Silent

Quote:
Mr. West was the first feature film that Kuleshov made with a team of actors who had attended his Experimental Cine-Laboratory. For four years, this group had been doing preparatory work as they planned to reform the art of cinema with an eye on montage. Yet, for a long time, their ideas remained dry theory, because the workshop lacked resources to make films. The focus of the Cine-Lab’s practice was on acting études. Details of scenes were story-boarded, photographed, or “framed” by special viewfinders in order to visualize how they might look in an edited film sequence. Thanks to these exercises, the notion of montage that Kuleshov developed was inextricably linked to his ideas on acting and shot composition. Read More »

Plot:
Jean Valjean is a forced man who after nineteen years is released. At that time he will have to fight against society’s contempt and his fate will go through various phases, from opulence to the relentless pursuit of justice, always with the shadow of his fierce enemy, the policeman Javert, who will persecute him for more than thirty years.Read More »

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The heroine of the film is a proletarian wife and mother. Her husband, a coalminer, seeks solace in alcohol and neglects his work. After he is sacked, he spends most of his time in the pub with his friends and his lover, a waitress. He wastes the money his wife earns as a washerwoman. The woman, with her work and her worries, doesn’t even remember it is her birthday but her neighbours come to visit her to wish her happy birthday. Even this happy day ends in sadness: her husband comes home drunk. When he starts destroying their meagre furniture in a fit of rage, she throws him out. The man moves in with his lover. One day the wife badly scalds herself while washing some linen and after a few days she dies. The man comes home and prepares her a simple funeral which is attended by all the neighbours. After the funeral the husband holds a wake in the local inn. Then they all return to their homes as if nothing had happened. Such is life.Read More »

Quote:
Four-generation story-saga dealing with the decline of a middle-class Lübeck family.
The first adaptation of a Thomas Mann book was also Gerhard Lamprecht’s first major film.Read More »

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Dovzhenko’s “film poem” style brings to life the collective experience of life for the Ukranian proles, examining natural cycles through his epic montage. He explores life, death, violence, sex, and other issues as they relate to the collective farms. An idealistic vision of the possibilities of Communism made just before Stalinism set in and the Kulack class was liquidated, “Earth” was viewed negatively by many Soviets because of its exploration of death and other dark issues that come with revolution.—Jeff WalkerRead More »

Quote:
The Zuiderzee Works episode of We Are Building was elaborated to the much longer film Zuiderzee by Joris Ivens in 1930. In 1934 Ivens used the same material, and additional footage, to make another version: New Earth. This time the film got a political message, and the editing became more compact and stronger, sustained by the stirring Music of Hanns Eisler. After the part on the reclamation and the closing of the dyke the film continues with images of the economic crisis and the poverty among labourers. Ivens opposes this with the speculation on the market: those who helped with the reclamation of new land for agriculture are now unemployed and starving, while grain is dumped at see to keep the prices up. The closing of the dyke is still one of the strongest editing sequences in the films of Joris Ivens.Read More »

An industrial film which shows the operations inside the Philips Radio plant: In a mêlée of activity, glassblowers make delicate glass bulbs. Machinery assists the bulb manufacture. A virtuoso glassblower begins a more complex tube used in radio broadcasting; it is then turned, fired, and sculpted. Conveyors carry partially completed units. Workers perform their various specific assembly-line tasks. Cases are manufactured and machined, wire harnesses are assembled, loudspeakers are produced. As radios near completion, they are run through a series of tests. Engineers and draughtsmen define future developments. In a closing stop-motion sequence, in a style reminiscent of Norman McLaren, a group of loudspeakers performs a playful dance. The film overall is a poetic depiction of an industrial process.Read More »

Prométhée… banquier (1921)

Synopsis:
Mr. Prévoyan, a wealthy banker, is a man who is lucky. If everything he touches turns to gold, the medal on his reverse. Indeed, riveted to his desk by his business, he did not notice that an idyll had formed between the beautiful Gaby, object of his affection, and his own secretary, Toudieu.Read More »

Nana (1926)

When the vivacious and beautiful Nana bombs at the Théâtre des Variétés, she embarks on the life of a courtesan, using her allure and charisma to entice and pleasure men.Read More »