Zinkthink: Filmfest 1927-1933

Back in the CD-ROM days, we had a great little game for our family computer. It was called Opening Night, and I have never since seen a game that so inspired creativity and imagination. The concept was pretty simple; you, the player, direct a play. That's it. The rest was totally up to you. Put in one of the various backdrops to set your scene, add some of the characters, animate them around the screen using the game's built-in motions. Add props, and move them as you see fit to make it look like they're being held or used. Dialogue was typed in, and one of the various 90's-quality voice synthesizers would read your words. It was incredible.

If you think about it, there are few games that allow you such freedom. Maybe Sim City or one of its analogues, but even then you were limited to making a city. In Opening Night, you could bring any story you could imagine to life. I enjoyed the heck out of it, but sometimes struggled to come up with a compelling story. I remember well my biggest and best production had something with a witch casting spells on other characters, appearing and disappearing in poorly animated puffs of smoke. But I also remember the conflict that brought her into the fray, a very arbitrary argument between a husband and wife.

(Written phonetically to assist the old synthesizer)
- Baht, baht, waht evair is zee matter, dar-ling?
- It's just zaht, I want a new house.

For some reason this set the guy off, he stormed away, encountered the witch and all went crazy from there. Not exactly a compelling conflict. Unlike this batch of five movies, all with excellent character and plot conflicts, whether serious or zany, embodied by war or the internal struggles of love. Without further ado, here are the next five films.

Movies 6-10

1927 - Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (#82) - This is a prime example of why I rewatch some movies that I've already seen. On first viewing, Sunrise got maybe 3 stars, and I didn't think too much of it. On second viewing, I think it could be a favorite, certainly from this era. My issue was with the way the wife (no one has names in this film) responded to the man after he does something pretty terrible (vague so I don't spoil it), which I had a hard time looking beyond, at first. The story is about a couple who lives in the country, though the husband is quite taken by a woman of the city, the allure, glitz and glamor of that life. This leads him to do something that, as TCM puts it, "almost destroys his life." It's interesting, and moves along nicely, but the reason I like it so much now is how beautiful the filmmaking is. There is such a unique visual style throughout, with interesting special effects, and almost no break of the flow for title cards. On top of that, the reactions to the struggle the couple faces is conveyed with such brilliant emotion that no words or sound are needed. From fear to joy, sorrow to love, the expressions of the two main players pull you right in. As they say in the famous (yet still unseen by me) Sunset Boulevard, "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" Sunrise breathtakingly proves it to be true.

5 rowboats out of 5

1930 - All Quiet on the Western Front (#54) - As you may know, I don't typically like war movies. I think war is awful, and in general believe that we have much better ways to settle our disagreements. Certainly I don't really go for the triumphant, hawkish movies that sometimes occupy this genre. All Quiet on the Western Front is definitely not one of those. Made in 1930, this film is set in World War I, and lays bare the horrors of trench warfare and war in general at a time when many of its veterans could still remember it and a whole new generation needed the warning. The protagonists are a group of German schoolboys, swept up in the fervor of going to war, and who end up enlisting in the army. Over the course of the film, we see how exposure to that harsh environment has changed them, exemplified by a few brilliant scenes: one where Paul, the main character, is trapped under rubble with an enemy soldier, and another where he returns to his hometown on leave. The film intersperses the camaraderie of the men with the agony of death or dismemberment, the juxtaposition showing how people must adapt to such a strange world. It's horrible and pretty sad, but it's a good reminder as to what war really means when we insularly talk about it thousands of miles away.

4 butterflies out of 5

1931 - City Lights (#11) - Chaplin film number two since the reboot, and although it was significantly better than The Gold Rush, it still didn't live up to my memory of Modern Times. Hopefully I'm not just remembering that one with rose-tinted glasses, but so far it seems to be my favorite of the bunch. Anyway, City Lights is pretty good, again starring Chaplin's Tramp character. This time he begins simply trying to help out a blind flower seller, but after a short time with her he begins to fall in love. Their love is complicated by her blindness and their lack of money, but through it all they remain hopeful as the Tramp tries to wrangle his way out of one outrageous situation after another. There were some outright laughs, though City Lights is probably more of a sweet movie than a funny one. That said, the scenes preparing for and during the boxing match were really clever and I caught myself smiling almost the whole way through. The ending is famous in film history as one of the most touching or poignant ever, and I can agree that it's up there, but perhaps not so much as I'd built up in my head after hearing that. The main downside was with some of the gags, which became overused to the point where they were no longer funny. The millionaire's memory just got irritating after a while and wasn't believable. It's flawed, but it's pretty amusing and very cute.

4 bowler hats out of 5

1931 - Frankenstein (#87) - I started to rewatch this film, saw why I hadn't much liked it the first time, and decided to opt out, retaining my previous review. I think it's because I read and rather liked the Mary Shelley novel in school that I find the movie so disappointing. The book was great, and did an excellent job in making the "monster" a sympathetic character. He is monstrous in appearance, but largely just misunderstood as he struggles to make sense of a confusing world. It's very well done, very thought-provoking, and something I'd have hoped the movie would have stayed true to. Instead, we have the well-known and oft-satirized aspect of the criminal brain. One of the most famous scenes is Igor (or Fritz, as he's known in the movie) dropping the "good" brain and substituting it with one from a deranged criminal. Well, you do that, and you take out any ambiguity about why the monster is the way he is. It's a convenient excuse for him to be pigeonholed as a monster, one we should be happy to be rid of. Outside of that, it's not that great of a film - it just has some classic scenes that everybody knows, but it's quite choppy throughout. Maybe I'd think differently if I hadn't read the book, but I just can't love this one

2 brains out of 5

1933 - Duck Soup (#60) - What can I say about this that I haven't already? The Marx Brothers were comedy geniuses, among the best of all time, and this is perhaps their best work. If you've never seen it you need to, and you will be shocked at how much you'll laugh. Not that plot matters much, but this is the movie where Groucho takes over as leader of Freedonia, and eventually ends up going to war with neighboring Sylvania. Along the way, he woos and simultaneously insults the wealthy Mrs. Teasdale, mostly unbeknownst to her, and enlists the various services of Harpo and Chico, who are secretly spies from Sylvania but really bad at it. Again, that doesn't matter much, as the real strengths of this movie are the snappy one-liners from Groucho, the banter between he and Mrs. Teasdale or Chico, and Chico and Harpo's zany antics. This film is filled with ridiculous situations and classic scenes. Chief among them are the famous mirror scene, which has since been parroted in various forms over the years. Trust me, this is funnier than anything you'll find today, and it's definitely a keeper.

5 Grouchos out of 5