{"id":32894,"date":"2015-12-28T15:37:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T21:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=32894"},"modified":"2020-08-06T20:16:55","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T01:16:55","slug":"the-ten-best-films-of-1925","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2015\/12\/28\/the-ten-best-films-of-1925\/","title":{"rendered":"The ten best films of … 1925"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Big<\/a><\/p>\n

The Big Parade<\/strong> (1925).<\/em><\/p>\n

Kristin here:<\/strong><\/p>\n

As all about us in the blogosphere are listing their top ten films for 2015, we do the same for ninety years ago. Our eighth edition of this surprisingly popular series reaches 1925, when some of the major\u00a0classics of world cinema appeared. Soviet Montage cinema got its real start with not one but two releases by one of the greatest of all directors, Sergei Eisenstein. Ernst Lubitsch made what is arguably his finest silent film. Charles Chaplin created his most beloved feature. Scandinavian cinema was in decline, having lost its most important directors to Hollywood, but Carl Dreyer made one of his most powerful\u00a0silents.<\/p>\n

For previous entries, see here: 1917<\/a>, 1918<\/a>, 1919<\/a>, 1920<\/a>, 1921<\/a>, 1922<\/a>, 1923<\/a>, and 1924. <\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The lingering traces of Expressionism vs the New Objectivity<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Joyless<\/a><\/p>\n

The Joyless Street<\/strong>\u00a0(1925).<\/em><\/p>\n

Last year I suggested that German Expressionism was winding down in 1924. It continued to do so in 1925. Indeed, no Expressionist films as such came out that year. What I would consider to be the last films in the movement, Murnau’s Faust<\/em> and Lang’s Metropolis<\/em>, both went over budget and over schedule, with Faust<\/em> appearing in 1926 and Metropolis<\/em> at the beginning of 1927.<\/p>\n

Murnau made a more modest film that premiered in Vienna in late 1925, Tartuffe<\/em>, a loose adaptation of the Moli\u00e8re play. The script adds a frame story in which an old man’s housekeeper plots to swindle and murder him. The man’s grandson disguises himself as a traveling film exhibitor and shows the pair a simplified version of the play, emphasizing the parallels between the hypocritical Tartuffe and the scheming housekeeper.<\/p>\n

The film has some touches of Expressionism but cannot really be considered a full-fledged member of that movement. The lingering Expressionism is not surprising, considering that some of the talent involved had worked on Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr.Caligari: <\/em>screenwriter Carl Mayer, designers Walter R\u00f6hrig and Robert Herlth, and actors Werner Krauss and Lil Dagover.<\/p>\n

The visuals include characteristically Expressionist moments when the actors and settings are juxtaposed to create strongly pictorial compositions.\u00a0 These might be comic, as when the pompous Tartuffe strides past a squat lamp that seems to mock him, or beautifully abstract, as when Orgon is seen in a high angle against a stairway that swirls around him:<\/p>\n

\"Tartuffe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a>\"Tartuffe<\/a><\/p>\n

A restored version is available in the USA from Kino<\/a> and in the UK in Eureka!<\/a>‘s Masters of Cinema series. (DVD Beaver<\/a> compares the two versions.) The restoration was prepared\u00a0from the only surviving print, the American release version; it runs about one hour.<\/p>\n

The other German film on this year’s list, G. W. Pabst’s The Joyless Street<\/em>, contrasts considerably with Tartuffe<\/em>.\u00a0 It was arguably the first major film of the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity trends in German cinema. I have already dealt with it in a DVD review entry<\/a>\u00a0shortly after its 2012 release. The restoration incorporated a good deal more footage than had been seen in previous modern prints, but it remains incomplete.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once more the comic greats<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Gold<\/a><\/p>\n

