A Criminally Overlooked Masterpiece - 1911 - L'Inferno - Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan & Giuseppe de Liguoro

L’Inferno is one of the most ambitious films ever made. It was the first ever Italian feature film, took over three years to make, involved a cast of over 150 people and required the work of three separate directors. Some of these statistics may not sound impressive today, but at the time it marked a quantum leap in terms of scale and aspiration.

One of this blog’s goals has been to find key films between the making of The Great Train Robbery and The Birth of A Nation and prove that a whole decade of great cinema has been woefully overlooked. We have looked at many strong examples so far, but few can smash the myth that nothing consequential happened in cinema between 1903 and 1915 like L’Inferno.

I have read reviews lamenting the fact that the film pre-dates Griffith’s pioneering of the close up and that the camera remains static for the majority of the film. But I suspect film historians have overemphasised early silent cinema’s technical innovations over its imagistic brilliance. For there are four or five scenes in this film which are as breathtaking as any I have encountered in cinema.

The Lumiere Brothers held up a mirror to our lives, Méliès took us to the moon, Porter took us to the Wild West, Blackton pioneered animation; these three Italian directors take us to Hell. And given that it is five years before the brutalities of the Somme and mustard gas, given that it was made in the century which included the brutalities of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, The Great Terror, My Lai and much more – film’s first (and most successful) portrayal of Hell is of significant importance.

Furthermore, it is clear the broad influence the film has had on subsequent cinematic work - from Pasolini to Romero. The film was also successful when it was released – taking $2 million in the US alone (When this figure is adjusted for inflation it comes to just over $45 million. A remarkable figure when one considers that cinema was still a fledgling concept). Not that a film’s financial success can be equated with its aesthetic quality, but what today might be considered an ‘art house’ film was once a genuine ‘blockbuster’. 

There is one major caveat. The film was restored relatively recently; producer Tim Pierce painstakingly put together the most complete version of the film from archival footage. The team behind the restoration decided to allow Tangerine Dream to score the film – and it is a contender for the most inappropriate soundtrack ever recorded. I think Tangerine Dream have made some compelling music (Zeit is a spellbinding album) but this score is awful. It often undercuts key visuals with unnecessarily melodramatic sounds, but worst of all is a vocalist who murders some of the most visually striking scenes with absurdly reductive lyrics. I recommend watching the film a completely different piece of music (Could someone recommend the ideal piece of music to accompany the film?). 

L’Inferno is not the first cinematic adaptation of a literary text but is certainly the most successful thus far. 1910 adaptations of King Lear and Frankenstein successfully channelled their source material to allow the works to adhere to the limited time span of the one-reeler. But with L’Inferno, the three directors are able to tackle their source material without having to remove the majority of the original framework. But L’Inferno does not simply tackle Dante’s masterful work piece by piece; it provides it with a new setting which illuminates several key moments.

The film’s opening scenes do not hint at its imminent visual delights. The film is at its weakest when it portraying animals and beasts (the leopard and Cerberus both look tacky - see Cerebrus below) as Dante and Virgil wanders around a mountain.

But as they approach the River Acheron, the film’s anarchic visual aesthetic becomes clearer. Scores of naked bodies attempt to board Charon’s ferry as he beats them off with his oar (see image below). There is no precedent for such a scene in cinema pre-1911; you can have all the Griffithian close-ups you want, but the immediacy with which these images embed themselves on your subconscious is striking.

It is also important to draw attention to the scale and horror of the imagery as it distinguishes the film from being a vision of Hell through the borrowed vision of Georges Méliès. For the film uses plenty of Mélièsian trickery and is littered with references and homage to Méliès; particularly when we see the face of the devil. But where Méliès worked with no more than four or five actors, these Italian directors are happy to fill the lens with human bodies (the power of the scene where Dante and Virgil stand over the group of flatterers showering in the river of filth is partly due to sheer number of flatterers bathing in excrement - see image below). 

This also demonstrates that the three directors embraced the comic savagery of Dante’s vision of Hell. Hence the face of the devil also contains the bodies of Cassius and Brutus trying to kick free – this is the imagery of comic apocalyptic nightmares.

L’Inferno also introduces a key narrative tool: the flashback. While we have seen historic films such La Presa Di Roma and Nerone skip between passages of time – L’Inferno ‘flashes back’ to a character’s life before they entered Hell and then returns to their terrible surroundings. 

The device is employed on three separate occasions and is at its most brutally effective when flashing back to the life of Count Ugolino (see images below). When Dante and Virgil encounter Ugolino, he is gnawing away at the brain of Archbishop Ruggieri. Count Ugolino then recounts the tale of him and his family’s starvation by the Archbishop, as we see his children dead on the floor as he is dizzied from hunger. As the image returns to his soul in Hell, the contrast could not be more striking as the ‘reality’ of this inception of Hell becomes apparent.

