{"id":11070,"date":"2010-12-05T16:40:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T21:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=11070"},"modified":"2020-08-06T20:20:06","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T01:20:06","slug":"the-ten-best-films-of-1920","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2010\/12\/05\/the-ten-best-films-of-1920\/","title":{"rendered":"The ten best films of &#8230; 1920"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/High-and-Dizzy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11073\" title=\"High and Dizzy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/High-and-Dizzy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/High-and-Dizzy.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/High-and-Dizzy-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/High-and-Dizzy-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>High and Dizzy<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Kristin here:<\/p>\n<p>Three years ago, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=1779\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">we saluted<\/a> the ninetieth anniversary of what was arguably the year when the classical Hollywood cinema emerged in its full form. The stylistic guidelines that had been slowly formulated over the past decade or so gelled in 1917. We included a list of what we thought were the ten best surviving films of that year.<\/p>\n<p>In 2008 we again posted another <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=3235\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ten-best list<\/a>, again for ninety years ago. This annual feature has become our alternative to the ubiquitous 10-best-films-of-2010 lists that print and online journalist love to publish at year\u2019s end. It\u2019s fun, and readers and teachers seem to find our lists a helpful guide for choosing unfamiliar films for personal viewing or for teaching cinema history. (The 1919 entry is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2009\/12\/30\/the-ten-plus-best-films-of-1919\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>There were many wonderful films released in 1920, but, as with 1918, I\u2019ve had a little trouble coming up with the ten most outstanding ones. Some choices are obvious. I\u2019ve known all along that Maurice Tourneur\u2019s <em>The Last of the Mohicans<\/em> (finished by Clarence Brown when Tourneur was injured) would figure prominently here. There are old warhorses like <em>Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari<\/em> and <em>Way Down East<\/em> that couldn\u2019t be left off\u2014not that I would want to.<\/p>\n<p>But after coming up with seven titles (eight, really, since I\u2019ve snuck in two William C. de Mille films), I was left with a bunch of others that didn\u2019t quite seem up to the same level. Sure, John Ford\u2019s <em>Just Pals<\/em> is a charming film, but a world-class masterpiece? A few directors made some of their lesser films in 1920, as with Dreyer\u2019s <em>The Parson\u2019s Widow<\/em> or Lubitsch\u2019s <em>Sumurun<\/em>. Seeing Frank Borzage\u2019s legendary <em>Humoresque<\/em> for the first time, I was disappointed\u2014especially when comparing it with the marvelous <em>Lazy Bones <\/em>of 1924. (Assuming we continue these annual lists, expect Borzage to show up a lot.) Chaplin didn\u2019t release a film in 1920, and Keaton and Lloyd were still making shorts, albeit inspired shorts. Mary Pickford\u2019s only film of the year, the clever and touching <em>Suds<\/em>, is a worthy also-ran. Choosing <em>Barrabas<\/em> over <em>The Parson&#8217;s Widow<\/em> or <em>Why Change Your Wife? <\/em>over <em>Sumurun <\/em>has a certain flip-of-the-coin arbitrariness, but we wanted to keep the list manageable. But they all repay watching.<\/p>\n<p>The year 1920 can be thought of as a sort of calm before the storm. In Hollywood a new generation was about to come to prominence. Griffith would decline (<em>Way Down East <\/em>may be his last film to figure on our lists). Borzage will soon reach his prime, as will Ford. Howard Hawks will launch his career, and King Vidor will become a major director. The great three comics, Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd will move into features. In other countries, an enormous flowering of new talent will appear or gain a higher profile: Murnau, Lang, Pabst, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dozhenko, Kuleshov, Vertov, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Jean Epstein, Pabst, Hitchcock, and others. The experimental cinema will be invented, and Lotte Reiniger will devise her own distinctive form of animation. Watch for them all in future lists, which will be increasingly difficult to concoct<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, here\u2019s this year\u2019s ten (with two smuggled in). Unfortunately, some of these films are not available on DVD. They should be.<\/p>\n<p>The great French emigr\u00e9 director Maurice Tourneur figured here last year for his 1919 film <em>Victory<\/em>. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Last-Mohicans-1920-Silent\/dp\/B000QRIKR2\/ref=sr_1_9?s=dvd&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291227094&amp;sr=1-9 \" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Last of the Mohicans<\/a><\/em> is just as good, if not better. I haven\u2019t read the Cooper novel, set during the French and Indian War, but it\u2019s obvious that Tourneur has pared down and changed the plot considerably. The sister, Alice, is made a less important character, with the plot focusing on two threads: the Indian attack on the British population as they leave their surrendered fort and on the virtually unspoken attraction between the heroine Cora and the Mohican Indian Uncas. The seemingly impassive gazes between these characters, forced to conceal their attraction, convey more passion than many more effusive performances of the silent period. The actress playing Cora also wore less makeup than was conventional, de-glamorizing her and making her a more convincing frontier heroine.