daviuquintultimate Reviews

This Side of the Law (1950)

Not ill made, but with substantial plot issues.

[5/10 · 15 May 2024]

The millionaire Malcom Taylor is missing since about 7 years (two weeks remaining), after whose terms he will be declared legally dead and his estate will be splitted between his wife Evelyn and Malcom's brother Calder. Lawyer Philip Cagle seems to be somewhat liable to take over Malcom's legacy - though it is really never explained on what bases.

Inexplicably, Cagle doesn't not calmy wait for the expiration date (he could have done it calmly because he himself murdered Malcom a few years before), but he engages a David Cummins - whose resemblance with Malcom is astonishing - to impersonate Malcom before the rest of the deceased's family (they don't know their relative is dead), including the dead's sister-in-law Nadine Taylor. Why Cagle has done that remains without explication.

Nadine realizes that David is not Malcom, still agrees not to reveal his identity, just to share part of the inheritance with him. Which makes no sense, as Nadine is entitled to the legacy (as long as she remains with Calder) anyways. It seems that Evelyn and Calder should be the first to get ridden of. But the first (well, second) to be murdered is really Nadine: Cagle throws her down the cliffs. The lawyer had heard of a possible agreement between Nadine and Cummins/Malcom and wanted to get rid of her. He maybe hoped to get the full inheritance. Which is still only an interpretation, given the uncertain motives of Cagle's claims.

With a few more tricks the film ends. Deo gratias.

Soldier of Fortune (1955)

You don't have to think, someone thought it for you.

[26 April 2024]

If you are looking for a movie in which vital informations - about the search which is central to the plot - are given as if by magic, with no clue whatsoever to their plausibility; in which the informators themselves spring up like mushrooms totally at random; in which a military man of the United Kingdom trespasses into a foreign country just for the fun of it; in which a man abruptly kisses an unknown woman after having met her for just two minutes of the film's running time; in which an ageing white-clad Clark Gable (who shares with Susan Hayworth the unhygienic habit of never changing clothes over a period of at least several days, if not more - at land, at sea, at home, outside, through sweltering heat and hurricanes) solves the case all by himself by means of money, yes, rude talking, yes, but more often with a couple of well-placed punches, in the old traditional way; then "Soldier of Fortune" is the film for you.

The Fall of Troy (1911)

Phisical Education.

[6/10 · 25 April 2024]

A very interesting film, considering it was made in 1911. I read somewhere it was very important, after its distribution in the U. S., for the further development of American cinema. Lavish sceneries, impressive sets, wonderful photography will be acknowledged even nowadays. What will be less appealing for today's audiences is - I think - the acting style.

As is often the case in the films of the period - after the early inception of motion pictures, but before their more uniform routinized productions of the '20s - film-makers had to face the problem of conveying meaning. Theatre was a model; but in films you didn't have the assistance of the spoken language. Before some more cinematic patterns were discovered and utilized (close-ups, just to name one) one could only rely on gestures. The usual cinematic shot of the period is the so-called wide shot, that shows the entire human figure; the movements and gestures that are possible, and visible, in this wide shot are those of the arms and legs.

That's why in "La caduta di Troia" we see all of the actors display an uninterrupted sequence of ample arm movements. It's like we just jumped in a Gym Class for Elders. Some of those movements and gestures are still intelligible today, as stereotyped significants for some emotions. Most of them are not, unfortunately.

Little Old New York (1923)

Clothes don't make the man.

[6/10 · 18 April 2024]

I will not write about this interesting film in general, but will focus on one little aspect of it. Let's begin.

The old mr. O'Day had two kids, Patrick and Patricia. I wonder what would he have called a third child, had he had one. But that's out of the question, now. Well, the young and beautiful Patricia O'Day (Marion Davies) plays almost all the film through en travesti, impersonating her dead brother. And she manages to fool half the population of 1807 New York (the other half didn't have the occasion to meet her). Which is astonishing.

