restoration, how can he say other editions cut into his profit?

Seems like Coppola is benefitting here from some legal bullying of the sort that circumvents the law in his favor. No way what he's doing is in any way legal by the actual letter of the law, there must have been some friendly money passed around.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

Jirin wrote:It looks like even the VHS costs $42 minimum on Amazon right now. I guess I looked for it at the right time.

How does Coppola have a legal leg to stand on here? If he's not currently attempting to profit off his father's restoration, how can he say other editions cut into his profit?

Seems like Coppola is benefitting here from some legal bullying of the sort that circumvents the law in his favor. No way what he's doing is in any way legal by the actual letter of the law, there must have been some friendly money passed around.
"Circumventing the law" is exactly what's going on here, which is why it pisses me off so much. I fully agree with every point you make, but the facts are that, as long Coppola is being a big baby, and organizations like Criterion and Masters of Cinema (the two home video companies that initially were speculated to be purchasing the most recent restoration) and TCM eat up his money like lap dogs, the tragedy is this masterpiece will probably never be released, until Coppola kicks the bucket (and hopefully doesn't dictate some crap in his will about it, which considering just how obsessed he seems with preventing the recent restoration from ever being put out in a widely-available form, I wouldn't be suprised.)
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by SuperFurry »

:happy-smileyinthebox: Napoleon (1927)

http://vimeo.com/72612389
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

SuperFurry wrote::happy-smileyinthebox: Napoleon (1927)

http://vimeo.com/72612389
Hallelujah! Thank you SuperFurry! It's the 80s restoration, granted, but that's still better than not having it available at all.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by BleuPanda »

This starts up in a couple days.
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Re: Films of the Early 20th Century: Prep and Recommendation

Post by JimmyJazz »

Bumped for people to see the links in the 1938-1940 section.
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