Pygmalion (1938)

People often say that there is no original work, that something had to stem from somewhere and everything is based off of something that came before it. OK, this is true a lot of times, but there are some instances where someone really used their imagination to take some original material and transform it into a great story set in then-modern times. Take the mythological story Pygmalion: it tells of a sculptor who had no interest in women, but carved sculptures of them, until one day he fell in love with one of his own sculptures. Praying to Aphrodite, or Venus, depending on which way you look at it, she took pity on him and brought the statue to life.

Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) is obviously drawn to be comparable to Pygmalion: he seems to have no interest in women, yet obsesses over dialects and proper speech. He takes on the challenge of turning the lowly Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) into a lady, with proper speech and accent and all. And, of course, he comes to love her.

Movies back in the day liked to spell out their themes or references for the audience; after all, people didn't have access to the Internet and its wide bank of knowledge. The story of Pygmalion is told to us through text, at the beginning, so that we may know exactly what the filmmakers are aiming for and what their true intentions are. Today, no such scroll would precede the movie, and audiences would be forced to look up Pygmalion and discover the title's source.

The movie is exceptionally well made and is better, I think, then the musical My Fair Lady that came out 27 years later (the film version, anyways). For one, it's an hour shorter, and while I have no problems with long movies, I didn't feel that the plot supported the length. Here too the movie seems to meander, and it is only slightly over 90 minutes!

But the performances are also very good. Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard may be no Audrey Hepburn or Rex Harrison, but they still deliver thoughtful performances and their chemistry lights up the screen. As we watch Eliza progress, we care about what happens to her. There is a hilarious scene where she tries out her new dialect, and speaks in tongue twisters as if they were normal conversation. The subsequent reactions to this are priceless.

Part of what drags the story of Pygmalion down, for me, is everything that happens after the ball scene. The whole movie builds up to that point, and then continues for an extra thirty minutes (My Fair Lady goes on for another hour). It's such a great scene, and the buildup is worth it. The Queen employs a former pupil of Higgins to find out where Ms. Doolittle is from, and he makes the astute observation that "...only people who are taught English can speak it well."

The movie delivers an important message of women being just more then objects, as evidenced by Higgins' treatment of Ms. Doolittle. Early on Higgins' assistant refers to her as "Ms. Doolittle," and that level of respect makes her smile. Of course, Henry sees her only as Pygmalion saw his creations: as statues. Until she comes to life and fights for herself, he continues to disrespect her.

All versions have a particularly odd ending, as Eliza returns to Henry after leaving him, and he really realizes he is in love with her. Upon her return, he simply states, "Where the devil are my slippers, Eliza?" I accept that as a game that they are playing with each other, by the end, and that Higgins really does have newfound respect for Eliza.

One note: David Lean, the acclaimed director of Lawrence of Arabia and several other epics, was the editor on this film. One should note he was an editor for several films before he broke out into the directing world, and didn't edit again until his final movie, A Passage to India. Just a fun note. I spotted his name in the credits.

La Grande Illusion (1937)

A lot has to be said for a movie that imagines people as real people; that portrays enemies as really allies forced into conflict by the clashing interests of their motherlands. When you think of prison escape movies, you imagine the round-up of prisoners planning the escape, and the ruthless, cruel guards and their warden. Much of this is true in 1994's Shawshank Redemption, but one must also remember that that prison contained actual convicts, not prisoners of war.

The French POWs are treated rather fairly. When Capt. de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and Lt. Maréchal (Jean Gabin) are first captured, they are treated to a nice dinner by the somewhat formidable Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim), and then sent to a prison camp where the guards are cordial and where rules aren't necessarily strict. Any POW caught escaping is shot on sight, of course, but they are not, otherwise, treated inhumanely.

Of course, the POWs still want to be free; it is a common need of the human soul to have freedom, and so the soldiers do all they can to escape the confines of their prison. Upon Maréchal's first night in prison he discovers his flat mates have been tunneling, little by little, a way out, dumping the excess dirt outside during gardening duties. A funny scene takes place as a Frenchman, burrowing out, loses consciousness due to lack of oxygen, and when he is retrieved is fed cognac. When the liquor touches his lips, he reawakens and cradles the bottle as if he were a child drinking milk.

