1910 - The Unchanging Sea

Title: The Unchanging Sea

Release Date: 5 May 1910
Directed by: DW Griffith
Starring: Arthur V. Johnson, Linda Arvidson, Mary Pickford
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0001431/
My Rating: (10/10) ★★★★★★★★★★ 

As I take my sojourn through cinematic history, I get very excited when I stumble upon a gem like The Unchanging Sea. I actually watched it for the first time about a week ago, and it's taken me this long to process why it touched me so deeply. First it's very simple...a very simple story of a woman who waits years and years for her husband to return after he leaves to earn a living on a fishing expedition. Unbeknownst to the woman, the husband has had an accident and has lost his memory. Meanwhile the couple's daughter grows up and finds a fisherman of her own, and the wife grows more and more weary at her husband's continued absence. But luckily, there's a happy ending indeed...

I think the reason it made such an impact on me is the fact that, for the first time I think, I felt effective passage of time utilized in cinema. You watch the wife age, you watch the daughter grow up, you watch the husband age. All of this plays out for the sake of the narrative, and that's something I don't think I've seen up to this point. Plus I have a great big soft spot for stories of people who sacrifice themselves to the torture of everlasting unrequited love. What a life I say.

This film was inspired by a poem by Charles Kingsley called The Three Fishers. Here's an excerpt from that poem: For men must work, and women must weep / And there's little to earn, and many to keep / Though the harbour bar be moaning.

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other DW Griffith films I have watched

Those Awful Hats
The Sealed Room - This film is about a king who gets angry that his lover is having an affair with the court musician and so, when he finds her in a room with her conquest, he summons his servants and they seal the room up with bricks. This kind of reminds me of what that one chick did to Rafe on Days of our Lives last week
Corner in Wheat
His Trust: The Faithful Devotion and Self Sacrifice of an Old Negro Servant - This is the first time I have encountered black face on my quest. I'm sure there are a lot more instances  to come though.

Resemblance?

Chloe Sevigny

Linda Arvidson

Before the Nickelodeon - The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter

 



Title: Before the Nickelodeon - The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter
Directed by: Charles Musser
Narrated by: Blanche Sweet
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083633/
My Rating: (5/10) ★★★★★✩✩✩✩✩

What I knew about Edwin Porter before watching this documentary: He was an incredibly prolific director--one of the first--who worked for Edison's company. He had a knack for film editing and helped to establish the narrative structure we are familiar with today through innovations in parallel editing. I also knew that, like Melies, he grew terribly out of fashion way before he was ready to put down the camera, and thereby lost not only his fortune but also his street cred.

As I'm kind of hovering at about 1906 in this film adventure of mine, I decided to pick up this documentary to sort of get a feel for Edwin Porter the gentleman. The innovator. 1906 was around about the time that people were starting to develop incredible technique, and Edwin Porter started to get left behind simply by over-utilizing the very tricks he created. People were tired of them and wanted more. This documentary includes an incredibly sad review of one of his later films Rescued From An Eagle's Nest where the New York Post (I believe) literally tears him to shreds.

Aside from this one moment, this doc does not really delve too deeply into Porter's life. But what this documentary lacks in detail, it tries to makes up for in the quality of print restoration for some of his more obscure films...particularly Rescued From An Eagle's Nest & Jack and the Beanstalk (which before it begins includes a set of sketches that, if they're indeed Porter's, are as INCREDIBLE a look into his process as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth sketches).

1906 - Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Title: Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Release Date: 7 April 1906

Director: J. Stuart Blackton

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000554/

My Rating: (10/10) ★★★★★★★★★★

This is truly a remarkable find. Six years after his 90 second film The Enchanted Drawing, J. Stuart Blackton brings to the cinema a series of 500-600 drawings photographed in sequence to make up the world's first animated spectacular. Only three minutes long and shot in stop motion, Blackton draws figures on a chalkboard which not only seem to come to life but, through special cutouts he created, run amok and do unexpected things. Lots of surprise live action here too with the cutouts, but also lots of exciting, whimsical animation (that Blackton himself would later call juvenile). It seems funny that, long before Disney, the man considered to be the grandfather of American animation was a Brit. But that's how those guys do. Blackton died penniless in the 40's after being hit by a bus.

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces


The Enchanted Drawing (1900)


All in all, 1906 was a trippy year apparently. It seems that all the greatest movie makers must have been taking hallucinogenics otherwise how else could they explain the level of avant garde work they were producing. This was the year McCutcheon & Edwin Porter co directed the drug fueled Dream of a Rarebit Fiend and Georges Melies brought us The Merry Frolics of Satan, which was edgy even for Melies. Here are a few pictures...

The Merry Frolics of Satan (just listen to that title!)

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (which we will discuss when we get to 1921)