First of all, her new dress: it's quite boy-ish, in the sense that it is different from the dresses the other women wear in the movie, but it's also different from those of the men. Her curly hair is cut and straightened: again, it does not resemble either the girls' or the boys'. She wears make-up, lipstick and all, and, well, she even has quite some boobs! It reminds me of an early personification of Hannah Montana. Younger generations could know who I am referring to: anyways, this miss Montana is a (fictional) girl whom nobody recognizes when she wears a wig, and, apart from that, is absolutely identical to the girl without a wig.

As you can well understand, in a film conceived in that way there must be a moment in which she reveals her identity and her sex: and there is indeed, toward the end. How does she manage the revelation? Boy or girl, she looks almost the same, so there's only one way (compatible with public morality) to do it: she just says it. I'm a girl! In the next scenes she looks as before, only with a more girlish dress and her hair curled again. The overnight perming.

By the by, another little thing: in the middle of the movie an U. S. flag is raised, with 15 stars for 15 states: in 1807 there were two more.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

A little glitch.

[15 April 2024]

(My rating: 7,5/10)

I will not repeat here the grounds upon which the film is considered very good, if not a masterpiece: many reviewers (in IMDb and elsewhere) and many film critics and historians have made it clear enough. I just wanted to focus on a little curious oversight that slipped into the film, otherwise masterfully conducted.

As we know from the plot (you can find it easily around the web or elsewhere, if you haven't seen the film yet), Marguerite's marriage with Etienne Laurier had been arranged by her parents, and she doesn't love him. She loves Julio Desnoyers and is loved by him; and she leaves her husband. But then the war comes. Etienne is wounded: he is blind. Marguerite feels guilty and wants to atone for having deserted her husband: she resolves to let go Julio and to dedicate to Etienne.

But you cannot lie to yourself, at the end. Being a nurse to Etienne, thinks Marguerite, is not my place, I should be with my beloved Julio. So she resolves to leave (again) Etienne, and writes a letter to him in which she states her motivations.

And that is precisely the glitch: you don't write a letter for someone to read, if that someone is blind!

Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

Cinema and its literature.

[7 April 2024]

7,5/10.

I won't make particular remarks about the film itself, which is a very brilliant comedy indeed - except for the fact that its ending comes, in my opinion, a little too much out of the blue. Rather, I'm focusing here on some minor aspects regarding its production.

I read from a well-known source that, from the beginning, a conflict had arisen between the two stars of the film, Glenn Ford and Bette Davis, about the assignment of dressing-rooms (!). I'm not saying this has not happened, I'm only thinking about what it all has to do with the film itself, in both its faces as a business venture or an art product.

Pythagoras, we all know, did not eat fava beans: again, this has nothing to to with the demonstration of the famous theorem that brings his name, and which is central to the scientific field even today, after more than two millennia.

The problem is that from the beginning, film criticism and literature about cinema has always been keenly interested in such trivial issues as star-system, gossip, and production incidents like the one cited above. All that could work only because there has been an audience devoted to that. And there still is (the well-known source I talked about is absolutely up to date). Well, I am not a part of that audience, and many others, I believe, are with me.

Bucking Broadway (1917)

Inconsequent.

[5/10 · 3 April 2024]

In a Wyoming ranch Cheyenne Harry (he's a man, so I prefer to call him Harry) carves a little wooden heart and gives it to his fiancée saying "If you will ever happen to be in some trouble in the future, please send it back to me." They plan to marry.

Then Helen elopes with Eugene Thornton. She's not kidnapped, just elopes. Destination New York. From facial expressions of Helen we come to know that she is not particularly happy in the big apple. She is not held captive. Does she go back to Wyoming? No. She just sends back to Harry the little wooden heart, inside an envelope. Does she write her address? No.

So Harry is forced to go to New York and search for her among the millions. But, you know how destiny works: Harry stays at the Columbia Hotel of New York, on the terrace of which is being held the party for the engagement of Helen and Thornton. She is there by her own will, she smiles and kisses Thornton, until he starts a fist fight: everybody against everybody.