<\/p>\n<p>The film is remarkable for its gorgeous photography, with spectacular location landscapes, some apparently shot in Yosemite (below left). Tourneur\u2019s signature compositional technique of shooting through a foreground doorway or cave opening or other aperture appears frequently (below right). (Brown\u2019s account of the filming in Kevin Brownlow\u2019s <em>The Parade\u2019s Gone By<\/em> makes it sound as though he shot most of the picture, but in watching the film I find this hard to believe.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-landscape.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11120\" title=\"Last of the Mohicans landscape\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-landscape.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-landscape.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-landscape-150x122.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-tent-opening.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11121\" title=\"Last of the Mohicans tent opening\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-tent-opening.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-tent-opening.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Last-of-the-Mohicans-tent-opening-150x122.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finally, the film stands out from most Hollywood films of its day for its uncompromising depiction of the ruthless violence of the conflict between the British and those Indians allied with the French. The scene in which the inhabitants of the fort leave under an assumed truce and are massacred can still create considerable suspense today, and the outcome puts paid to the notion that all Hollywood films end happily.<\/p>\n<p>The word melodrama gets tossed around a lot, and many would think of much of D. W. Griffith&#8217;s output as consisting of little besides melodramas. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Way-Down-East-Lillian-Gish\/dp\/B001G2S48G\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=dvd&amp;qid=1291227164&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Way Down East<\/em><\/a> is the quintessential film melodrama. An innocent young woman (Lillian Gish) is lured into a mock marriage and ends up deserted and with a baby. The baby dies and she finds a place as a servant to a large country family, where the son (Richard Barthelmess) falls in love with her. Her sinful status as an unwed mother leads the family patriarch to order her out, literally into the stormy night. She ends up on an ice flow, headed toward a waterfall. Along the way there&#8217;s comic relief from some country bumpkins and a naive professor who falls for the hero&#8217;s sister. It all works, partly because Griffith treats the main plot with dead seriousness and partly because Gish elicits considerable sympathy for her character.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Way-down-east.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11089\" title=\"Way down east\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Way-down-east.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Way-down-east.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Way-down-east-150x112.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Not only is it a great film, but it provides a window into the past, preserving a popular nineteenth-century play and giving insight into the drama of that era. It&#8217;s hard to think of another feature film that conveys such a genuine record of the Victorian theater, directed by a man who had made his start on the stage of the same period. (Unfortunately the film does not survive complete. The Kino version linked above is from the Museum of Modern Art&#8217;s restoration, which provides intertitles to explain what happens during missing scenes.)<\/p>\n<p><em>Way Down East <\/em>displayed a conservative attitude toward sex that was rapidly receding into the past&#8211;at least as far as the movies were concerned. The same year saw two films that set the tone for the Roaring &#8217;20s in their more risqu\u00e9 depiction of romantic relationships:\u00a0 Cecil B. De Mille&#8217;s <em>Why Change Your Wife?<\/em> and Mauritz Stiller&#8217;s frankly titled Swedish comedy <em>Erotikon.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>De Mille has featured on our previous lists, for <em>Old Wives for New<\/em> in 1918 and <em>Male and Female<\/em> in 1919. <em>Why Change Your Wife? <\/em>ramped up the sexual aspect of the plot, however, as a <em>Photoplay<\/em> reviewer made clear: &#8220;&#8221;Having achieved a reputation as the great modern concocter of the sex stew by adding a piquant dash here and there to <em>Don&#8217;t Change Your Husband<\/em>, and a little more to <em>Male and Female<\/em>, he spills the spice box into Why Change Your Wife?&#8221; The plot is not nearly as daring as this suggests. Gloria Swanson plays a wife who is straight-laced and intellectual, driving her husband to spend time with a stylish woman who tries to seduce him. Yet he flees after one kiss, and after his wife divorces him on the assumption that he has cheated on her, he marries the seductress. The heroine discovers the error of her ways and becomes sexy in her dress and behavior. As a result the husband regains his old love for her, and they remarry. No actual adultery occurs, and the first marriage is affirmed with a happy ending.