![\"Victory](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Victory-1.jpg\" "\\"Victory")
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KT here<\/strong>, with some help from DB:<\/p>\n Two entries are enough to create a tradition. Once again, at a time of year when critics are picking their 10-best lists for 2009, we jump back ninety years and give our choices for 1919.<\/p>\n (For our 1917 list, see here<\/a>, and here<\/a> for 1918.)<\/p>\n I remarked in last year\u2019s post that it was a bit difficult to come up with ten films, a result perhaps of accidents of preservation or slackening of activity by certain major filmmakers. There was no such problem for 1919, and films had to be bumped off the initial list to keep it to ten. (In fact, you’ll notice we didn’t quite manage to keep it to ten.) Since some people may take these lists as a guide to exploring the cinema of the teens, we’re adding some also-rans at the end, all very much worth watching.<\/p>\n With 1919, we\u2019re approaching the decade when many of the most widely known silent classics were made. Some titles on this year\u2019s list will be very familiar. Erich von Stroheim\u2019s first film came out in 1919, as did Carl Dreyer\u2019s. Ernst Lubitsch, always a prolific director, was particularly busy that year. Other titles are less well-known, still being largely the province of silent-film festivals and archival research.<\/p>\n Three, sadly, are not available on DVD, and some others have to be ordered from sources in their countries of origin. In this day of internet sales around the world, such orders are not difficult. You need, however, a multi-region DVD player.<\/p>\n Charles Chaplin had long since left his knockabout comedy behind and was making more controlled, poetic films by Cecil B. De Mille had begun his series of high-society battle-of-the-sexes films by this point. Male and Female<\/a> <\/em>differs from the others in that it is based on a prominent literary source, The Admirable Crichton<\/em>, J. M. Barrie\u2019s successful 1902 play. The plot involved the butler of a wealthy British family. He becomes their leader when the pampered group is cast away on an unpopulated island. A romance develops between the spoiled daughter, Lady Mary (Gloria Swanson), and Crichton (Thomas Meighan). De Mille spiced up the story with a fantasy scene based on William Ernest Henley\u2019s popular poem of 1888, \u201cI was a King in Babylon.\u201d It dealt with reincarnation, one of several spiritualist fads of the period, which also included psychic contact with the dead and the fairy photographs that deluded Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Crichton refers to the poem, leading into a scene of him as king in a Babylon. When a Christian slave girl rejects his advances, he orders her thrown to the lions. The scene providesa glimpse of the costume-epic style that De Mille would increasingly turn to as his career advanced.<\/p>\n Henley, by the way, is largely forgotten today, but another of his poems, \u201cInvictus,\u201d inspired Nelson Mandela and lends its name to the latest Clint Eastwood film.<\/p>\n D. W. Griffith released an impressive lineup of features in 1919, despite the fact that he was also acting as the producer for other directors. His output includes a charming set of pastoral stories A Romance of Happy Valley, True Heart Susie,<\/em> and The Greatest Question;<\/em> a belated war film, The Girl Who Stayed at Home;<\/em> a Western, Scarlet Days;<\/em> and a melodrama that ranks among his most admired films, Broken Blossoms<\/em>. Griffith\u2019s status within the industry was Broken Blossoms<\/a> <\/em>owes its simplicity to the fact that Griffith was then making a series of films based on short stories. The title of Thomas Burke\u2019s \u201cThe Chink and the Child\u201d sounds offensive today, but it was an ironic reference to the epithet forced upon an idealistic young Chinese man who comes to London\u2019s grim Limehouse district and becomes disillusioned. He falls in love with the delicate Lucy, abused by her violent, drunken father. These three form the main characters. Another Chinese man lusts after Lucy, but for once in Griffith\u2019s work, the sexual threat to the innocent heroine takes second place to her abuse by her father. Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess convey the quiet resignation that at intervals gives way to Donald Crisp\u2019s vicious outbursts.<\/p>\n Apart from the strong performances from the three leads, the film was perhaps the first to consistently use the \u201csoft style\u201d of cinematography, an approach that borrowed from a recently established trend in still photography. The hazy views of the Chinese setting in the opening and of the Limehouse docks later on would be enormously influential on films of the 1920s.