However, 1927 is one of the years where cinema broke so I guess that's why I decided to include that little bit. Or maybe it was the complaint of one reader that I don't have interesting introductions (pardon me for not having jetpacks like the intro to Thunderball). Whatever the reason, it's time to get beyond that and step right into 1927 which is by far one of the most important years in movies!
I. WINGS (AUGUST 12th, 1927)
Directed by William A. Wellman
I personally find it pretty awesome that the first movie and the last movie to win the Best Picture Oscar are the only two silent films on the list. Wings is the first big winner at the first Academy Awards and to many it stops there, but this film has a lot more to it than just that. It's actually good (it's not Slumdog Millionaire or worst of all Titanic).
With the inception of talkies back in '27, I'm gonna focus on some of the last great silent films from 1927. This film broke grounds in terms of what you could show on screen and how they were shown. This movie has Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen sharing a smooch! It's got Clara Bow's boobs! And it won an Oscar? Controversial subject matter won an Oscar? 1927 must have been some strange, alien world where artistic talent is recognized and not subject to the scrutiny of prude soccer moms whose husbands haven't touched them in years so they take their weird sexual frustration out on us. ANYWAYS! This movie also revolutionized the way one could operate a camera. The fluid, realistic flight sequences made some audiences gasp, gave a few WWI veterans a delusional bout of PTSD, and made a few of the friskier teenagers in the back think they were officially in the mile high club.
Wings marked the end of true recognition for American silent cinema, but it was a fine note to end on. Plus, along with It and Mantrap, exhibited Clara Bow during the peak of her career.
II. METROPOLIS (JANUARY 10th, 1927)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang is the King of Weird. In terms of film, this guy's like Klaus Nomi's biological grandfather (his grandmother being David Bowie). Metropolis is one of Lang's best, one of his weirdest, and perhaps his most important.
One thing that a lot of moviegoers don't pay much heed to is sets. Sets are one of the most complicated and important aspects of filmmaking. Sets determine almost everything about a scene or a shot and Metropolis is one of those movies that defines what a great set is. Taking a nod from other German Expressionist films, Lang and his set crew built sets (that's right, Fritz Lang was such a total bad ass that he helped build the sets so no one could screw it up) that are nightmarish, angled, and some of the sickest realizations of pre-Jetsons retrofuturism ever put on film. This wild surrealist dream-like silent film experience is so revered that German techno band Kraftwerk released a new restoration of it with a complete electronica soundtrack. When I say this film is golden folks, I mean it makes Saddam Hussein's palace look like the dilapidated cardboard box that Clint Eastwood was raised in by rabid wolves.
The film deals with the then-current rise of fascism in Germany, as well as the pitfalls of capitalism and Soviet communism. Metropolis is one of the first movies to give some academic/intellectual legitimacy to film, but especially science fiction and horror cinema. That is why we geeks (like Terry Gilliam of Monty Python, Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, and Stanley Kubrick) love it so much. When a card-carrying member of the complete nerd community (such as myself) watches this movie, think of it as being akin to a Buddhist watching Siddhartha Gautama strumming out a few verses of WAR's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" on the old keytar.
III. NAPOLEON (APRIL 7th, 1927)
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Directed by Abel Gance
Abel Gance is the greatest director of the Silent Era. Rednecks and other racial purists might boast about D. W. Griffith; hippies and hipsters may talk about some weird Indian woman who recorded a Bengal Tiger sleeping for 8 hours and call it art; normal people who aren't easily categorized by wretched, terrible savages like me might say Cecil B. DeMille because they can't think of anyone else; then again they might also say "get away from me with that tape recorder you strange little shell of a man and quit asking me about movies", but that only happened to me once. Movie people who know movies and love movies as if movies were some weird appendage flying out of their heads know that no one was able to do what Abel Gance did. Napoleon is this brilliant director's magnum opus.
Napoleon tells the story of this dictator you probably haven't heard of: Genghis Kahn. No, I'm just kidding it tells the story of everyone's favorite dwarf with a Freudian issue. It weaves Napoleon's tale dramatically and theatrically, but none of that would have been possible without two things: 1) A stone cold beast of a lead in Albert Dieudonné and 2) Some of the most innovative technical work to ever be spit out of a projector. This movie has some of the first fluid moving camera work that wouldn't be seen again until movies like Citizen Kane and Paths of Glory. Gance employed every handheld, dolly, tracking, and tinting technique that leave audiences in awe and film buffs crying dearly for their sweet, old mothers. This is another one of those films that I'd love to say more but I'd rather have this beautiful pillar of French/all cinema speak for itself.
Napoleon didn't gain the recognition it deserved back in the day because its technical beauty was beyond comprehension in these early, golden days of cinema. Yet today in the modern world, it is revered and respected as one of the greatest pieces of all time.
Well fair readers, we have to leave the Jazz Age in favor of the Great Depression (which makes this sound a lot worse than it is), but the effect of these early days will stay with us forever. Especially with The Artist winning Best Picture, these movies are gaining more notice than ever before and deservedly so. But now, with a tear in our eyes, a song in our hearts, and excitement in our unmentionables, we leave the Roaring Twenties for the 1930's: The Cinema Dust Bowl. Next time here on Bad Craziness it's
1932!
For a better look at the cinema of 1927 be sure to check out these movies folks OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES:
The Jazz Singer (the first talkie!)
That's all from Bad Craziness! Follow me on Twitter and like the Facebook Page for literally TOO MUCH information on movies! Dancing Days are here again hombres and remember as always,
~Viva amigos,
~D. Merrick
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