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11107\" title=\"Why Change 1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-1-150x112.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11108\" title=\"Why Change 2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"226\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-2.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Why-Change-2-150x113.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Why Change Your Wife?<\/em> may have seemed more daring because De Mille here externalizes the shifting relationships through the costumes to the point where no viewer could miss the implications. Initially the wife&#8217;s demure dresses mark her as prudish, while the woman who lures her husband away is dressed like a vamp. Once the wife lets go, she dons similar revealing, expensive designer clothes. As a result, the male members of the audience might revel in a fantasy of their ideal wife, and the women would delight in displays of fashions most of them could never own in reality. It proved a successful combination. We tend to forget it now, but the 1920s was full of variants and imitations of <em>Why Change Your Wife?<\/em>, often featuring a fashion-show scene that was nothing but a parade of models in outlandish clothes. (Early Technicolor was sometimes shone off in such sequences.) Top designers like Ert\u00e9 were recruited to bring their talents to such films.<\/p>\n<p>Fashion as a selling point in films remains with us. The glossy new version of <em>The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=11057\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recently decried <\/a>by David, now has a regular &#8220;Hollywood Style&#8221; section. The November 24 issue ran &#8220;Costumes of <em>The King&#8217;s Speech<\/em>,&#8221; and the December 1 issue describes &#8220;Fashions of <em>The Tourist<\/em>,&#8221; with photos of Angelina Jolie in her various costumes. In addition to shots of the stars, both articles feature enticing close-ups of lipstick, shoes, jewelry,and purses.<\/p>\n<p>A double feature of <em>Why Change Your Wife?<\/em> and <em>Erotikon<\/em> would provide a vivid sense of the differing moral outlooks of mainstream America and Europe in the post-war years. In <em>Erotikon<\/em>, the situation is reversed. An absent-minded entomologist neglects <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-11110\" title=\"Erotikon 2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"358\" height=\"259\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-2.jpg 358w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-2-150x108.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 358px) 100vw, 358px\" \/><\/a>his sexy wife, who is having an affair with a nobleman. She is in love, however, with a sculptor, who is having an affair with his model. The sculptor returns her love, but eventually becomes jealous, not of her husband, who is his best friend, but of her lover. When the husband finds out that his wife has been unfaithful, he is mildly upset, but he settles down happily with his cheerful young niece, who pampers his taste for plain cooking and an undemanding home life. About the only thing these two films have in common is that they view divorce, which was still quite a controversial issue in the 1920s, as sometimes benefiting the people involved. Adultery actually occurs rather than being hinted at but avoided, though faithful monogamy is ultimately put forth as the ideal.<\/p>\n<p><em>Erotikon<\/em> reflects some of the influences from Hollywood that were seeping into European films after the war. Sets are larger, cuts more frequent (though not always respecting the axis of action), and three-point lighting crops up occasionally. Yet Stiller maintains the strengths of the Scandinavian cinema of the 1910s, with skillful depth staging (left) and a dramatic use of a mirror. In the opening of a crucial scene where the sculptor confronts the wife with her adultery, tension builds because she does not know he is watching her until she sees him in the mirror (see bottom). Still, apart from its European sophistication, <em>Erotikon<\/em> could pass for an American film of the same era. Stiller and lead actor Lars Hansen would both be working in Hollywood by the mid-1920s.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t allow the nearly unknown director William C. de Mille to take up two slots this year, though it\u2019s tempting. William\u2019s career was shorter than that of his much better-known brother Cecil. It peaked in 1920 and 1921, though, and I still\u00a0 look back fondly on the\u00a0 films by him that were shown in \u201cLa Giornate del Cinema Muto\u201d festival of 1991. That year saw a large retrospective of Cecil&#8217;s films, and the organizers wisely decided to include a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Conrad-in-Search-of-His-Youth.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-11096\" title=\"Conrad in Search of His Youth\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Conrad-in-Search-of-His-Youth.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"358\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Conrad-in-Search-of-His-Youth.jpg 358w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Conrad-in-Search-of-His-Youth-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 358px) 100vw, 358px\" \/><\/a>sampling of William&#8217;s surviving work.