ROLL THE REEL: THE ROARING TWENTIES - 1925

1925

    We're half way through the Jazz Age and film is on a fiery, dangerous trail hellbent on changing the world for good.  Movies were moving so fast it'd make your head spin with such centrifugal force, you may be mistaken for a blender.  1925 marked a year in innovation comparable to the invention of string cheese (meaning it was a groundbreaking, historic, celebrated time).  In the world of cinema circa 1925, things were like this in the words of a better man than, I fair readers:

I.     THE LOST WORLD (FEBRUARY 2ND & JUNE 22ND, 1925)

Directed by Harry Hoyt

      There are very few films that can say they've influenced as many movies as The Lost World.  And The Lost World can't say it because it's a silent film GET IT???  Anyways, before my comedy gets any worse, let me spin you why this movie changed so much.

      The effect that this non-Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation has had on visuals is equivalent -- if not beyond -- the effect that Star Wars or The Matrix has had.  The stop motion/Claymation we laugh at with love in our hearts during Christmas time when we watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer all began with this movie.  In fact, the special effects designer for another film famous for its stop motion (the original RKO King Kong), Willis O'Brien, got his start by pioneering his method in The Lost World.  It was so frightening back in the day that people became frenzied at the likeness, running out of the theater without realizing they didn't live in prehistoric times/an uncharted region of South America.  The interactions between the stop-motion dinosaurs and the actual actors was unprecedented until the 1940's with televised cartoons.
      This story of adventure, romance, and prehistoric animals shocked and exhilarated audiences; propelling cinema to new heights and probably causing several heart attacks in its wake.


II.     THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (DECEMBER 21st, 1925)

Directed by Sergei Eisenstein

      "That movie with the stairs and the old lady, right?"  To many in America, The Battleship Potemkin is a classic but they don't know why or they don't know it at all.  This Soviet propaganda film changed a lot about cinema in terms of themes and presentation.  Think like Quentin Tarantino only instead of snappy dialogue and Spaghetti Western references, it's got themes of Bolshevism and history that never happened.

      Potemkin was one of the first movies to have a discourse on violence.  It celebrates the death of a Czarist ship captain at the hands of a mutinous crew, but when the Cossacks shoot at will into a crowd, nobody's very happy about it.  Besides these philosophical quandaries, the film also revolutionized the "tracking shot".  You know how in movies the camera moves in sync with the action of a scene?  Like in the 1998 Godzilla when Matthew Broderick and the mini-Godzillas are chasing each other around adorably in Madison Square Garden?  Or in every shot of a Michael Bay movie?  Okay, that's a bad example, people shouldn't be watching Michael Bay movies.  But tracking shots are one of the basic "variant" shots in movies, and in the famous Steps scene of The Battleship Potemkin we find one of the most influential uses of all time (which is why it's the link up above).

      Every pretentious film school loser may talk about this film like it's God's gift to the Earth (but they use God figuratively, religion's too mainstream) and it's not; it's Sergei Eisenstein's and our good friends in the old USSR's propaganda office.  This movie showed people the value in moving the camera and using production as well as the plot line to introduce and analyze themes, thus setting the grounds for the study of film as an art form.

III.      THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (NOVEMBER 25th, 1925)

Directed by Rupert Julian

      No, sorry folks, this version is not the one with Gerard Butler.  This version (the original version) of Phantom stars the man of a thousand faces himself, Lon Chaney.  In one of his most revered roles (plus he's alongside one of the most beautiful ladies of cinema, Mary Philbin), Chaney dons the mask of the Phantom, but when it's stripped away, cinema changed forever.

      The Phantom of the Opera revolutionized a few things.  For starters, Chaney's innovative costume and make up gave the art of film design a greater depth than it had before.  On the same production note, Phantom changed the way we see movies.  To add to the theatrical and Expressionist vibes of the film, editors Lois Weber and Maurice Pivar and cinematographer Virgil Miller worked together to change the way we see movies.  While filming, Miller put colored gels on the lens of the camera to change the tint of the scene.  In some scenes in fact, Technicolor was used in the process thus making The Phantom of the Opera one of the first color films.  To bring out the colors, Miller used extreme lighting techniques (seen in Expressionist horror films like Dr. Caligari and classic film noirs such as The Big Combo or The Third Man) to accentuate the look of each shot.  In the editing room, Pivar and Weber sharpened the look of each frame and used dramatic cuts to make the whole thing work together.  In the words of a corny educational children's program: and the rest is history!

      Phantom may not be the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical that we all know (meaning it's actually really good), but with its history of experimentation and some of the most remarkable performances from the Silent Era, we here at Bad Craziness believe it's an enduring legend and one of our favorite films.

      For an even better look at 1925, check out these movies too readers!:
      - The Gold Rush
      - The Big Parade
      - Ben-Hur
      - The Freshman
      - Orochi

      That's it for 1925 folks, next time it's on to

1927!

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~Viva amigos,

      ~D. Merrick