1920s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists project Vol. 3)

[Michael Kerpan]

A bit graceless, lubitsch -- and unduly splenetic.

KT "babbles" on Expressionism?

Nosferatu is generally considered an Expressionist film, though there are only a few of the stylized sets that we tend to think of as vital to that artistic movement.

Nothing she says suggests that the screenshots of Nosferatu she includes are supposed to evoke expressionistic painting models.

I think KT does a nice summary of what people can look for if they want to explore the films of 1922. No reason to think that she considers her little piece the last word on the subject.

[lubitsch]

KT "babbles" on Expressionism?

Nosferatu is generally considered an Expressionist film, though there are only a few of the stylized sets that we tend to think of as vital to that artistic movement.

Nothing she says suggests that the screenshots of Nosferatu she includes are supposed to evoke expressionistic painting models.

I think KT does a nice summary of what people can look for if they want to explore the films of 1922. No reason to think that she considers her little piece the last word on the subject.

Well, by now their blog is probably one of the most popular film scholarship pages around. And therefore they have quite an influence with these blog entries probably exercising far more lasting power than quite a lot of books published on the subject. This again means that they have a certain responsibility and I'd appreciate it if some work would go into the by now traditional "90 years ago" posts which also means out pointing out forgotten films. In the earlier entries this was the case, but since Kristin Thompson has taken over this part of the blog the entries are really unremarkable and could very well have been written by any participant of our list project. It's simply not good enough.

As for Nosferatu her first sentence in the chapter is But here are two full-fledged masterpieces, both from the German Expressionist movement. Even if she tracks back to some stylized sets (which ones?) this would be a good opportunity to point out that this is NOT under any circumstance an Expressionistic film. It is based on the Dracula legend and a novel which aren't expressionistic and is influenced by the whole gamut of 19th century German painting ranging from C.D. Friedrich to the Biedermaier painters and I'd even throw in some landscape painters like Carl Blechen into the mix.
This is simple the laziest and most careless kind of scholarship to slap a label on a certain period of film due to one famous example, Caligari, without noticing that there's a lot more going on at the same time. Barry Salt has written about this decades ago, but still I have to read this nonsense, I'm simply tired of it especially seeing it appear on the blog of the world's leading film scholar.

[TMDaines]

There is also this sentence:

Unlike with Murnau, we now have all of Lang’s early films and can judge his entire career.

#-o

We wish. What a lazy article.

[domino harvey]

The Edward Everett Horton set was one of the projects that Ben Model did a Kickstarter campaign to do the scores for, so it is nice to see it getting some official recognition as well.

Watched all eight shorts in this set and had a mixed to positive reaction. Horton is, unbelievably, able to project the same fussy persona we know him for now even without talking. The first three shorts in the collection are terrific, especially the Western one. I appreciated how they didn’t go for obvious approaches of Horton being weak or effete but instead made him rather quite resourceful. This line gradually diminishes as the later shorts become more nondescript (and could have starred anyone) and Horton is more frustrated-upon instead of inspiring it in others, and not as humorously solution-oriented as he is in the initial shorts. Knowing nothing more of the context of these being created, I assume the creative team came prepared with the initial slate, found them popular enough to make more, and quickly cobbled together more tired material to get additional shorts out (plus it’s only in the eighth and final short that we get a gay joke— let’s be glad these stopped when they did!)

Also, though the Amazon listing and packaging indicate otherwise, these are DVD-Rs…

[knives]

Does any Wallace Worsley film exist outside the big three with Chaney that are available?

[domino harvey]

The Edward Everett Horton set was one of the projects that Ben Model did a Kickstarter campaign to do the scores for, so it is nice to see it getting some official recognition as well.

Watched all eight shorts in this set and had a mixed to positive reaction. Horton is, unbelievably, able to project the same fussy persona we know him for now even without talking. The first three shorts in the collection are terrific, especially the Western one. I appreciated how they didn’t go for obvious approaches of Horton being weak or effete but instead made him rather quite resourceful. This line gradually diminishes as the later shorts become more nondescript (and could have starred anyone) and Horton is more frustrated-upon instead of inspiring it in others, and not as humorously solution-oriented as he is in the initial shorts. Knowing nothing more of the context of these being created, I assume the creative team came prepared with the initial slate, found them popular enough to make more, and quickly cobbled together more tired material to get additional shorts out (plus it’s only in the eighth and final short that we get a gay joke— let’s be glad these stopped when they did!)

Also, though the Amazon listing and packaging indicate otherwise, these are DVD-Rs…

Getting a Blu-ray release (presumably BD-R) next month