<\/p>\n<p>The two men&#8217;s approaches were markedly different. Where Cecil by this point was setting his films among the rich and using visual means like costumes to make the action crystal-clear to the audience, William was more likely to favor middle-class settings with small dramas laced with humor and presented with restrained acting and small props. Despite William&#8217;s skill as a director and his ability to create sympathy for his characters, he never gained much prominence, especially compared to his brother. He retired from filmmaking in 1932, at the relatively young age of 54. Yet obviously he was attuned to his brother&#8217;s style, having written the script for <em>Why Change Your Wife?<\/em> It may be characteristic of the two that Cecil capitalized the De in De Mille, while William didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Relatively few of William&#8217;s films survive, but these include two excellent films from 1920, <em>Jack Straw<\/em> and <em>Conrad in Quest of His Youth<\/em>. I don&#8217;t remember <em>Jack Straw<\/em> well enough to describe it. It involved the hero&#8217;s falling in love with a woman when they both live in the same Harlem apartment building. When her family becomes rich, Straw disguises himself as the Archduke of Pomerania in order to woo her. Sort of a Ruritanian romance but played out in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>I remember <em>Conrad in Quest of His Youth <\/em>better. The hero returns from serving as a soldier in India. He feels old and decides to try and recover his youth. The first attempt comes when he and three cousins agree to return to their childhood home and indulge themselves in the simple pleasures of their youth. Eating porridge for breakfast is a treasured memory, but the group discovers that this and other delights are no longer enjoyable to them as adults. Conrad goes on to seek romance elsewhere and eventually finds a woman who makes him feel young again. The film&#8217;s poignant early section manages in a way that I&#8217;ve never see in any other film to convey both nostalgia for the joys of childhood and the sad impossibility of recapturing them.<\/p>\n<p>Neither film is available on DVD. Indeed, I couldn&#8217;t find an image from either to use as an illustration. The only picture I located is a rather uninformative one from <em>Conrad in Quest of His Youth<\/em>, above right, which I scanned from William C.&#8217;s autobiography (<em>Hollywood Saga<\/em>, 1939). It&#8217;s no doubt an indicator of William&#8217;s modesty that the frontispiece of this book is a picture of his brother directing a film.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe this entry will serve as a hint to one of the DVD companies specializing in silent movies that these two titles deserve to be made available. They&#8217;re high on my list of films I would love to see again.<\/p>\n<p>Most people who study film history see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cabinet-Dr-Caligari-Restored-Authorized\/dp\/B00006JMQG\/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291227270&amp;sr=1-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari<\/em><\/a> very early on, though they probably push it to the backs of their minds later on. I have a special fondness for <em>Caligari<\/em> precisely because I did see it early on. I took my first film course, a survey history of cinema, during my junior year. Maybe I would have gotten hooked and gone on to graduate school in cinema studies anyway, but it was <em>Caligari<\/em> that initially fascinated me. It\u00a0 was simply so different from any other films I had seen in what I suddenly realized was my limited movie-going experience. It inspired me to go to the library to look up more about it, a tiny exercise in film research.<\/p>\n<p>Some may condemn it as stage-bound or static. Despite its painted canvas sets and heavy makeup, however, it\u2019s not really like a stage play. Many of the sets are conceived of as representing deep space, though often only with a false perspective achieved by those painted sets:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-in-hallway.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11076\" title=\"Caligari in hallway\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-in-hallway.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-in-hallway.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-in-hallway-150x115.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-Jane-at-deserted-fair.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11077\" title=\"Caligari Jane at deserted fair\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-Jane-at-deserted-fair.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"191\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-Jane-at-deserted-fair.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Caligari-Jane-at-deserted-fair-150x114.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Still, in an era when experimental cinema was largely unknown, <em>Caligari <\/em>was a bold attempt to bring a modernist movement from the other arts, Expressionism, into the cinema. It succeeded, too, and inaugurated a stylistic movement that we still study today.<\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t watched <em>Caligari<\/em> in years (I think I know it by heart), but I\u2019m still fond of it. The plot is clever <em>grand guignol<\/em>. It has three of the great actors of the Expressionist cinema, Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, and Lil Dagover, demonstrating just what this new performance style should look like. The frame story retains the ability to start arguments. The set designs area dramatically original, and muted versions of them have shown up in the occasional film ever since 1920. Even if you don\u2019t like it, <em>Caligari<\/em> can lay claim to being the most stylistically innovative film of its year.