Vertov gives visual form to Marxist principles in a stunning montage that follows the transformation of handwork into mechanized labor (women progress from sewing by hand to sewing by machine, from abacus to cash register) and that lauds the speed, efficiency, indeed the joy of assembly-line labor. Workers use their new-found leisure to socialize in state-subsidized clubs and beer-halls, to play music and chess, to swim and sunbathe, pole-vault and kick soccer balls. Moscows ordinary people become stars of their own lives as they see themselves on screen. By the time Vertov bids an explosive farewell to the old by splitting the Bolshoi Theater in half, he has made his case for the revolutionary potential of cinema.
Ultimately, Vertov could not accommodate to Socialist Realism, and his career faltered. With The Man with a Movie Camera, however, he achieved his goal: a non-linear narrative form for cinema, a glorious tribute to everything that moviemaking can be. JW
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1920s
DIE BÜCHSE DER PANDORA (1929)
PANDORAS BOX
Germany (Nero-Film) 97m Silent BW
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Producer: Seymour Nebenzal
Screenplay: Joseph Fleisler, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, from the plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora by Frank Wedekind
Photography: Günther Krampf
Cast: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz, Krafft-Raschig, Alice Roberts, Gustav Diessl
A lasting masterpiece from G.W. Pabst, adapted
from Frank Wedekinds Lulu plays, Pandoras Box is remembered for the creation of an archetypal character in Lulu (Louise Brooks), an innocent temptress whose forthright sexuality somehow winds up ruining the lives of everyone around her. Though Pabst was criticized at the time for casting a foreigner in a role that was considered emblematically German, the main reason the film is remembered is the performance of American star Brooks. So powerful and sexual a presence that she never managed to make a transition from silent flapper parts to the talkie roles she deserved in a Hollywood dominated by Shirley Temple, Brooks is the definitive gamine vamp, modeling a sharp-banged bobbed haircut known as a Louise Brooks or Lulu to this day.
Presented in distinct theatrical acts, the story picks up Lulu in a bourgeois Berlin drawing room, where she is the adored mistress of widowed newspaper publisher Peter Schön (Fritz Kortner), friendly with her lovers grown-up son Alwa (Franz Lederer) and even with the gnomish pimp Schigolch (Carl Goetz), who is either her father or her first lover. When Schön announces that he is remarrying, Lulu seems to be passed on to a nightclub strongman (Krafft-Raschig) but, provoked when Schön tells his son that one does not marry a woman like her, sets up an incident backstage at the music hall where she is dancing that breaks off the editors engagement and prompts her lover to marry her, though he knows that it will be the death of him.
Though her husband in effect commits suicide, Lulu ends up convicted of his murder. On the run with Alwa, Schigolch, and her lesbian admirer Countess Geschwitz (Alice Roberts), she makes it to an opium-hazed gambling boat on the Seinewhere she is almost sold to an Egyptian brothel and Alwa is humiliatingly caught cheatingthen finally to a Christmassy London, where she is stalked by Jack the Ripper (Gustav Diessl). Pabst surrounds Brooks with startling secondary characters and dizzying settings (the spectacle in the thronged wings of the cabaret eclipses anything taking place on stage), but it is the actresss vibrant, erotic, scary, and heartbreaking personality that resonates with modern audiences. Brookss mix of image and attitude is so strong and fresh that she makes Madonna look like Phyllis Diller, and her acting style is strikingly unmannered for the silent era, unmediated by the trickery of mime or expressionist makeup. Her performance is also remarkably honest: never playing for easy sentiment, the audience is forced to recognize how destructive Lulu is even as we fall under her spell.
The original plays are set in 1888, the year of the Ripper murders, yet Pabst imagines a fantastical but contemporary setting, which seems to begin with the 1920s modernity of Berlin and then travels back in time to a foggy London for a death scene that is the cinemas first great insight into the mindset of a serial killer. Lulu, turned streetwalker so that Schigolch can afford a last Christmas pudding, charms the reticent Jack, who throws aside his knife and genuinely tries not to kill again but is ultimately overwhelmed by the urge to stab. KN
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1930s
Contents
Der Blaue Engel (1930)
Lâge Dor (1930)
Zemlya (1930)
Little Caesar (1930)
All Quiet on The Western Front (1930)
à Nous La Liberté (1931)
Le Million (1931)
Tabu (1931)
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
City Lights (1931)
The Public Enemy (1931)
M (1931)
La Chienne (1931)
Vampyr (1932)
Love Me Tonight (1932)
Boudu Sauvé Des Eaux (1932)