<\/p>\n The Sentimental Bloke <\/em>was restored in 2004 and this past April appeared in a DVD set prepared by the Australian National Film & Sound Archive. A supplementary disc includes historical material, information on the new musical accompaniment, and an interview with Longford. A book of historical essays is also included in the box, which is available directly from the DVD company Madman<\/a>. (Note that although there is no region coding, it is in the PAL format.)<\/p>\n When I was studying film in graduate school, Ernst Lubitsch\u2019s German period was known mainly for the 1919 historical epic Madame Dubarry<\/em>. There was little known about the two comedies that came out that year, perhaps the most amusing and delightful of all his German films in this genre: Die Austernprinzessin<\/em> (\u201cThe Oyster Princess,\u201d though seldom called by that title) and Die Puppe<\/em> (\u201cThe Doll,\u201d also a little-used name).<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to choose which of these three is Lubitsch\u2019s best for the year. Ironically Madame Dubarry<\/em> isn\u2019t watched much any more, and it\u2019s not on the recent DVD set \u201cLubitsch in Berlin,\u201d<\/a> though the two comedies are. Complete prints are rare, due in part to censorship. (If the print you see ends with a close-up of the heroine\u2019s head held up after she is executed, you\u2019ve probably been watching a reasonably complete version.) It may seem a bit stodgy upon first viewing, but I warmed up to it during repeated screenings while researching my book on Lubitsch\u2019s silent films. There are many excellent moments: the extended series of eyeline matches when Louis XV first sees Jeanne, the masterfully timed and staged long take when Choiseul refuses to let Jeanne accompany Louis\u2019s coffin, and a meeting among the revolutionaries that ends as Jeanne reacts in horror to their bloodthirsty plans, backing dramatically into shadow in the background (below).<\/p>\n Given how different these films are, I\u2019m going to declare a tie between Madame Dubarry<\/em> and one of the comedies. Wonderful though The Oyster Princess<\/em> is, I\u2019m opting for Die Puppe (above)<\/em>. Its story-book opening and stylization are charming. The hilarious scenes in the doll workshop and the monastery full of greedy monks fill out the plot, making it considerably denser than that of Die Austernprinzessin<\/em>.<\/p>\n As with Lubitsch, when I was first studying film and for many years thereafter, Swedish director Mauritz Stiller was known mainly for one film, Sir Arne\u2019s Treasure<\/em> (Herr Arnes Pengar<\/em>), though an abridged version of The Saga of G\u00f6sta Berling<\/em> also circulated. Sir Arne\u2019s Treasure<\/em> was assumed to be his masterpiece. The gradual rediscovery and restoration of other Stiller films from the 1910s has considerably broadened our view of him. Perhaps Sir Arne\u2019s Treasure<\/em> is not the solitary, towering masterpiece it was long thought to be. Still, it holds up well upon revisiting.<\/p>\n It is a period piece set in a small seaside community. A group of foreign men massacre most of a family, in search of their mythical riches. They are forced to remain in the village when the ship in which they are to sail becomes Sir Arne\u2019s Treasure <\/em>was one of the films which gained the Swedish cinema of the 1910s the reputation for brilliantly exploiting natural landscapes. Few silent films have exploited actual winter settings so well. The actors are clearly working in genuine snow; one can sometimes see their breath fog as they speak. Atmospheric shots show the wind sweeping snow across the ice. Stiller uses the blank backgrounds created by the snow to create stark, simple compositions of dark figures and objects.<\/p>\n Kino\u2019s DVD release<\/a> uses a print from Svensk Filmindustri\u2019s own archives. To my eye, the tinting used is too dark, especially since much of the action naturally takes place in the dark of the northern winter days. Deep blues somewhat obscure parts of the action. Still, the darkness adds to the brooding tone that pervades the story.<\/p>\n Erich von Stroheim\u2019s first film, Blind Husbands<\/em>,<\/a> is the only one he completed that has come down to us in more or less its original version. As the director\u2019s artistic ambitions expanded, his studios\u2019 willingness to accommodate the growing Blind Husbands<\/em> is my favorite among von Stroheim\u2019s films. It tells its story of sin and punishment with a lighter touch than his later films would. The director plays a would-be seducer of a neglected wife when the group converges in a village for a mountain-climbing vacation. Von Stroheim\u2019s eye for striking compositions against the snow-clad landscapes and his skillful use of the inn\u2019s hallways and doors to convey the characters\u2019 shifting relationships show an already mature grasp of the art form. (See right, where the villain eyes the heroine in her room but is himself watched by the protective guide in the hallway between the rooms.)