<\/p>\n<p>As I did for our 1918 ten-best, I&#8217;m cheating a bit by filling one slot of the ten with a pair of shorts by two of the great comics of the silent period. Both have matured considerably in the intervening two years. In 1918, Harold Lloyd was still working out his &#8220;glasses&#8221; character. By this point he is much closer to working with his more familiar persona. Similarly, in 1918, Buster Keaton was still playing a somewhat subordinate role in partnership with Fatty Arbuckle. In 1920, he made his first five solo shorts, co-directing them with Eddy Cline.<\/p>\n<p>The Lloyd film I&#8217;ve chosen is <em>High and Dizzy<\/em>, the second short in which he went for &#8220;thrill comedy&#8221; by staging part of the action high up on the side of a building. (See the image at the top.) Four years later he would build a feature-length plot around a climb up such a building in <em>Safety Last<\/em>, one of his most popular films. In <em>High and Dizzy<\/em>, Harold is not quite the brash (or shy) young man he would soon settle on as the two variants his basic persona. The opening shows him as a young doctor in need of patients. He soon falls in love with the heroine, and through a drunken adventure, ends up in the same building where she lies asleep. She sleepwalks along a ledge outside her window, and when Harold goes out to rescue her, she returns to her bedroom and unwittingly locks him out on the ledge. The film is included in the essential <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harold-Lloyd-Comedy-Collection-Vols\/dp\/B000B5XORA\/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291260286&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection&#8221; box-set<\/a>, or on one of the two discs in Kino&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harold-Lloyd-Collection-Slapstick-Symposium\/dp\/B000AM4PJ0\/ref=sr_1_8?s=dvd&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291260286&amp;sr=1-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;The Harold Lloyd Collection,&#8221;<\/a> Vol. 2.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Neighbors<\/em> was the fifth of the five Keaton\/Cline shorts made in 1920. (It was actually released in early 1921, but I&#8217;ll cheat a little more here; there are other Keaton films to come in next year&#8217;s list.) It&#8217;s a Romeo and Juliet story of Keaton as a boy in one working-class apartment house who loves a girl in a mirror-image house opposite it. Two bare, flat yards with a board fence running exactly halfway between them separate the lovers. Naturally the two sets of parents are enemies.<\/p>\n<p>Lots of good comedy goes on inside the apartment blocks, but the symmetrical backyards and the fence inspire Keaton. We soon realize that his instinctive ability to spread his action up the screen as well as across it was already at play. The action is often observed straight-on from a camera position directly above the fence, so that we&#8211;but usually not the characters&#8211;can see what&#8217;s happening on both sides. For one extended scene involving policemen, Keaton perches unseen high above them, hidden. Even though we can&#8217;t see him, the directors keep the framing far enough back that the place where we know he&#8217;s lurking is at the top of the frame as we watch the action unfold. The playful treatment of the yard culminates in an astonishingly acrobatic gag that brings in Keaton&#8217;s early music-hall talents.<\/p>\n<p>The boy and girl have just tried to get married, but her irate father has dragged her home and imprisoned her in a third-floor room. She signals to Keaton, across from her in an identical third-floor window. A scene follows in which two men appear from first- and second-story windows below Keaton, and he climbs onto the shoulders of the two men below. This human tower crosses the yard several times, attempting to rescue the girl; each time they reach the other side, they hide by diving through their respective windows:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11092\" title=\"Neighbors 1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"195\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-1.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-1-150x117.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11093\" title=\"Neighbors 2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-2.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Neighbors-2-150x116.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/neighbors4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11104\" title=\"neighbors4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/neighbors4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/neighbors4.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/neighbors4-150x115.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>They perform similar acrobatics on the return trips to the left side, carrying the bride&#8217;s suitcase or fleeing after her father suddenly appears.