The Gold Rush<\/em> <\/strong>(1925).<\/p>\n

For several years now these year-end lists have mentioned Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd, in various combinations. Early on it would was Chaplin alone (Easy Street<\/em> and The Immigrant<\/em> for 1917) or Lloyd and Keaton alone (High and Dizzy<\/em> and Neighbors<\/em>\u00a0for 1920). In a way most of these films were placeholders, signalling that these three were working up to the silent features that were among the most glorious products of the Hollywood studios in the 1920s. In our 1923 list, each found a place with a masterpiece: Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris<\/em>, Keaton’s Our Hospitality<\/em>, and Lloyd’s Safety Last<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This year we may surprise some by giving Lloyd a miss. For years The Freshman<\/em> was thought of as his main claim to fame, perhaps alongside Safety Last<\/em>. I think this was largely because The Freshman<\/em> was the one of the few Lloyd films that was relatively easy to see. (Perhaps also because Preston Sturges dubbed it an official classic by making a sequel to it (The Sin of Harold Diddlebock<\/em>, aka Mad Wednesday<\/em>, 1947.) Now that we have the full set of Lloyd’s silent features available, it emerges as a rather tame entry compared to Safety Last, Girl Shy, <\/em>or our already-determined entries for 1926, For Heaven’s Sake, <\/em>and 1927,<\/em> The Kid Brother. <\/em>Let’s just call The Freshman<\/em> a runner up.<\/p>\n

Keaton’s Seven Chances<\/em> takes one of the most familiar of melodramatic premises and literally runs with it. James Shannon discovers from his lawyer than he stands to inherit a great deal of money if he is married by 7 pm on his 27th birthday–which happens to be the day when he receives this news. A misunderstanding with the woman he loves leads to a split, and in order to save himself and his partner from bankruptcy, Shannon determines to marry any woman who will volunteer in time. Hundreds turn up.<\/p>\n

The result is another of the extended, intricate chase sequences that tend to grace Lloyd’s and Keaton’s features, and to a lesser extent Chaplin’s. In fact Seven Chances<\/em> has a double chase. The first and longer part involves a huge crowd of women gradually assembling behind Shannon as he unwittingly walks along the street. This accelerates and keeps building, exploiting various situations and locales, as when the chase passes through a rail yard and Shannon escapes by dangling from a rolling crane above the women’s heads. Eventually the action moves into the countryside, where the brides temporarily disappear, taking a short cut to cut Shannon off, and he ends up in the middle of a gradually growing avalanche.<\/p>\n

\"Seven<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Seven<\/a><\/p>\n

Seven Chances<\/em> is available on Blu-ray<\/a> and DVD<\/a> from Kino.<\/p>\n

Of all the films on this year’s list, Chaplin’s The Gold Rush<\/em> is probably the most widely familiar. The Little Tramp character, here known only as a “Lone Prospector,” blends hilarity with pathos in a fashion that is actually typical of relatively few of the director\/performer’s films overall. It is, however, how many people think of him.<\/p>\n

The Gold Rush<\/em> looks rather old-fashioned compared with Seven Chances<\/em>. Although the opening extreme long shots of an endless line of prospectors struggling up over a mountain pass are impressive, much of the action takes place in studio sets, sometimes standing in for alpine locations. Both the cabins, Black Larsen’s and Hank Curtis’, are like little proscenium stages, with the action captured from the front. Yet the film depends on its brilliant succession of gags and on the Prospector’s status as the underdog who is also the resilient and eternal optimist.<\/p>\n

The best bits of humor arise from Chaplin’s ability to create funny but lyrical moments by transforming objects metaphorically. Given the plot, some of the best-known gags arise from meals. One is the dance of the rolls, part of a fantasy sequence in which the Prospector dreams of entertaining a group of beautiful women at dinner (above), when in fact the women stand him up. Trapped by a storm in a remote cabin, the Prospector and his partner cook one of his shoes. He serves it on a platter and carefully “carves it, with the leather becoming the meat, the nails bones, and the laces spaghetti.<\/p>\n

\"Gold<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Gold<\/a><\/p>\n

Many home-video versions of The Gold Rush<\/em> have been released, but the definitive restoration of the 1925 version is available from the Criterion Collection.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Golden Age in full swing
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Lazy<\/a><\/p>\n

