I had to watch Lang's Metropolis in stages because it was so long. Granted, it was my first silent, so it was hard to adjust into the silent film frame of mind. Probably not the best introduction into silents.
edited 25th Apr '16 8:55:44 PM by LongTallShorty64
"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."Metropolis was on the shorter end of Lang's silents. 2hrs and 40mns (depending on projection speed).
Die Nibelungen and Dr. Mabuse are his two big ones. But then both movies are diptychs not truly intended to be seen in one go. They were two parters of 2hrs each. I actually prefer Lang's Spione over Dr. Mabuse (and Testament of Dr. Mabuse over the original silent). Spione is essentially a Mabuse movie with character names changed but it's funnier, weirder and visually exciting.
Die Nibelungen though is amazing. It's a two-part movie but both are entirely different movies. Siegfried's Death (Part 1) is essentially an Epic Fantasy Movie with dragons, flying horses and the like. Kriemhild's Revenge (Part 2) however is a brutal revenge fantasy and Kriemhild (played by Lil Dagover) is one of the greatest tragic heroes in silent cinema. An amazing performance in the silent era, that coldness, that hatred and passion, and Kriemhild's Revenge is one of the darkest, most violent and bleakest movies I have ever seen.
edited 25th Apr '16 9:19:57 PM by JulianLapostat
A silent that I recently watched was Speedy with the fun Harold Lloyd. I liked this movie a lot, especially the Coney Island scenes—even if the rides did look kind of iffy, and I wondered about the amount of safety measures that were taken in 1928 with roller-coasters.
Anybody a fan of Lloyd? I like his young, go-getter shtick.
"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."I've seen Safety Last and that is awesome. The Freshman is also good. But on the whole Chaplin and Keaton are miles ahead of him. And to me the latter two occupy all my bases as far as silent comedy goes.
Lloyd was actually quite popular in his lifetime. Like he was huge in Japan and a favourite of Yasujiro Ozu. And of course the whole "Glasses Look" was lifted for Clark Kent, since his creators were major movie buffs
I saw one of his shorts with Buster Keaton in them. Seemed servicable enough. But I can't judge.
I have never heard anyone making a case for Arbuckle as a film-maker, merely an associate and mentor of Keaton and Chaplin. Harry Langdon I have heard more about. Many people consider the films he made solo, after Capra walkeda way (and which Capra trashed) to be pretty good. I haven't seen it myself but I have heard of it.
I don't think we should omit the name of Larry Semon...
OK, OK, Larry Semon isn't really up there with the best of them. If he's known for anything it's his 1925 take on The Wizard Of Oz, which jettisoned the material in favor of slapstick comedy.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."The main highlight was the time he became President of the Screen Actor's Guild and became a Sell-Out McCartyhy-ite from the get-go, supporting laws like Taft-Hartley and others.
He was not a good actor in general. The only good movie he appeared in is Don Siegel's The Killers. It was also his last movie and only villainous role as a corporate thug.
Reagan apparently did a lot of research for the part, speaking to disabled men and doctors because he, in his own words, had "neither the experience nor talent to fake it."
At the time the film was viewed as too gloomy and slow. Now it's got a 100% from 13 reviews
. One of those numbers will matter to some, and another to others.
Bear in mind that older movies tend to get higher ratings by default because of the Nostalgia Filter. I haven't seen King's Row myself so I can't say either way. The only Reagan movie I have seen is The Killers which he hated mostly because he saw it as a B-Movie made for TV role (Charlton Heston dismissed Touch of Evil for the same reason, which led Welles to call him a "horse's ass"). But He Really Can Act in that film at least, pretty effective as a villain. But then I don't know if Reagan as a cold, corporate evil mastermind is really acting so much as a Sarcastic Confession on the part of the future destroyer of America.
Reagan himself always admitted that he was a weak actor and that he went into politics because he wasn't going anywhere as an actor, and his snobbism towards B-Movie and other low-budget work undoubtedly didn't win him favors. His political career began as President of the Screen Actor's Guild after all.
It's generally agreed that Reagan's best roles were before the war; after the war he only got parts in B-movies.
In one of the Medveds' bad movie books, there's a chapter about "The Worst Movie Starring Ronald Reagan," in which they mention that the infamous Bedtime for Bonzo, in which Reagan plays second banana to a monkey, is one of his better movies...
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."Kings Row is pretty good. Pulpy melodrama of the sort that could have been directed by Douglas Sirk, but pretty good. I also enjoyed Desperate Journey, which was not grand cinema but was a fun little action movie and more importantly had Reagan billed before the title along with Errol Flynn. It was right after that when he got inducted into the Army and his movie career never recovered.
He also has a small part in Dark Victory with Bette Davis, who apparently loathed him and was horrified when he rose to national prominence as a politician.
If you want bad Ronald Reagan movies, they can't come worse than a godawful piece of crap called That Hagen Girl in which he costarred with none other than Shirley Temple. Incest Subtext out the yin-yang. Was not long after than when Temple retired from acting.
Harold Lloyd was one of the great comedians of the silent age and was for a long time unjustly considered a step behind Chaplin and Keaton. He is brilliant. I particularly like The Kid Brother.
Re: Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, I actually liked it, a lot. It's just a little intimidating to see 4 hrs and 44 min on your DVR.
edited 29th Apr '16 9:26:10 AM by jamespolk
It wasn't intended to be seen in one go. It was a 2part diptych.
What I love about Dr. Mabuse is the opening sequences, the nightclub scenes (Si Nan Fu is imprinted on my eyes) and then Part 2. That intertitle of Mabuse, "In the long run the only thing that matters is playing with human lives and their fates". The opening shows Mabuse manipulating the stock market and communication systems to take over, and since Mabuse is a gambler, Lang is saying the stock market is gambling, our communication systems are being manipulated. Lang is very relevant in the 21st Century with his obsessions with intricate networks and mass surveillance. And it's this nasty satire of the Weimar Republic, showing how shaky things are built. The hero is a State Attorney but he's kind of clueless and is of a different class than the people on the ground...Mabuse himself blends with every class and social group, he's like an evil sociologist. It starts out fantastic, and then you have a totally realistic police shootout that anticipates 30s gangster movies and probably inspired it.
And Mabuse is the first supervillain the grand-daddy of the comic book bad guys and noir bad guys and villains. He anticipated Hitler (a link Lang made clear in the sequel The Testament and the 1000 Eyes of Mabuse) and today you can say Osama Bin Laden with his constant video messages, his endless writings and subversion of 24/7 News Coverage for his own hands, is the closest anyone in real-life has come to using Mabuse tactics.
And Troy Mc Clure was played by Phil Hartman, who played Reagan in the famous Mastermind sketch on SNL.
My god, the connections...
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Just watched The Red Shoes. Honestly, every single Archers movie is magical. I can't describe it any other way. What a wonderful use of Technicolor. I'm just blown away by all their films.
edited 24th Apr '16 6:32:09 PM by LongTallShorty64
"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."