And the movie has a clever sense of timing. On the night of the proposed escape, a camp change is made, and flat mates are separated. Another touch of humanity is displayed by the guards as they load the POWs onto trucks to venture to a new location: "May you see your wives soon." It affirms that no one likes war, and most wars are not a necessity; people would rather coexist in peace, though it is ironic that most humans are unable to do so.

The movie has a goofy air about it, and one particular moment that is both somewhat silly and rather poignant comes when the men receive costumes to put on a show with. They catch wind that women wear their hair short now ("It's like sleeping with a boy," the cognac-loving Frenchman exclaims), and then pause as they witness one of the men dressed up in a woman's dress. Everyone falls silent. It highlights the repression that goes on in prison, the need to escape, and the lack of a female companion for men who go to war (more specifically then then now).

Maréchal and Boeldieu are put under Rauffensteins rule, who runs what is described as an "inescapable fortress." He also comes equipped this time with a silver plate to support his fractured spine, becoming part machine almost and carrying with him a menacing air. He speaks in a slow drawl and is burned all over, "which explains the white gloves," he muses. Rauffenstein is the epitome of the evil prison warden, yet he is not. He respects Boeldieu as a fellow servicemen and, when a raid on Boeldieu's room is done, trusts his word that nothing illegal is there (it is a lie). There are also random moments when both men speak to each other in excellent English.

The theme of human kindness is best represented in two scenes near the end: Maréchal and another inmate, Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) escape while Boeldieu attracts the attention of all the guards as he makes another escape. Rauffenstein pleads with Boeldieu to come down, to not force his hand and make him shot him. But Boeldieu continues onward, and Rauffenstein shoots him down. Later, in a hospital wing, Rauffenstein apologizes for what he had to, and Boeldieu simply replies, "I would have done the same."

The other happens after Maréchal and Rosenthal escape successfully and find shelter with a widowed German woman, Elsa (Dita Parlo) and her daughter. Her loneliness cries for recognition from someone, as her husband was killed in the war, and the common bond shared between two should-be enemies is beautifully rendered to dust here, as they grow to love each other.

I have spoken perhaps too much of the film's plot, and nowadays some will probably see it's optimistic view of humanity as dated and not as revolutionary. The film holds my attention throughout and is filled with characters that I truly grow to love and care for. There are no villains, except for perhaps the war that rages in the background, but instead people being people, kind, honest human beings. There are too few movies that triumph the human spirit, but this is one of them.

Pépé le Moko (1937)

The anti-hero is something that has been around in film for a very long time, even in literature. There are a variety of antiheroes, from Rick Blaine in Casablanca to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, to any gangster in any gangster movie. The earliest anti-heroes can be seen in the gangster movies of Hollywood's 1930s, but Pépé le Moko is probably one of the most significant in terms of firsts.

Directed by Julien Duvivier, Jean Gabin plays the antihero of the title, a thief from Paris who hides in Algiers and steals, steals, steals. In an early opening sequence, the police try and catch him by swarming several houses, but he is so well connected with everyone that he escapes without detection (though a gun fight ensues).

He meets and falls in love with a woman visiting from France, and wants to finally end his career as a criminal. The movie is about deception, greed, and crime, as Pépé is loses an accomplice to the police and, eventually, succumbs to a French ending. Anyone who knows French films from the 30s through the 60s (most of them, anyways), know that the characters usually die by the end. Wages of Fear (which I will review much later down the road) has an example of one of these.

But this movie is famous because it firmly establishes what an antihero is. He is charming, yet violent, pleasant, yet cold and calculating. Jean Gabin, who also stars in another on my list to review, Grand Illusion (1937), is terrific as the man who knows no limits, who steals and pilfers to his hearts content.

Really, anyone who loves a good gangster movie and wants to understand where the archetypal character came from need only turn to Gabin in this film. It is a seminal performance, laying the pathway for Humphrey Bogart, Al Pacino, and many others to follow. It is not a terrific film by any means, but it is a damn good one, and one worth checking out.

The 39 Steps (1935)

Anyone who loves cinema has, at one point or another, seen Hitchcock. It's impossible not to; his films are their own, unique special brand, and while many have tried, none have made a film that can replicate the touch Hitchcock gives his pictures. Sure there have been more suspenseful works since then, but none have imbued their films with as much dry humor as Hitch does, at least in the way Hitch does.