<\/p>\n Maurice Tourneur\u2019s Victory<\/em> runs a mere 63 minutes in its current version, but the original footage count suggests that what we have is substantially complete. That\u2019s somewhat short for a feature by a major director at this point in history, but the simple, intense plot, based on a Joseph Conrad short story, benefits from the compression. The protagonist is a man who has escaped his past and lives as a virtual hermit on a South Seas island. Attracted despite himself, he befriends a young woman playing in a visiting orchestra and rescues her from the abuse of the orchestra\u2019s owner and the lustful advances of the local hotel owner. Returning with the woman to his lonely island, he faces the intrusion of three thugs deceived by the vengeful hotel owner into thinking that the hero has riches hidden on his island.<\/p>\n By this point Tourneur has fully mastered the \u201crules\u201d of classical continuity style and of three-point lighting. Many of the compositions in Victory<\/em> look like they could have been made in the 1930s. When I first saw the film about thirty years ago, I found the earliest case of true over-the-shoulder shot\/reverse shot that I had ever seen:<\/p>\n Since then, David has found an earlier one that sort of qualifies (maybe more on this in an upcoming entry), but this is a purer case.<\/p>\n Tourneur had also developed a distinctive approach to filming settings in long shot with framing elements within the mise-en-scene and figures silhouetted in the foreground (see top). In general the lighting is superb. Few Hollywood directors had reached this level of sophistication by 1919.<\/p>\n Victory<\/em> has been released on DVD<\/a> largely because it features Lon Chaney as one of the thugs. Image offers it paired it with another Chaney film. For some reason the titles are out of focus, but the rest of the film fortunately is in good condition and presents Tourneur\u2019s visual style well.<\/p>\n DB’s picks:<\/strong><\/p>\n Carl Theodor Dreyer began his film career writing scripts at the powerful Danish studio Nordisk. When he started directing, however, World War I had destroyed Nordisk\u2019s markets, and the American cinema was on the rise. Dreyer\u2019s generation was the first to register the impact of the emerging Hollywood cinema, and he displayed his understanding of Griffithian technique in The President <\/em>(Praesidenten<\/em>).<\/p>\n The English title should probably be something like \u201cThe Head Magistrate\u201d or \u201cThe Presiding Judge,\u201d and the plot appropriately sets up a tension between justice and personal obligation. One of Nordisk\u2019s favored genres was the \u201cnobility film,\u201d in which illicit passion plunges a wealthy man or woman into the lower depths of society. Dreyer gave the studio a nobility film squared, using flashbacks to show how two generations of men in a family have seduced working-class women. The present-day drama displays the crisis that ensues when a respected judge realizes that the woman to be tried for infanticide is his illegitimate daughter. Dreyer\u2019s abiding concern for the exploitation of women under patriarchy begins in his very first film.<\/p>\n From the early 1910s, Danish films displayed a mastery of tableau staging<\/a> and careful pacing. But The President <\/em>bears the mark of American technique in its bold close-ups and reliance on editing to build up its scenes. (There are nearly 600 shots in the film, yielding a rate of about 8.8 seconds per shot\u2014quite swift for a European film of the era.) Perhaps more important are Dreyer\u2019s efforts to shove aside the heavy furnishings of bourgeois melodrama. Compare the overstuffed set\u00a0of Hard-Bought Glitter <\/em>(Dyrekobt Glimmer<\/em>, 1911) to this daringly bare one, with its sweep of cameos.<\/p>\n In the late teens, other Danish directors were moving toward simpler settings, but The President<\/em> carries this tendency to geometrical extremes. Dreyer’s walls, bare or starkly patterned, isolate the players\u2019 gestures and heighten moments of stasis. The result is one of the most adventurously designed film of its time, and if some of its experiments do not quite come off, already we can see that impulse toward abstraction that would be given full rein ten years later in La Passion de Jeanne d\u2019Arc<\/em>. The all-region DVD<\/a> from the Danish Film Institute provides a somewhat dark tinted copy with original intertitles and English translations.