<\/p>\n<p><em>Neighbors<\/em> is included as one of two shorts accompanying <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Chances-Neighbors-Balloonatic-Buster-Keaton\/dp\/6305701261\/ref=sr_1_13?s=dvd&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291262602&amp;sr=1-13\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Seven Chances<\/em><\/a> in the Kino series of Keaton DVDs, available as a group in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sherlock-Hospitality-Navigator-Steamboat-Battling\/dp\/B00005QW5A\/ref=sr_1_6?s=dvd&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291262698&amp;sr=1-6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">box-set<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Our final two films lie more in David&#8217;s areas of expertise than mine, so at this point I turn this entry over to him.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas-1-400-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11126\" title=\"Barrabas 1 400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas-1-400-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"309\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas-1-400-1.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas-1-400-1-150x115.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas-1-400-1-388x300.jpg 388w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>DB here:<\/p>\n<p>With\u00a0<em>Barrabas<\/em> Feuillade says farewell to the crime serial. Now the mysterious gang is more respectable, hiding its chicanery behind a commercial bank. Sounds familiar today. As Brecht asked: What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?<\/p>\n<p>Over it all towers another mastermind, the purported banker Rudolph Strelitz. In his preparatory notes Feuillade called him \u201ca sort of sadistic madman, a virtuoso of crime . . . a dilettante of evil.\u201d Against Strelitz and his Barrabas network are aligned the lawyer Jacques Var\u00e8se, the journalist Raoul de N\u00e9rac (played by reliable \u00c9douard Math\u00e9), and the inevitable comic sidekick, once again Biscot (so perky in <em>Tih Minh<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>The film\u2019s seven-plus hours (or more, depending on the projection rate) run through the usual abductions, murders, impersonations, coded messages, and chases. But there\u2019s little sense of the adventurous larking one finds in <em>Tih Minh<\/em> (1919), in which the hapless villains keep losing to our heroes. The tone of <em>Barrabas<\/em> is set early on, when Strelitz forces an ex-convict into murder, using the letters of the man&#8217;s dead son as bait. The man is guillotined. The epilogue rounds things off with a series of happily-ever-afters in the manner of <em>Tih Minh<\/em>, but these don\u2019t dispel, at least for me, the grim schemes that \u00a0Strelitz looses on a society devastated by the war. Add a whiff of anti-Semitism (the Prologue is called \u201cThe Wandering Jew\u2019s Mistress\u201d), and the film can hardly seem vivacious.<\/p>\n<p>According to Jacques Champreux, <em>Barrabas<\/em> was the first installment film for which Feuillade prepared something like a complete scenario, although it evidently seldom described shots in detail. The film has a quick editing pace (the Prologue averages about three seconds per shot), but that is largely due to the numerous dialogue titles that interrupt continuous takes. With nearly twenty characters playing significant roles and some flashbacks to provide backstory, there\u2019s a lot of information to communicate.<\/p>\n<p>Of stylistic interest is Feuillade\u2019s movement away from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=10622\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the commanding use of depth<\/a> we find in <em>Fant\u00f4mas<\/em> and other of his previous masterworks. Here the staging is mostly lateral, stretching actors across the frame. Very often characters are simply captured in two-shot and the titles do the work, as if Feuillade were making talking pictures without sound. Once in a while we do get concise shifting and rebalancing of figures, usually around doorways. Here Jacques vows to go to Cannes and tell the police of the kidnapping of his sister. As Raoul and Biscot start to leave, Jacques pivots and says goodbye to No\u00eblle, creating a simple but touching moment of stasis to cap the scene.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas4-300dpi1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11128\" title=\"Barrabas4 300dpi\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas4-300dpi1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas4-300dpi1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas4-300dpi1-150x108.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas3-300dpi.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11129\" title=\"Barrabas3 300dpi\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas3-300dpi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas3-300dpi.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas3-300dpi-150x108.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas2-300dpi.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11130\" title=\"Barrabas2 300dpi\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas2-300dpi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas2-300dpi.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Barrabas2-300dpi-150x108.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Full of incident but rather joyless, <em>Barrabas<\/em> will never achieve the popularity among cinephiles of the more delirious installment-films, but it remains a remarkable achievement. The <em>cin\u00e9-romans<\/em> that would follow until Feuillade\u2019s death in 1925 would lack its whiff of brimstone. They would mostly be melodramatic Dickensian tales of lost children, secret parents, strayed messages, and faithful lovers. <em>Barrabas<\/em> is not available on DVD.