39 Steps is not Hitch's best film, to be sure, but it is his first really good one. It's the film that really proved Hitch had an idea of what he was doing early on, he just didn't have his sure footing yet. It has many of the recognizable Hitchcock touches: an innocent man caught in a tale of intrigue, a ruthless villain who isn't seen much, and a blonde that becomes the love interest.

It also features probably the first great example of Hitchcock's MacGuffin, which is easily defined as the thing (object, person, anything) that motivates the plot, but the audience doesn't need to know what it is, only that it is essential it is obtained/stopped/whatever. The MacGuffin here isn't necessarily what The 39 Steps is, but what secret information they are trying to obtain.

We are introduced to Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), a Candian in London who attends a show where a gun shot is fired and panic breaks out. As he leaves, a young, sexy foreign woman asks to accompany him home to keep her safe from the men hunting her (you see, it was SHE that fired the gun). Hannay complies, and this is reason number one you don't take a mysterious, young, foreign, sexy woman home with you being hunted by spies. She divulges information about The 39 Steps, and the next morning she walks into Hannay's room with a knife in her back. Naturally, Hannay goes on the run because he has been framed for the murder, and to find out who is behind the secret organization.

Hitchcock uses the murder of a person to drive the plot, rather then what that key information is. Hannay spends much of the time on the run, and has a run-in with a blonde bombshell, Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), who doesn't believe him at first and keeps trying to turn him in. Slowly, of course, she comes round and eventually begins aiding him in his quest.

Hitch was a master at causing thrills, and none is more evident then in his brilliant set-up of his villain, Professor Jordan (Godfrey Tearle); Ms. Sexy Foreign spy tells Hannay that if he should ever run into a man with the top portion of his left pinky missing he had better run. Hitch finds something unique we won't forget, and when the Professor pulls out his hand and reveals the missing limb, it immediately instills the audience with a sense of danger. These classic methods are either gone or too rare for movies to deal with.

And here's the thing about the movie: it's thrilling, but at the same time it's not a completely stupid movie either. I definitely liked a lot more when I first saw it five or six years ago, but even on a second viewing (I had forgotten most of the movie by this point) I still found it engaging and entertaining. It's not as deep as one would like, which is typical of Hitchcock, but it is still smart.

It even takes a throw-away character, Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson) and uses him as a bookend piece AND an integral part to the story. Not a moment of this movie is wasted (thank goodness, since it is only 86 minutes!), and everything builds to its conclusion. I've seen a couple of Hitchcock's movies from the 30s, and I can say firmly this is the best of the bunch (of course I'm pending my upcoming viewing of The Lady Vanishes (1938), so that may change).

This is an important film for Hitchcock, and essential for any cinephile or Hitch lover. I'll reiterate again that this is by no means his best movie, but it certainly is the one that launched his career. Hitchcock wouldn't hit his stride until the 50s, when he churned out three or four masterpieces (the pinnacle of his career), but all the films leading up to that point are worth a look, if only to see how someone defines their style. I make it no secret that Alfred Hitchcock is my favorite director, because of his off-screen personality, and because of his unique dose of thrills.

M (1931)

I have seen Fritz Lang's M only twice now, but it is a movie I grossly underestimated, or forgot about, the first time around. This is a movie of profound power, that has the ability to challenge you with one viewpoint, and then unexpectedly turn things around on you and force you to view everything from a new, different perspective.

Petter Lorre is Hans Beckert, an elusive, anti-social young man who is a pedophile. Much beyond that, he also kills his victims, and this act causes such an uproar in the streets of the unnamed German city that police begin raiding bars to find him. Eventually he is found, but many great sequences lead up to this revelation.

First is the opening sequence, a simple yet powerfully done sequence in which children are shown playing, and then the faceless Beckert strides up and offers to buy a young girl a balloon, all the while whistling Edvard Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King. No gratuitous acts against the young girl are shown; instead, we simply get a shot of a balloon stuck in wires, and a ball rolling to a stop in the grass.

The movie descends into much of the first half as a standard police procedural, as the cops try desperately to find who this pervert is, working hours of overtime and getting 90% false leads. A unique spin comes from the German Underworld, who are getting so fed up by the constant police raids that they decide they must find Beckert themselves and end this once and for all.

M to me really speaks to German cinema in the early years of film, and solidifies my belief that they were they best filmmakers of the day. Robert Wiene helped define German Expressionism with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Sunrise) and G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box) have turned out the greatest works from those early days. Not to mention Erich von Stroheim (Greed). And Fritz Lang essentially invented the science fiction genre with Metropolis (1927), another film I'd love to revisit because it has been so many years.

