Metropolis

Rumor has it that Metropolis is going to be remade.

I've seen it. I saw it before the rest of the footage was discovered in Buenos Aires last year. I watched Brigitte Helm's unforgettable performance in her dual role.

And I can't stand the thought of it being remade. I don't know who had this particularly stupid idea, but if you're reading this, you lack imagination. You lack creativity. You shouldn't be making films.

Why?

Because you're remaking a classic. Hell, you're remaking a film. That's more than enough. Want to make a classic? Make your own movie. Don't ride someone else's coattails in a vain attempt to make a name for yourself. If you can't write your own films - and a lot of people can't; there's no shame in that - then adapt a work of fiction that's never been made into a film before. Do something ORIGINAL. Make a film that will be a showcase for your own talents and that of the people involved.

DON'T remake someone else's triumph and try to pass it off as a tribute to a superior filmmaker. Fritz Lang was a groundbreaker in filmmaking; if you can't be one yourself, don't try to redo what he can do, DID do, better. The era in which Metropolis was made had a definite impact on the appeal of the film, then and now. This era is not the same; this era has its own distinctive mark.

Make a real film. Make something that's never been done before. Be DARING. Any idiot can do a remake, and many idiots do. Don't be one of them.

Lost

One of the saddest things about the silent era; so many films from that time no longer exist. I read somewhere that the guesstimate is 80 - 90%.

That is one GRIM statistic. For all of the great films that still exist, how many more are gone? No wonder we get excited at the news that the missing footage of Metropolis has been found. I wouldn't mind taking a tour of screening rooms, old movie theaters, and the houses of theater owners, in the hope of finding even one reel of a missing film. I'm that intent.

I know that the AFI has a list of "Most Wanted" of the lost films, but I couldn't find it online; I found many mentions of it, but not the list itself.

Here are some of mine:

The Miracle Man
The Greatest Thing in Life
London After Midnight (I've seen this referred to as perhaps the most famous lost film of them all)
Remodeling Her Husband (starring Dorothy Gish and directed by none other than her sister, Lillian; her only film behind the camera)
Cleopatra
The entire epic of Greed
The Boy in Blue
Number 13

Chaney! Gish! Murnau! Hitchcock!

Today in silent film history

1906: Anita Garvin is born in New York City.
1948: Sergei Eisenstein dies in Moscow.
1974: Anna Q. Nilsson dies in Hemet, California.

Boring

I experience this problem occasionally. I'll watch a silent movie, looking forward to a great story and amazing acting, yet BORING comes along. There will be an actor or actress in a leading role who has all the depth of a paper napkin. Fortunately, this happens rarely in silent films (yet much of the time in modern films), but it does happen, and makes the experience painful.

This happened the other night with The Volga Boatman, part of my Cecil B. DeMille collection. It was one of the few I hadn't seen from the set. I was already wary, since the male star was William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd. I saw him in Lady of the Pavements last year at the silent film festival in Pordenone. "Hello," he seems to be saying, "I'm boring." Nice-looking man, but not an exciting presence. I think he tries, but he comes across better as part of the decoration rather than as an actor.

The Volga Boatman, though - that was a double whammy. First there was Boyd. Then there was Elinor Fair, whom Boyd later married. I can think of a couple of things they had in common; they were both film people, and neither of them had screen presence. Fair was even worse than Boyd, constantly striking Statue of Liberty poses - I expected her to pull out a torch at some point - and, in general, looking two-dimensional. The plot was interesting; the supporting cast was fine; the leads might just as well have taken off for an extended vacation, leaving cardboard cutouts of themselves to be used in shooting. It would have been more cost-effective, and the audiences would never have noticed.

I expect more of the silents, because they give more. There are far fewer incompetents in them; they have better stories, richer performances, and more memorable faces. When a film falls flat, it's all the more disappointing. The most interesting part of The Volga Boatman is the knowledge that Boyd proposed to Fair onscreen, towards the end. I was looking for it, but I must have blinked and missed it. I was too busy being irritated by Fair, with her hair hanging around her face, still thinking that standing still and looking stupid made her glamorous, to paraphrase Hedy Lamarr.

Today in silent film history

A landmark for silent AND sound film:

Ronald Colman is born in Richmond, UK, in 1891.

The Show

This one fascinates me. John Gilbert, as Cock Robin (now, there's a name for you!) is the ultimate antihero here; loud, coarse, manipulative, angry, violent, greedy. His usual expression is a hard, suspicious glare. We've all experienced something like it. He is constantly gauging other people, measuring them up, deciding the best way to use them.

He regards women greedily, wondering how much money he can get from them; in an early scene, he tells a besotted young country girl that he will "let" her buy him dinner that night, then later upbraids her for failing to meet him at the restaurant, complaining that he had to buy his own dinner. The man is a nightmare.

Of course, he has a Good Woman in love with him, though in this case, she's not entirely submissive. Salome (Renee Adoree) is Robin's partner in a popular show, which allows him to take advantage of a wide variety of women, and allows her to watch him do it.

We know that the two were involved earlier, and that Salome is deeply jealous of Robin, frightening away the women who are interested in him, which in itself is a full-time job. To complicate matters, the Greek (Lionel Barrymore), another member of the show, has decided that he owns Salome, and is more than ready to kill Robin to get her.

With the exception of an unintentionally funny scene where both Robin and the Greek are trying to avoid an enraged, deadly poisonous killer iguana, the movie is fabulously dark. As a matter of fact, most of the scenes take place after nightfall.

The title is particularly appropriate, because more than one show is seen here. We have the stage show, the one that scares the hell out of the audiences. We have the show that Salome puts on in front of other women, as if she and Robin are truly involved. We have Robin's show, when he masquerades as a dependable human being. And we have the most important shows, both Salome's, concerning her life at home; this is by far the most touching part of the film.

I did like the ending, despite its happy nature. John Gilbert really pulled off the part, and even his transformation - taking place gradually - is believable. Plus, given the tragically early deaths of both the leads (Renee Adoree died of tuberculosis in the early 1930s; John Gilbert was taken by a heart attack in 1936), it's good to see them playing characters who have a solid future ahead of them.

February 1 and 2 in silent film history

February 1:

William Desmond Taylor dies in Hollywood, 1922.
Buster Keaton dies in Los Angeles, 1966.

February 2:

Anna May Wong dies in Santa Monica, California, 1961.
Boris Karloff dies in Midhurst, UK, 1969.