Today's year on this fine, fine day of Merrick's March Movie Madness is 1915.
1915 was a watershed year in cinema all over the world (even FRANCE!), and it's one of my absolute favorite years. The three movies I've selected may cause quite a stir for some, and their content back in the day made Al Capone cry and nuns quit the church to join biker gangs.
1915
And what a year it was folks! To start things off:
I. LA FOLIE DU DOCTEUR TUBE
Directed by Abel Gance
This film is BY FAR one of the strangest thing ever thrown up onto a random screen somewhere in France (and that's saying something because there are A LOT of odd French films and I love them all).
La Folie du Docteur Tube is one of the first science fiction films and one of the first experimental films too. To showcase the odd storyline (about a mad scientist with an oddly shaped head and bad teeth who invents a hallucinogenic powder and wreaks havoc on the world with it), Gance refrains from using title cards. One is left to try to decipher this weird little movie to the best of their ability like all halfway decent experimental films that aren't churned out by some weird film student from SUNY Purchase.
The film employs some of the first uses of curved lenses, fish-eye lenses, and fast-motion and they are used in a way that's still pretty masterful for today. It's a hilarious sci-fi comedy that broke new grounds in experimental cinema.
II. LES VAMPIRES (November 13th, 1915- June 30th, 1916)
Directed by Louis Feuillade
With the exception of the early Lumiere Brothers films and Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902) (among many of his other films), no other French film has had quite the influence of Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires.
The 10 part, 400 minute crime story shot off like a kamikaze spaceship in the cinema world because there was nothing like it around. No other film was willing to cover topics like Apache gangs, decapitation, and suicide at the time and more than that, none of them would SHOW IT.
A remake of Les Vampires was attempted back in 1996 and it was alright, but nothing compared to the original. Every exploitation film, art film, grindhouse grind, French New Wave, film noir, neo noir, and crime movie references this movie or shows its influence without even realizing it. Even Fantômas (another Feuillade picture) hasn't had the sheer influence of Les Vampires.
III. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (February 8th, 1915)
Directed by D.W. Griffith
America's not too proud of its past. We've got more race hatred here than in four episodes of Roots. However, out of that racism came jazz and Spike Lee movies. Also out of that racism came this one, my third favorite of 1915, the first American epic: The Birth of a Nation.
D.W. Griffith's magnum opus is beyond large scale. Clocking in at 3 hours and a $110,000 budget (massive for that time period), this movie redefined cinema. It's one of the first blockbusters (don't tell Steven Spielberg that, there's a big difference between Birth of a Nation and Jaws). Even with its content that includes the Lincoln assassination and the "glorious" rise of the Ku Klux Klan, this film is absolutely beautifully realized by Griffith.
Even if it's been used by the KKK and other white supremacist organizations to get angsty white teenagers to join their ranks, this movie changed everything. Roger Ebert compared the film to Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will in terms of its beauty that everyone is afraid to recognize. To all the naysayers I say this isn't Driving Miss Daisy or Amistad. This movie is outwardly racist and doesn't sugarcoat it's racism. I'm not saying that the racism is okay because that'd be dumber than the Bush Administration. I'm saying that Birth of a Nation isn't about the racism. It's about the majestic shots, the grand scale, and the depth of the plot. It's a film that even with its controversy, is an absolutely breathtaking sight.
1915 was a pretty wild year folks, and as the years go on the movies will just keep on getting wilder. Coming up later on we've got our next favorite year here at Merrick's Movies:
That's all for now people! Follow me on Twitter for everything you need to know about movies: @DylanMerrick6
And remember as always!
~Viva amigos,
~D. Merrick
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