<\/p>\n A prologue shows lumbering, somewhat thick-headed Ingmar climbing a ladder to heaven, where generations of Ingmars sit in dignity around a massive meeting-room (see below). There his father tells him that he must find a wife. But Ingmar then explains that he once took a wife, with unhappy results. Some long flashbacks ensue, showing Ingmar forcing a young woman to marry him. The plot takes some doleful turns, with the result that the woman is sent to prison.<\/p>\n Running over two hours (and initially released in two parts), Sons of Ingmar<\/em> has a fittingly lengthy climax that portrays the pains of reconciliation between a sensitive woman and an inarticulate man. In the film\u2019s final scenes, Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m risks a delicate emotional modulation that would daunt a director today. Using Hollywood continuity cutting with a casual assurance, he relies on subtly timed cuts and changes of shot scale to trace the couple’s wavering guilts and hopes. These last scenes have a human-scale gravity that balances the weighty paternal authority of the heavenly sequences.\u00a0In Theatre to Cinema<\/a><\/em> our colleagues Lea Jacobs and Ben Brewster have written a penetrating analysis of the performances of Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m as Ingmar and Harriet Bossa as Brita.<\/p>\n Unhappily, we know of no video version of this wonderful film. It should be a top priority for DVD companies specializing in silent cinema.<\/p>\n Another 1919 candidate for ambitious DVD purveyors is Louis Feuillade’s great serial Tih Minh<\/em>. It has been overshadowed by Fant\u00f4mas<\/em> (1913-1914), \u00a0Les Vampires<\/em> (1915-1916), and Judex<\/em> (1917), but it has a playful charm of its own. It\u00a0is, in a way, the anti-Vampires. <\/em>Instead of chronicling the triumphs of an all-powerful secret society, this six-hour saga gives us a few ill-assorted conspirators who inevitably fail at every scheme they try. The plot\u00a0is no less far-fetched than that of the earlier serial, but the twists are more comic than thrilling. (Which is not to say that we’re denied some astonishing real-time stunt work performed by the actors, as above.)\u00a0The film’s genial tone assures us that nothing bad will happen to the poor girl Tih Minh, but the villains will get enjoyably harsh punishment. In the course of the adventure three couples are formed, the routines of provincial life are filled in with leisurely detail, and the whole thing ends with a big wedding.<\/p>\n Unlike the Paris-bound serials, Tih Minh<\/em> allowed Feuillade to apply his elegant staging skills<\/a> to natural landscapes. By now he was filming in Nice, and the chases and fistfights are enhanced by gorgeous mountains, vistas of water, and hairpin roads. More than one connoisseur has confessed to me that this is their favorite Feuillade serial, and it’s hard to disagree. I always find that viewers are carried away by its zestful tale of good people who come to a good end.<\/p>\n KT\u2019s runners-up:<\/strong> I suppose that there will be some tongue-clicking over the fact that Abel Gance\u2019s J\u2019accuse!<\/em> <\/a>is not present in our list. There\u2019s no doubt it\u2019s historically important and influential, but it\u2019s also heavy-handed and doesn\u2019t add the leavening of humor to its melodrama, as some of the above films do. But it does deserve a mention in an overview of 1919. (I’ve posted about what I see as Gance’s limitations here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Last year I put Marshall Neilan\u2019s Mary Pickford vehicle, Stella Maris<\/em>, in the top ten. I\u2019d be tempted to do the same with his (and her) Daddy-Long-Legs<\/em>, but this year there\u2019s a lot more competition. But it\u2019s a charming film, and the great cinematographer Charles Rosher provides another series of beautiful images using the new three-point lighting system. It was the first Pickford film into Germany after the war and considerably influenced Lubitsch and other German directors.<\/p>\n![\"Sunnyside\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sunnyside.jpg\" "\\"Sunnyside\\"")
this point. The Little Tramp was beloved around the world, and numerous impersonators were turning out films to cash in on his popularity. Sunnyside<\/em> is his most highly regarded film of 1919, in large part because of a dream sequence in which the Tramp wakes up by a little bridge to find himself welcomed by a bevy of wispily dressed young ladies. The subsequent open-air dance displays Chaplin\u2019s extraordinary ability to inject humor into such a scene without marring its lyricism. (The only DVD version<\/a> currently available in the U.S. is a fuzzy copy.)<\/p>\n![\"Male](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Male-and-Female.jpg\" "\\"Male")
<\/p>\n![\"Broken](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Broken-blossoms.jpg\" "\\"Broken")