It is then sad that Adolf Hitler not only led the greatest genocide in history, but also destroyed the German filmmaking industry for Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films. Fritz Lang had to leave his native Germany and went to America, and never directed anything notable ever again. But here is a film full of invention, tackling a subject that will always be grisly and unpleasant.

Two other remarkable scenes include: a scene where Beckert, driven mad by his desire to kill children, finds another suspect and whistles merrily the Mountain King. He is recognized by a blind man, and is marked by a young man with an M on his shirt. This shot, as Beckert turns and realizes what is on his coat, is one of the definitive shots in movie history. The realization that dawns on Lorre's wide eyes speak volumes about the danger he knows he is in.

Finally, the last scene in the film is altogether another remarkable piece of virtuoso filmmaking. Captured by the German Underworld, Beckert is put on trial in front of not just mobsters but many citizens from Germany up above. One man is assigned to Beckert's defense, and two powerful speeches are delivered: the first comes from Beckert. Writhing on the ground, he screams that the urge to commit this horrible acts is something he can't control. Here, Peter Lorre lets loose with the character and screams for mercy, because he really is insane, he really can't control the urges.

The second speech comes from his "lawyer" who states that, yes, this man has committed these awful crimes, and that he should be left to the police, not killed by the mob of angry people standing at this mock trial. A strange thing happens during these two speeches: you actually feel sorry for the pathetic little man, writhing on the floor. Not empathy, for anyone who does may need to be checked out themselves, but a small grain of sympathy is shed for this unworthy man.

In America and indeed maybe most other places in the world in the 30s, you wouldn't find a movie that explored such dark and resonant themes as these. I love classic Hollywood pictures, but something has to be said for the mundanity of most of their plots. You see where they are all going, its just how are they going to get there. But in Germany particularly, anti-heroes and antagonists were getting plenty of attention, and it is a shame that Hitler rose to power, because of the War and genocide, and also the destruction of many more potentially great films.

Footnote: The movie ends by stating that the current version of the film, which runs 110 minutes, is still an incomplete form of the movie. Like with so many other pictures in that day, scenes were edited out and that footage was lost. Still, the edition that exists in lovely Criterion transfers is well worth the watch.

Die Büchse der Pandora (1929) (Pandora's Box)

It is curious how, back in the day, some directors (particularly German ones) structured their films into Acts. There is not set number of acts, it was just how many you needed and what fit. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) has six acts, and Pandora's Box (1929) has eight. Why? No reason really, it was just what director Georg Wilhelm (G.W.) Pabst required for his film.

Pandora's Box is a curious little film. Twice I have now seen it, and I will not deny that through many of the first six acts I became a little wearisome of it, waiting for it to pick up its pace and continue on. But the last two acts are so engaging and full of drama that they make up for some of the slower moments in the earlier parts.

What really magnetizes the film together, though, is Louise Brooks, who stars as the main character Lulu. She has a presence that I do not think I have seen equaled by any other silent screen actress. When she is on screen, she is magnetic, transfixing you with her odd haircut that seems to accentuate her soft features (made possible through soft focus, of course). She is absent for most of the film's second act, and it suffers without her.

The plot can not really be summarized in a sensible way, but essentially it is about Lulu, her seductive power over men, and how she sinks deeper and deeper into despair. She begins by seeing "clients", and her most reliable is an old man who at one point claims to be her father, but you are sure he could not be.

She is put into a show and, through a series of events becomes involved in an accidental murder, goes on the run, and ends in one of the best scenes of silent cinema as she unwittingly invites Jack the Ripper into her run down living place. Her beauty stops the Ripper from using his knife, but soon he succumbs, and Lulu's hand goes limp.

Whenever I watch a silent movie, I find I usually tune out the track that Criterion or whomever has composed specifically for it. Of course the music effects my perception of what is happening on screen in a purely visceral level, but in my head I usually create other atmospheres to go along with what is happening. In act seven, in a scene at a bar I imagine glasses clinking and people cheerily talking, or when Lulu succumbs to Jack the Ripper I imagine her last breath escaping her lips.