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11135\" title=\"Masterman1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"302\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman1.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman1-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman1-397x300.jpg 397w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You might think that a movie that opens with a frowning old man studying a skeleton would also be somewhat unhappy fare. Such isn&#8217;t actually the case with Victor Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m&#8217;s generous-hearted <em>M\u00e4sterman<\/em>, a story of a village pawnbroker obliged to take a young woman as a housekeeper. With his stovepipe hat and air of sour disdain, Samuel Eneman, known to the village as M\u00e4sterman, is a ripe candidate for rehabilitation. Once Tora is installed and has put a birdcage (that silent-cinema icon of trapped womanhood) on the window sill, the scene is set for M\u00e4sterman&#8217;s return to fellow feeling. But she is there merely to cover the debts and crime of her sailor boyfriend, and eventually Eneman realizes he must make way for young love.\u00a0The drama is played out in front of the townspeople, and as often happens in Nordic cinema (e.g.,<em> Day of Wrath<\/em>, <em>Breaking the Waves<\/em>) the community plays a central role in judging, or misjudging, the vicissitudes of passion.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman3-2502.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-11144\" title=\"Masterman3 250\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman3-2502.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"264\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman3-2502.jpg 264w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Masterman3-2502-150x109.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 264px) 100vw, 264px\" \/><\/a>As a director Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m is a marvel. His finesse in handling the 1910s &#8220;tableau style&#8221; shines forth in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=2674\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ingeborg Holm<\/a><\/em> (1913), but unlike Feuillade and most of his contemporaries, he immediately grasped the emerging trend of analytical editing. His\u00a0<em>The Girl from the Marsh Croft<\/em> (1917) and <em>Sons of Ingmar<\/em> (1918-1919) show a mastery of graded shot-scale, eyeline matching, and the timing of cuts. In\u00a0<em>M\u00e4sterman<\/em> he continued to use brisk editing and close-ups to suggest the undercurrents of the drama. He moves people effortlessly through adjacent rooms, and his long-held passages of intercut glances recall von Stroheim. On all levels, <em>M\u00e4sterman<\/em> deserves to be more widely known&#8211;an ideal opportunity for an enterprising DVD company.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>For a valuable source on Feuillade\u2019s preparation for <em>Barrabas<\/em> and other of his works\u00a0see Jacques Champreux, \u201cLes Films \u00e0\u00a0episodes de Louis Feuillade,\u201d in <em>1895<\/em> (October 2000), special issue on Feuillade, pp. 160-165. I discuss Feuillade&#8217;s adoption of editing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/books\/figures_intro.php?ss=2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">elsewhere on this site<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Tom Gunning provides an in-depth discussion of Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m&#8217;s style at this period in &#8220;&#8216;A Dangerous Pledge&#8217;: Victor Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m&#8217;s Unknown Masterpiece, <em>M\u00e4sterman<\/em>,&#8221; in <em>Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930<\/em>, ed. John Fullerton and Jan Olsson (Sydney: John Libbey, 1999), pp.204-231. For more on some of the directors discussed in this entry, check the category list on the right.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11115\" title=\"Erotikon 3\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"376\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-3.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-3-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Erotikon-3-398x300.jpg 398w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Erotikon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>High and Dizzy Kristin here: Three years ago, we saluted the ninetieth anniversary of what was arguably the year when the classical Hollywood cinema emerged in its full form. The stylistic guidelines that had been slowly formulated over the past decade or so gelled in 1917. We included a list of what we thought were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,143,104,87,242,94,1,12,14,60,59,57,33,137,93,68,294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1910s-cinema","category-directors-feuillade","category-directors-griffith","category-directors-keaton","category-directors-lloyd","category-directors-sjostrom","category-film-comments","category-film-history","category-film-scholarship","category-technique-cinematography","category-technique-staging","category-hollywood-aesthetic-traditions","category-national-cinemas-france","category-national-cinemas-germany","category-national-cinemas-sweden","category-silent-film","category-the-ten-best-films-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11070"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38395,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11070\/revisions\/38395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}