Of course Harry steps in, but he is not alone: a bunch of cowboys from the Wyoming ranch happen to be in the city, and they jump in after a horse ride along Broadway leaded by Buck Hoover, after whom the film is evidently named, though we have not very much caught the sight of him in it. In the end Harry and Helen reunite, as if nothing had happened. And, to be honest, nothing particularly consequential really happened.

Great Photography.

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Reality check

[5/10 · 29 March 2024]

Let's face reality: a group of angry and hungry boys, in a village of Spain in 1937, murders Sebastian Venable and eats parts of his body. If you are OK with that, suit yourself, because that is the plot, the whole plot, and nothing but the plot. And it's not even a pulp.

I read somewhere that censorship forced the screenwriter to cut from the script any hints about homosexuality, which, if mantained, would probabily have lent some more thrill to the movie (in an era in which homosexuality still constituted a kind of thrill). If not, all that remains is a story of unmotivated cannibalism.

Does the girl who reveal the truth come to do so by a sort of subtle psychological work? No, she's just under the effects of truth serum. They could have given it to her a couple of hours earlier in the film. So, no thrill, no pathos.

Orphans of the Storm (1921)

When a hundred years passes, something changes.

[6/10 · 25 March 2024]

French Revolution. Two sets of people: the aristocrats (including the Court), and the people. With only two single men as exceptions, both sets are depicted as complete imbecils, each in their own way. The nobles are corrupted and amoral, the people is a slew of drunken hoodlums. The exceptions: Danton (among the revolutionary people), and, for the aristocrats, a Chevalier de Vaudrey.

I'm not surprised about the over-simplification of both characterization and world history in the case of D. W. Griffith, a director known for his mastery of the cinematic medium as well as for his racism. I'm not surprised either of the film's very good narrative pace, though the movie is a litte too long, in my opinion.

Two characters stand out: the step-sisters Henriette and Louise (played by the real sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish). They cannot be assigned to any of the two categories mentioned before. (By the way: they are not properly orphans, as the title suggests, but that's beyond the point). Anyways, I must note that Henriette's (lovely Lillian Gish's) face is quite the same when it is in the guillotine, at the end, or when it happily jokes with her sister's, at the beginning.

When a hundred years passes from the making of a film, something changes.

Devil's Partner (1960)

A demon in disguise.

[4/10 · 16 March 2024]

If not The Devil in person, Nick Richards is surely a demon. Nothing wrong about that: we've seen King Kong destroy Tokyo and we were perfectly OK with that.

In a memorable scene, Nick transforms into his old dead uncle Pete, or maybe Nick and Pete are the same person. We know King Kong had his motives, but we will never know why Nick, in the trasformation scene, wants a witness to attend, in the person of town drunkard Papers (called that way because he likes to read newspapers!).

Nick can make animals obey to his commands, or/and can himself change into animals. And he is responsible of a lot of evil doings. When a pool of residents of Furnace Flats (the hell is a hot place...) discover - without any clue - his secret, they take appropriate measures. (Let's call it "secret", though evidently it is not, otherwise Nick wouldn't have requested a witness).

The good citizens shoot to death Nick's last avatar, a black horse. In the final scene they - not particularly astonished - see the dead horse transforming into Nick, then into Pete, and then, magically, "all losses are restored, and all sorrows end".

The Pusher (1960)

Simplicity is your hell and heaven.

[6/10 · 14 March 2024]

B-movies are sometimes envisaged as an inferior kind of films. No, it means that the production costs are not as elevated as A-movies. If a star actor gets, say, 1 million dollars for a movie, well, some films (without stars) were made with an overall expenditure of less than 1 million. Now, I don't really care about production's costs, and some B-movies are better than the more high-class ones (not this one, I must say).

The strong positive values of "The Pusher", in my opinion, are the well-defined plot, without any confusing sub-plots or blurred images and shots that let you quite uncertain about what has really happened, and the consequent linear execution of it. This is also a detrimental point, because when you reach minute 16th (of the overall 82), you will know exactly how will the narrative develop.

