RICKENBLOG

Charles Chaplin, 1931. When I made my first music video, I wanted it to be funny. I remember sitting down at my desk and writing it out frame by frame, looking to maximize the amount of gags within each of the two hundred and thirty one seconds. It was, like finding the right combination of words to fit a phrase of music, an energizing and rewarding challenge; a realization that working within limitation could open more doors than it would close.

And then I consider Chaplin, at the top of his game, facing a tidal wave of change that threatens to wash away the world in which he became king, imposing an unfashionable limitation upon himself and maximizing all four thousand eight hundred and sixty seconds until he produced something that could exist, perfectly preserved under the depths of this sea change, as the most timeless film ever created. The stakes, my friends, were only slightly higher.

Homage is meant to be noticed, and thus often corny. Influence, however, hides in plain sight. When I made my music video, I had never seen a Chaplin film. Yet when I watch it back, there he is (albeit in a much less talented form). Post City Lights, Chaplin’s influence no longer hides from me.

So as I was thinking of what to say about a film that essentially serves as an epitaph to silent cinema (because pretty much everything has been said already), I considered anchoring it to the idea that “art loves limitation more than any else”. Feeling suspicious I was regurgitating something I had read long ago, I googled. To absolutely no one’s surprise, I was right. “The absence of limitation is the enemy of art” is a quote made famous by Orson Welles, director of what many believe to be the greatest film ever made. And what was his favorite film? I’ll give you one guess.

City Lights.

Joaquin Phoenix as Joker in "The Joker"

Fritz Lang, 1931. Hard to communicate what a leap this film is. I had no idea we had entered the talkie era, so that was already a huge shift. But the inventive camera work, the superb acting of Peter Lorre, the bone-chilling story, and the little disconcerting details all made it feel like the first modern film. And it was modern in more ways than one.

I was floored watching the bloodthirsty crowd of career criminals roll their eyes at the idea of rehabilitation while angrily predicting he would be released back into society only to kill again. The delicious irony of the underworld denouncing liberal crime policies was part of it, but there was also the unsetting recognition this argument is still being had a hundred years later. I was like Leo pointing to to the TV in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. “Hey, that’s New York City!” Let’s hope it turns out a bit better than it did in Berlin.

And then there’s the ending, which essentially punts on the moral quagmire of how to treat the most evil guy in town (you know the type, he’s actively kidnapping the young children so he can rape and murder them). The ending scene (which shrank to a small window in the top right corner of my screen before it concluded because streaming classic movies on platforms like Max is often a nauseating experience) amounted to essentially “keep a close eye on the children” which is a message everyone can get behind, but doesn’t really answer the question. And I’m not someone who’s looking for art to give me answers, but it felt a little convenient to leave us without a resolution to his story. Did society deem him redeemable? Did they eliminate him? We don’t know. Protect the kids!

And I guess that’s all you can do to guard against the perpetual advent of demented perverts. Why they do what they do and how you prevent it from ever occurring in the first place is the real question, but I’m not holding my breath for an answer. And with Lang’s ending, I don’t think he was either.

Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930. I didn’t feel particularly moved by this film at first, but some of the imagery (the opening death, the dancing, the funeral) has stuck with me. That’s really been my experience with Soviet films thus far. They are very impressionistic and hyper-focused on imagery. Emotions are more often than not symbolic of a group of people than they are displays of individual experience. But then again, these films are propaganda. Or at least created with a political intention, for all the predictable losers who are going to say “well, all art is political”. Yes, I know. But the director made the film to first and foremost communicate a deliberate political message, so save it.

The final scene was unfortunate (not the funeral scene, which was beautiful). The very last frame is the wife of the murdered hero locked in an embrace with her new man, but its portrayed as if she’s reuniting with her first husband in the clouds. I suppose its meant to communicate we’re living in a God-less world where the dead die and the wheat continues to grow, but I don’t understand why it had to be portrayed so…luminously. I really thought it was her reuniting with the spirit of her dead husband, but it turned out to be some new guy we’ve never seen before. And then it ends.

Now that I think of it, her entire treatment was bizarre. After her husband is murdered, she strips naked and enters an erotic frenzy, squeezing her breasts together and wincing at the ceiling by the window, suggesting the elimination of her human pleasure device has left her in the throes of sexual withdrawal. If you look at it symbolically (as I assume it’s intended), I suppose Dovzhenko is simply reminding us the soil is never not desperately searching for the seed. Maybe that’s true, but it’s just a bit collective for my tastes.

G. W. Pabst, 1929. Here we have Louise Brooks smiling at the fiancé of the man she was just caught kissing in a storage closet. Look at that face! It’s just too good.

In this (excellent) film Brooks plays LuLu, a prostitute, in Weimar Germany. Pabst wanted us to know she’s a Jewish prostitute, as evidenced by the sizable menorah she keeps in her well-furnished apartment, but this soon-t0-be historically relevant detail is completely overshadowed by the larger theme of this film: attractive, charismatic, and uninhibited women leave destruction in their wake.

And it seemed Pabst knew exactly what he was doing by casting Brooks (who had already established quite a reputation for herself). She’s the most compelling and attractive female I’ve seen from this era. Undeniable sex appeal. Some imdb reviews have complained she’s too “fresh” looking for such a practiced hooker. Who cares! What matters is you believe beyond a doubt these men are obsessed with her, because you yourself are also obsessed. And I confess I am now also obsessed.

Dziga Vertov, 1929. A precursor to modernity. Now everyone has a lusty, manic “kino-eye” in their pocket. And they also have an editor, too. You know the apps that create splice of life montages from your camera reel that change every two seconds? This is exactly that, expect a hundred years ago. Makes you wonder what other works of great effort will be effortlessly reproduced 100 years from now via technological advances. It also makes you wonder how many of the people featured in this film died the following decade, considering the future was portrayed as looking quite bright throughout the film (spoiler: it wasn’t).

I watched a truly silent version of this and regret it – Cinematic Orchestra did an entire soundtrack for it and it’s definitely the version to watch unless you can get the other one with the Nyman score.

Was surprised to see this listed as the number eight best film of all time according to a panel of “critics” (in this decade’s version the word is used incredibly loosely) at Sight and Sound. As I’m reading about some of these silents (especially the Soviet ones), I’m pounded over the head with how important these films are. I get it – but maybe it’s better served on a most consequential or influential list than a greatest one. Great movies change your life. And I fully recognize great movies often owe tremendous debt to what came before. A Man With A Video Camera came before, but it is not great. Sorry!