Lazybones<\/em><\/strong> (1925).<\/p>\n

When people speak of the “Golden Age” of the Hollywood studio system, they usually seem to mean the 1930s and 1940s (and the lingering effects of the system in the 1950s). A look at Hollywood films of the 1920s shows that it was already functioning at full steam. Three features of 1925 display the utter mastery of continuity storytelling and style and a sophistication that matches films of subsequent decades.<\/p>\n

Lady Windermere’s Fan<\/em> may be the best silent made by Ernst Lubitsch, who has appeared on these lists before. It arguably ranks alongside Trouble in Paradise<\/em> and The Shop around the Corner<\/em> as one of the best films of his entire career. It’s a loose adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play, but it’s pure Lubitsch throughout.<\/p>\n

Anyone who thinks that the classical Hollywood system was merely a set of conventions that allowed films to be cranked out with minimal originality could learn a lot from Lady Windermere’s Fan<\/em>. Its completely correct use of continuity editing, three-point lighting, and the like does not preclude imaginative touches and methods of handling whole scenes. There’s the sequence when Lord Windermere visits the mysteriously shady lady Mrs. Erlynne in her drawing-room. The camera is planted\u00a0in the center of the action, with frequents cuts as the two characters move in and out of the frame and even cross behind the camera. There’s not a hint of a mismatched glance or entrance across this complex and unusual series of shots. There’s the racetrack scene, as everyone present watches and gossips about Mrs Erlynne in a virtuoso string of point-of-view shots.<\/p>\n

The racetrack scene ends with a wealthy bachelor following Mrs Erlynne out of the track. The camera moves left to follow her, keeping her in the same spot in the frame. As the man gradually catches up, Lubitsch uses a moving matte to hint at their meeting without showing it or cutting in toward the action.<\/p>\n

\"Lady<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Lady<\/a><\/p>\n

A good-quality transfer of Lady Windermere’s Fan<\/em> is only available on DVD as part of the More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931<\/a>. (Beware the copy offered by Synergy, which according to comments on Amazon.com is from a poor-quality, incomplete print.)<\/p>\n

The one title on this list whose inclusion might surprise readers is Frank Borzage’s Lazybones<\/em>. I remember being bowled over by this film during the 1992 Le Gionate del Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone, which included a Borzage retrospective. I found the more famous Humoresque<\/em> (1920) a disappointment, but Lazybones<\/em> was a revelation. This is another case of a film that was simply unknown when film historians started writing about the Hollywood studio era. It was not discovered until 1970, when it was found in the 20th Century-Fox archives. As a result, Lazybones<\/em> was, as Swiss film historian Herv\u00e9 Dumont put it in his magisterial book on the director, “revealed as the most poignant–and the most accomplished–of Borzage’s works before Seventh Heaven<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Year by year since we started this annual list, I looked forward to recommending Lazybones<\/em>, and now we arrive there. I rewatched it for the first time to see if it really deserved to make one of the top ten. The answer is yes. For me, this is as good as 7th Heaven<\/em>, or as near as makes no difference.<\/p>\n

It’s difficult to describe the plot of Lazybones<\/em>, since it doesn’t have much of one. Steve (played by the amiable Buck Jones) is a very lazy young man living in a rural village. He has a girlfriend, Agnes, whose mother scorns him. The girlfriend has a sister, Ruth, who returns home with a baby in tow. In despair, Ruth leaves the baby on a riverbank and tries to drown herself (image at top of section). Steve rescues her, and she explains that unknown to her family, while she was away she married a sailor who subsequently went down with his ship. She has no proof of this and knows her tyrannical mother will assume that the baby is illegitimate. Steve decides to keep her secret and adopt the apparent foundling himself.<\/p>\n