No thrills, consequently, but if you are a lover of the genre you will enjoy this film. I rated it 6; let's say, more precisely, 6 and a half.

Tobacco Road (1941)

How long can you resist caricature?

[6/10 · 26 February 2024]

Important film by the legendary director John Ford and the even more legendary producer Darryl F. Zanuck, "Tobacco Road" is undoubtely well-made, with a bountyful photography and and an interesting theme on its background: the struggles of an impoverished family of farmers in the South of the United States. The wonderful Gene Tierney, in one of her first movie acting roles, is perhaps a little miscasted (it would happen to her again), as she is portrayed as a slightly outwitted daughter of the Lester family.

And that leads us to the main problem of the film, in my opinion: if you, like I am, are quite unfamiliar and unwilling to cope with a plot and acting in which all of the characters - all of them - are depicted simply as idiots, and doing idiotic things most of the time (let's except, say, 2-3 minutes), then "Tobacco road" is probabily not your cup of tea.

The Girl in the Kremlin (1957)

Cold War films: Shades of propaganda.

[5/10 · 23 February 2024]

I learn from history books that in 1956 the URSS' Communist Party amply criticized the doings of its former First Secretary, Joseph Stalin, died in 1953. With a perfect timing comes out in 1957 "The Girl in the Kremlin".

Back to the film: well, Stalin is not really dead. He is still alive, and plots to regain his dictatorial powers in a now (1957) slightly changed Soviet Union. This an admissible kern idea for a story for the movies: we were comfortable, to say one, with King Kong's destroying Tokyo... But I won't write about the plot: you can find an outline of it in this same site, or elsewhere. I'd like to focus on some other aspects. Here we go.

Thousands and thousands of films have been made with an underlying propaganda undercurrent, and some are very good. But when the thing is so blatant, with all the Soviets represented ab initio as pure idiots, then we are not there. It's like taking Americans (and the rest of the world of movie-goers) for just as many idiots (there undoubtedly have been many of them, and presumably there are still now), if you expect them to believe this nonsense. Paradoxically, those films, always with underlying propaganda, but serious, which treat the characters - whatever their political position - as human beings, just as a normal member of an audience considers her/himself, have the greatest effect. Assuming that something like a "normal" audience ever existed or will exist.

This Sporting Life (1963)

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

[5/10 · 19 February 2024]

We don't precisely get to know what he (Frank) really wants from her (Margaret), and, even less, what her own problems may be: she has issues with the memory of her deceased husband (Eric), and the real point of those issues is never plainly revealed. It appears that Eric had committed suicide, but his motivations for doing so are never really explained. Frank alternatively makes love to Margaret and scolds her, she in turn goes to bed with him and asks him to leave her alone forever.

The relation of Frank to other characters, as well, is ill-defined: that with Mr. Weaver, for exemple, is never fully outlined; and who is really Mr. Johnson, Frank's dad or just a scout for the rugby team? We will not find answers to these questions. It is as if a curtain of silence has fallen upon all of them.

Silence "implies consent", reads the proverb. But, first of all, consent to what? No alternative is given. More properly, I think that silence "says nothing" ("through yonder window"). Which is maybe good for audiences accustomed, and liking to make suppositions from what is (not) showed on the film, but - in my personal opinion - is just like some smoke in my eyes. And I don't like it.

P. S.: The film seems to be very professionally realized.

The Naked Edge (1961)

I suppose it cannot be considered a pagliarism. But, anyways...

[11 February 2024]

Many reviewers in IMDb have (up to now) mentioned "hitchcockian vibes", or similar, regarding this film, and one, in particular, has mentioned Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" (1941). But there is more. The plot of "The Naked Edge" is exactly the same as "Suspicion": the wife suspects the husband of being a criminal, a murderer, and only in the end the suspicion dissolves (in a neat way in the present film, in a more nuanced way in "Suspicion"). It could be a "standard" plot for thriller movies, and you can expect to find dozens of film sharing it. But, again, there is more.