That is probably the most interesting aspect of silent movies: they are the most pure form of film there is, because without the noisy scores, they are just film. And they seem the most fitting version of the format because film is in and of itself an illusion of rapid images creating fluid movement. Sound, of course, has made films better and a great sound design will enhance and enrich the movie. But there is something about letting the movie tell its own story, and silent movies are challenging for any person in today's society.

And Pandora's Box is a film that would only work in silence. If these characters spoke, the situations would be come ridiculous, outrageous, and downright silly. But here, melodrama is straight drama. Few films would only work in silence, and here is one of them. Anything by the silent clowns Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplain, and Harold Lloyd I would also include in that category.

The title of the film refers to a Greek myth, about a woman named Pandora who like Lulu was beautiful and happy. The gods gave her a box, and told her never to open it up. Sadly the curious thing did, and unleashed greed, sadness, anger, and a bevy of ill feelings upon our world. That Lulu mirrors this character is without saying, and that she unwittingly spreads lust and greed makes this one of the most unique adaptations of Greek Mythology.

This film, while dull in a few areas, is ultimately a beautiful work of silent filmmaking at its peak, when sound films were permeating every inch of American cinema. Louise Brooks alone makes the movie worthwhile, and stands out for me as one of the most unique films from the silent era.

Häxan (1922)

Silent films, to me, represent a very unique time in film's history; this is the time when the job of director, producer, and screen actor was being developed, and it is amazing that films back then were more daring then any single film you usually get in a year in this millennium. Filmmakers back then explored the newest possibilities, particularly the German Expressionists who were probably the best Silent Filmmakers (F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Erich von Stroheim, and Robert Wiene are among the best from that time).

Häxan is such a silent movie, adventurous, daring, trying new things, but it is also one of the only films that defies any convention, any labeling. It is part documentary, part drama, part comedy, and part horror. Yet this movie comes from a Danish director, not a German one, and exemplifies the limitless boundaries of the imagination from that time.

The movie is told in seven parts, though most of them really don't mark the ending of one story. Chapter One is basically a slideshow, as director Benjamin Christensen shows us a lot of researched history on the paranoia of people from the Middle Ages that led to their belief in Witches (Häxan translates, more or less, to The Witches). We get drawings that illustrate hell, where demons put the damned into cauldrons (I couldn't help but notice one of the cauldrons was marked "Judei"), and hot metal liquid is poured down the damned's throat.

Part Two on is mainly recreated scenarios involving witches actually existing. We see the horrible hags in their coven, plundering dead thieves' bodies from the gallows and using their remains in potions. One witch requests a love potion and we get two imagined scenes in which a portly brother of the church chases the witch, madly in love with her.

The film also highlights how witches were ousted: being thrown, naked, into a pond to determine their witchhood. If they floated, they were recovered from the pond and burned; if they sank, the fathers would thank God for sparing this girl's soul (though no remark is made as to whether this woman is rescued).

The only part of the movie I would call a running story, or thread, comes when a man falls ill and his wife blames witchcraft. An old woman stops by for food, and the wife immediately has her arrested by the church, who proceed to torture a confession out of her. And she describes the Witches' mass.

The Witches' mass is introduced to us in the film's first chapter, and it is mainly something you kind of have to see to really grasp how paranoid everyone was back then. To partake, the women fly high up into the sky to some castle and garden, and proceed to frolic with the devil and his minions. Probably the most significant moment of this movie involves the witches proceeding one by one to the devil and placing a kiss on his derrière. This marks them as witches, and allows them to continue on their evil wicked ways.

What message this movie is trying to put out, what lesson it is trying to teach is unclear to me. I was never certain if the director believed all the findings he researched, or he was merely laughing at how paranoid everyone was back then, and how that paranoia made everything a reality. Really, he seems to be presenting the second part as his main point, but he also has conviction in the scenes involving the witches.

The movie breaks the fourth wall a lot, and in Chapter 6 or 7, the director mentions that the actress who played Maria the Weaver (Maren Pedersen, another witch) turned to the director during shooting and said, "The Devil is real. I have seen him sitting at my bedside." Her conviction in this story is resolute, which is why Mrs. Pedersen probably partook of this film.

This film was made before there were conventions and clichés in film. There were no definite rules of story that we learn today in our classes, and Häxan is a movie breathing with life and invention from its director's limitless research on the subject of Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Even by today's standards I would say this film is very daring and I have really never seen anything like it in all the other movies I have ever seen.