reflected by the fact that this same year same the formation of United Artists as a company to distribute films by him and the other founders, Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks.<\/p>\n![\"Sent](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sent-bloke-300.jpg\" "\\"Sent")
Raymond Longford is far and away the least known of the directors in this list. Films were increasingly being made in countries outside the U.S. and Europe, but few have survived. Longford\u2019s The Sentimental Bloke<\/em> is widely held to be the first major Australian film and perhaps the best of the silent era. Based on a verse poem using vernacular language and serialized from 1909 to 1915, it was set among working-class characters and filmed on location in an inner-city district of Sydney. It follows the reformation of the Bloke, a drinking, gambling man reformed by his love for Doreen. The film\u2019s original intertitles, based on the poem and told in first person by the hero, were too colloquial for Americans to comprehend, and the film failed there, even after a new set of intertitles were substituted.<\/p>\n![\"Mme](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mme-DuB-350.jpg\" "\\"Mme")
<\/p>\n![\"Puppe](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Puppe-350.jpg\" "\\"Puppe")
<\/p>\n![\"Sir](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sir-Arnes-Treasure.jpg\" "\\"Sir")
icebound. The surviving daughter of the family unwittingly falls in love with one of the killers.<\/p>\n![\"Blind](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blind-Husbands-2.jpg\" "\\"Blind")
length and scope of his films diminished. His features of the 1920s were re-edited without his consent, most notoriously when the eight-hour naturalistic film Greed<\/em> (1924) was released in a version that ran little more than two hours. For many the original remains at the top of the wish list for lost films to be recovered someday. (Number one on my list is Lubitsch\u2019s Kiss Me Again<\/em>, released in 1925 just before his masterpiece, Lady Windermere\u2019s Fan<\/em>.)<\/p>\n![\"Victory](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Victory-2.jpg\" "\\"Victory")
![\"Victory](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Victory-3.jpg\" "\\"Victory")
<\/p>\n![\"Dyrekobt](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Dyrekobt-Glimmer-1-300-plus.jpg\" "\\"Dyrekobt")
![\"Prez](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Prez-1-3001.jpg\" "\\"Prez")
<\/p>\n![\"Ingmarssons](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ingmarssons-1-350.jpg\" "\\"Ingmarssons")
Dreyer deeply admired Victor Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m, who had already given Swedish cinema some of its enduring masterpieces: Ingeborg Holm<\/a><\/em> (1913), Terje Vigen<\/em> (1917), The Girl from Stormycroft<\/em> (1917), and The Outlaw and His Wife<\/em> (1918). Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m would go on to make The Phantom Carriage<\/em> (1921), The Scarlet Letter <\/em>(1926), and The Wind<\/em> (1928). Several other outstanding movies he signed remain little known; worth watching for are The Girl from Stormycroft<\/em> (1917), Karin Ingmarsdotter<\/em> (1920), and the deeply moving M\u00e4sterman<\/em> (1920; look for this on our list next year). Among these unofficial classics Sons of Ingmar<\/em> (Ingmarss\u00f6nerna<\/em>, 1919) stands out especially.<\/p>\n![\"Tih](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tih-Minh-1-300.jpg\" "\\"Tih")
![\"Tih](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tih-Minh-2-300.jpg\" "\\"Tih")
<\/p>\n![\"Opium\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Opium1.jpg\" "\\"Opium\\"")
DB’s runner-ups:<\/strong> Perhaps not as fine as the above, but definitely of bizarre interest, are two Robert Reinert films from 1919. The title of\u00a0Opium <\/em>pretty much sums up this fevered movie. It includes sinister Asians, drug-addled doctors, a lions’ den, and Conrad Veidt in a suicide-haunted performance that makes his Cesare role in Caligari<\/em> look underplayed (see right). Later in the same year Reinert gave us an even more overwrought tale, Nerven<\/em>. This is a movie about collapse–the collapse of a community, of a business, and of the tormented minds of buttoned-up citizens. Reinert renders melodrama in images of controlled frenzy unlike any others I know from the period. Had his films been as widely seen as the official Expressionist classics, I think he would be much admired today. I analyze these two movies in\u00a0Poetics of Cinem<\/em>a, and say a bit about them in this entry<\/a>. A DVD of <\/a>Nerven<\/a><\/em> is available from the Munich Film Archive.<\/p>\n
![\"Ingmarssons](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ingmarssons-500.jpg\" "\\"Ingmarssons")
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