Does the suspect, in both films, has something to do with real estates? Yes.

Is he, in both films, labelled as "a gambler"? Check.

Is he supposed to be in Paris while in reality he is in London? Does the wife fear that the husband is going to kill her? Do the couple - husband at the wheel - take a dangerous auto ride at high speed on a meandering road overlooking high rocky cliffs upon the sea? Do they dismount from the car and, walking, come near the abyss' edge, with the husband's hand behind the wife's shoulder? Check, check, check, check.

Nothing wrong in getting inspired by masterpieces of the past, but what about not telling a word about it? You don't need to do it - one may say -: everyone will readily see that. Well, nobody has.

Black Orchid (1953)

Quite loose and tentative plot.

[4 February 2024]

I will not deal about the plot, which you can easily pick up from elsewhere, and focus rather on my own critical impressions as a simple viewer.

To state it in a sentence: if you decide to abstain from more precise puncualizations you can still enjoy the film.

The main problem (minor flairs are also present) is: evidence is lacking, both when the first suspect is sentenced to death, and when, later, the two amateur detectives - by sheer luck - come across some clues that make them assume (without any certainty, again) who the real murderer might be. The filmmakers were undoubtely aware of that impasse, as the only way they could possibly conceive to make clear who really "did it" is the criminal's own confession.

Scotland Yard Inspector (1952)

Logically unstable film.

[5/10 · 25 January 2024]

In the thick fog of a London night a man is deliberately run over by a car driven by a woman: he was Denny McMara. The police classify it as an hit-and-run accident, but the young Heather, Danny's sister - basing on her own "intuition", but lacking of evidence -, is convinced it was a murder. An American magazine writer, Philip O'Dell, mainly motivated by the sex appeal of Heather, wants to help her prove her point, though Scotland Yard's inspector Rigby warns him not to mix, as an amateur private eye, with the sound investigation routine of the police.

But O'Dell, little by little, manages to uncover a ring of 4/5 people that would have had interest in killing Danny, their motive, and even the actual murderer. The problem is that every evidence he finds happen to be destroyed before he can show it to the Yard's inspector. At the end Rigby himself congratulates with O'Dell for solving the mystery: and we don't know why, because all the members of the gang are dead, by now, so the eventual evidence in the end is as feeble as it was in the beginning.

Quite cumbersome and totally predictable film, in whose plot nothing new happens; to make it worse, the comic traits are just laughable (ironically), not amusing.

O'Dell and Heather, at the end, of course, marry, which doesn't make the film any better, on the contrary...

Assunta Spina (1915)

Not exactly a morality model.

[5/10 · 5 January 2024]

Michele - Assunta Spina's fiancée - is very jealous and quite a criminal: he thinks that Assunta has an affair with another dude, so he inflicts a slashing in her cheek with a knife. Michele is arrested, and his mother accuses angrily Assunta to have ruined her son's life. Wait, what? Who committed the assault (and battery) and who was the victim?

Moreover Assunta develops a sort of Stockholm syndrome, and (thinks that) she still loves her harasser; but, though she lies to the judges trying to save him from the condemnation sentence, the witnesses are too many, and Michele ends up in jail. During the two years of Michele's detention, Assunta realizes that her love for him is fading (it's never too late), and she begins a relationship with another man, Federigo.

When Michele is released from prison and wants to reunite with Assunta, she says to him: "I'm not worthy of you!" (again: what?!). As soon as Michele comes to know about Federigo, he kills him. Assunta lets herself be blamed for the murder. Why? Is she still in love with Michele? Nobody can tell.

I will not condemn all the films in which "the Cavalry charged, and the Indians fell": they are just products of their age (and some of them are great films), but in the present times, when femicide and male chauvinism are far from being lost, I felt that "Assunta Spina" is particularly unapt as a morality model. Apart from that, in any case the film in question is not a big thing, anyway.

Stowaway (1936)

Not passing the test of time.