All this happens during the initial setup.\u00a0Then the little girl, Kit, grows up into a young lady. Along the way, not all that much happens. Steve, lacking any goals, stays lazy, which sets him\u00a0apart from the energetic, ambitious protagonists of most Hollywood films. Kit is shunned by her classmates and the townspeople, and Steve tries to shelter her from all this. He loves Agnes but quickly loses her to a richer, more respectable man. He goes off to fight in World War I, becomes an accidental hero, and returns home after perhaps the shortest battlefront scene in any feature of the period. Kit finds a boyfriend.<\/p>\n

What makes all this riveting viewing is its mixture of quiet comedy and poignancy. Steve is so amiably and unrepentantly loath to work that he is scorned by nearly everyone, and yet he commits an\u00a0act of great kindness for which he gets no credit at all, except from his devoted mother. It is clear that these snobbish townspeople would scorn him even if they knew how he has kept Kit out of the orphanage and made a happy life for her.<\/p>\n

The film is beautifully shot, and Borzage displays such an easy mastery of constructing a scene, particularly in depth, that it is easy to miss the underlying sophistication. Early on, Agnes and her mother arrive at Steve’s house. As Agnes waits outside the fence in the foreground, Steve tips his hat to her, in the foreground with his back to the camera. The mother passes by him toward the house, her mouth fixed in a sneer. We may think that Steve is oblivious to this, but once she passes out of the frame in the foreground, he puts his hat back on and slips it down over his face rather cheekily as he glances at her, his gesture suggesting his indifference to her opinion of him. (Note also the subtle touch of his lazily fastened suspenders.)<\/p>\n

\"Lazy<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Lazy<\/a><\/p>\n

Borzage has mastered the use of motifs that are so characteristic of Hollywood cinema. There’s a running gag about the dilapidated gate of the picket fence around Steve’s and his mother’s house, with each person remarking “Darn that gate!” as they struggle through it. The repetition becomes cumulatively funnier because about two decades pass in the course of the film without the thing being fixed. The acting, particularly of Buck Jones and Zasu Pitts (as Ruth), is affecting.<\/p>\n

It’s difficult to convey the charms of such an unconventional film, but give it a try and you may be bowled over, too.<\/p>\n

A superb DVD transfer of Lazybones<\/em> was included in the lavish Murnau, Borzage and Fox<\/em> box <\/a>(2008). The 20th Century-Fox Cinema Archives series offers it separately as a print-on-demand DVD-R<\/a>. I’ve not seen it but suspect that there would be some loss of quality in this format. Besides, every serious lover of cinema should have that big black box sitting on their shelves next to the Ford at Fox<\/em><\/a> one.<\/p>\n

Returning to the more familiar classics, my\u00a0final Hollywood film of the year is King Vidor’s The Big Parade<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Apart from its success and influence, however, The Big Parade<\/em>\u00a0remains an entertaining, funny, and moving film. Vidor’s scenes often run a remarkably long time, suggesting the rhythms of everyday life. One such action\u00a0 involves James fetching a barrel back to where he and his mates are staying so that he can turn it into an outdoor shower. When nearly back, he encounters Melisande, whom he initially can’t see. His stumbling about and her increasing laughter at his antics are played out at length (see top), as is a supposedly improvised scene shortly thereafter where James tries to teach Melisande how to chew gum.<\/p>\n

A very different sort of prolonged scene is the long march of James and his comrades through a forest full of German snipers in trees and machine-gunners in nests. They begin by walking through an idyllic-looking forest, then increasingly encounter fallen comrades, and finally reach the Germans.<\/p>\n

\"Big<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Big<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"Big<\/a><\/p>\n

For years the prints of The Big Parade<\/em> available were less than optimum, with some based on the 1931 re-release version, where the left side of the image had to be cropped to make room for the soundtrack. A 35mm negative was discovered relatively recently, however, and is the basis for the superb DVD<\/a> and Blu-ray<\/a> versions released in 2013.<\/p>\n

Finally,\u00a0I turn you over to David for some comments on films that fall within his specialties.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eisenstein, action director<\/strong><\/p>\n

Watch this. Maybe a few times.<\/p>\n