[5/10 · 24 December 2023]

There's really no use in trying to tell the plot of this movie, because you'll have got it after the first ten minutes. After this lapse of time, there's really nothing happening: you can devise all the turns of the film (if there were any) until the end. So, boredom is assured, for today's audiences.

They could have thought otherways as back as in 1936, and the growing fame of child-actress diva Shirley Temple might have contributed to the overrated evaluation of "Stowaway", over-evaluation that evidently continues until today, judging by the high mark the film gets in this very same IMDb platform.

I can't point out any positive feature: the acting is nothing more than (low-)standard (and far below the standard in the case of the Colonel, a character wholly unnecessary). Temple herself doesn't rise above old-fashioned cuteness and monkeyish gestures that, nowadays, appear not only out-of-date, but even detrimental to the dignity of children.

Diamonds of the Night (1964)

Confused. Too much "nová vlna" for me.

[5/10 · 24 December 2023]

"Nová vlna" (New Wave) was a cinematic movement in Czechoslovakia, regarded as avant-gardist (in the sixties, when it bloomed), and, as far as I know, much cherished by critics and film historians up to now.

The few things we can state for certain about "Diamonds of the Night" is that there are two young men on the run, followed and harassed through the woods by a bunch of toothless and fanatic old nazis with hunting rifles as old as they are. And that's all.

All the rest is wrapped in mystery. Some (once) experimental cinematic trends are characterized by a fuzzy way of editing the movie (see for exemple the Soviet montage theory of the twenties): it's the same for the "nová vlna". As a result, for what regards "Diamonds of the Night" there are some important issues that are undecidable. We don't know if the two fugitives are shot, in the end, or not; we don't know if they kill people to get some food or it is given to them by good-hearted civilians; we don't even know if the story takes place in Czechoslovakia or in Germany: for each of the above alternatives the film offers and presents both horns of the dichotomies (they are killed, and they're not; they kill, and they don't; they are in one country, they are in the other). So it's up to you to decide, if you really are interested in deciding.

A as final consideration, let me say that the main nucleus of the plot is easily conveyed, and it could have been more easily conveyed, and wasting less time, if the run in the woods would have lasted, say, 5 minutes, instead of the 40 or more minutes of uninteresting and utterly repetitive footage.

The Destiny of a Man (1959)

Propaganda can be OK, and is inevitable. But not too much, please.

[6/10 · 4 November 2023]

Good direction, I believe, and good B/W shots and photography. It's even not the propaganda that kills this film, it's rather its unshamed use throughout the movie, with not even an attempt to radicate it in some more higher moral value. In that way "Fate of a Man" ends out to be not other than a plethora of common places, clichées, one after the other.

Nazis are evil, of course. Who can deny it? A bad Nazi kicks a Soviet prisoner of war off a cliff to his death; sterotypical scenes of prisoners ill-treated in a concentration camp; German commander playing with the life of a prisoner just for fun;... OK. Is that all the reasons Nazis were bad? Not a hint. The military valour of a Russian soldier; the Soviet pride in winning the Stalingrad battle... again, who can deny it?

Sokolov, the protagonist, returning from the war, finds out that his entire family has been slaughtered. So he kind of adopts a little war-orphan boy (some Alyosha), as a sort of replacement for the son an daughters he has been deprived of. I was going to value this film 6/10 (which is a "passing" mark, in my opinion - and which is the evaluation I give in IMDb). But, then, at the end, the audience (of which I am a part) comes to know that Sokolov has a heart disease, and it is not sure that he will live enough to care for the future of Alyosha.

Finally, a few seconds before the end, a title card reads like this (in the English translation provided by a popular online video platform): "I'd like to believe that this Russian (meaning Sokolov), this man of unbreakable will, will stick out, and that the boy will grow at his father's side, into a man that can endure anything, shall his country ever call upon him to do so." I can quite understand it in war-time movies, or in films made just a little time after 1945, But in 1959?! That made me realize that the evaluation of the film should be almost a little less from "passing".

Gilda (1946)

Not really intriguing.

[5/10 · 30 October 2023]

My bad, my bad! I'm writing my review after having visionated only a little bit more than half of the movie! I know, this is not very fair, I admit. Social media and similar machines bestow to everyone the right to write whatever one thinks, regardless of its relevance. It's free speech, and at the same time it's a problem. Anyway, I will not bother you for more than a few seconds' reading.

Cryptic dialogues from the beginning: one never knows what are they really talking about. Innuendos never solved, and I hadn't the patience to drag to the end to see (maybe) the resolution of such hints. Dialogues that could hardly happen in real life, and not even in the best of fantasy or sci-fi movies, where King Kong destroying Tokyo is made absolutely believable.

She (Gilda, Rita Hayworth), with her constantly mocking look, is thorouglhy false and utterly unlikable. He (Johnny Farrell, Glenn Ford) is slightly less so. And they are the two most agreeable characters in the entire movie! I really couldn't get through. My bad!

Satan's Rhapsody (1917)

Cannot stand the test of time.

[3/10 · 29 October 2023]

A film that, let's just say it, has not aged well. The plot, however faustian it may be, barely deserves to be called a plot. And you can hardly understand it, were it not for some title cards: I mean, there is no visual efficacity whatsoever. Some title-cards only, just a few ones: the others are quite impressionistic evocations of vague states of mind, sometimes merely a series of sigle words separated by full stops, and expressed in a sort of antiquated Italian language that not only nobody speaks today (believe me, I happen to be Italian), but into which not even the best literates of 1917 would have dared to write. (Of course nobody expects the best literates to have partecipated in the movie).

The worst weakness of the film, however, is the acting. In you are interested in the topic, by the by, I recommend you watch the movie until the end, if you can stand its about 45 minutes of growing bore. Well: never, not in a single moment we can find a "natural" body expression or gesture. (Though I'm pretty sure the filmmakers expressily didn't want to have any; I think that was a facet in the time's esthetics). But, for today's audiences, it's really hard to follow and appreciate a never-ending plethora of sterotyped gestures, with the protagonist Lyda Borelli flinging hes arms around like crazy from beginning to end, whether she is happy or sad, or Mephisto lurking from the bottom of the shot, in his heavy clownish make-up, to insinuate deadly temptation.

The Devil (1921)

The Devil is out of the picture.

[6/10 · 7 October 2023]

At the beginning Mimi, art model, loves the painter Paul; Georges, a banker, loves Marie, and they are bethroted. In the end nothing has changed. In the middle there has been some fuzz, all caused by the devil himself, in the sembiance of dr. Müller: he wants to show that it's not true that "Evil can never overcome Truth", as everybody seems to think.

In the middle Paul and Marie become lovers. Is it true? Yes, it is. Is it evil? No, it is not. In the end, as I said, George loves Marie, and they marry; and Paul and Mimi reunite. Is it true, is it evil? As above. I won't say the devilish dr. Müller failed to prove his point, rather that the point cannot be proven at all, no example having been given of Falsehood or Good, in particular.

Moreover: we are told and showed that the devil/Müller has done all the mess. But it could well have happened also without him, all by itself, as it happens in life, either for believers or agnostics. In that way the protagonist himself is out of the picture.

Manslaughter (1922)

Over-abundant stereotyped gestures bias an otherwise OK plot

[5/10 · 23 September 2023]

The plot, even if a little dragged out, would be allright; we just can no longer stand seeing - especially in the scenes of ancient Rome (which are by the by perfectly unnecessary) - everyone waving their arms like madmen, and - not all through the film, I must say, but in a consistent part of it - the actors too often resorting to those stereotyped gestures that characterize many films of the first (and last) silent cinema: gestures probably taken from contemporary theatre, but - since in silent cinema, by definition, no words could be uttered - exaggeratedly amplified to be sure of getting the message across.

Other powerful means were also available to early cinema: just think of close-ups, or the expression of a face... Similar cinematic tricks were not possible in the theatre: they were some of the tools of cinema as a new means of expression, or - in rare cases - art.

Among the filmmakers, some realized it earlier, some later...