L’Inferno has every right to be acclaimed as one of the most important and influential films ever made – yet it languishes in cinematic purgatory as an afterthought to the oeuvre of Griffith. Yet as the balls of fire reign down on the blasphemers (see image below) and we have a scene so ahead of its time with its allusions to the great film on war, it becomes crystal clear that L’Inferno is a film of superlative quality that demands immediate insertion into the cinematic canon.      

Film's first great horror film - 1910 - Frankenstein - J. Searle Dawley

            Unlike many of film’s early adaptations of literary works, the first cinematic adaptation of Frankenstein is the equal of its more famous successors. Rather than allowing the film’s limited reel time to limit its portrayal of Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, the film flourishes within the boundaries of its limitations. The filmmaker manages to translate the original text into the cinematic equivalent of a powerful Poe or Robert Louis Stevenson short story and concentrate the impact of the text’s fable.

  

          The film makes a bold departure from its source by giving the viewer the impression that the Monster may in fact be a figment of Frankenstein’s imagination. As the film draws to a close, this uncertainty compounds the tension of the film’s climactic moments. As the viewer is unsure of the Monster’s existence, our confusion transforms into excitement as Frankenstein grapples with his creation while his wife lays unconscious on the floor; we cannot be sure if he is wrestling with his conscience or actually fighting with his creation.

          

          One of the main reasons for the film’s power is its deliberate exploitation of the power of visual terror. Although Georges Mèliès consistently dabbled in the horror genre with his many incarnations of devils and monsters, they amused more than they frightened. The monster in Frankenstein, particularly when he is being created, is simultaneously grotesque and petrifying (particularly when it expands in Frankenstein’s cauldron (See image below)).     

            This groundbreaking horror film was presumed lost for close to half a century:

For many years, this film was believed to be a lost film. In 1963, a plot description (reprinted above) and stills were discovered published in the March 15, 1910 issue of an old Edison film catalog, The Edison Kinetogram.

In the early 1950s, a print of this film was purchased by a Wisconsin film collector, Alois F. Dettlaff, from his mother-in-law, who also collected films.He did not realize its rarity until many years later. Its existence was first revealed in the mid-1970s. Although somewhat deteriorated, the film was in viewable condition, complete with titles and tints as seen in 1910. Dettlaff had a 35 mm preservation copy made in the late 1970s. He also issued a DVD release of 1,000 copies.

BearManor Media released the public domain film in a restored edition on March 18, 2010, alongside with the novel Edison's Frankenstein, which was written by Frederick C. Wiebel, Jr.

            Although we must be greatly appreciative of the rediscovery of this landmark movie, we cannot help be saddened by the knowledge that many of the other great films of the era will remain lost forever.

            Interestingly, the film was also banned after its release:

This was the very first "creation" film. At the time, the religious zealots thought the film was making a mockery of God, so the film was banned very shortly after its release. After that, it was condemned to obscurity...

            The film employs the use of a mirror with great success. Cinema’s obsession with the complex relationship between the voyeur and his/her subject(s) really takes off with this film. In the film’s most powerful sequence of events, several characters appear in the mirror in quick succession. In the second of these images, Frankenstein sees the Monster appear in the mirror and is startled by his presence as his fiancé is in the next room (see image below).

            But after Frankenstein’s fiancé re-enters the room and he hurriedly attempts to lead her out of that same room, they are now trapped in the mirror’s frame as the Monster observes them from his hidden location (see image below).

            The mirror and the camera lens share many similar properties; the complex interplay between these two reflective instruments deepens the allegorical framework of Shelley’s original text. And as the film comes to its gripping conclusion, the mirror plays a crucial role in ‘defeating’ the Monster and implicating that it was in fact a manifestation of the darker recesses of Frankenstein’s imagination.

            This brilliant film demonstrates that early silent films are capable of both containing complex, allegorical narratives and frightening modern day audiences. 

A most unusual film - 1910 - The Acrobatic Fly

The Acrobatic Fly is one of the more peculiar films I have encountered. Although it only lasts for three minutes, it is a film that has consistently perplexed me for the last week.

On its surface, The Acrobatic Fly is a simple trick film involving a housefly that balances various objects on its body. However, it appears that the ingenuity of the film is that there is no trickery involved (it is a real housefly balancing the various objects); although one wonders how Percy Stow managed to ‘convince’ the housefly to perform the various tricks it pulls off.

As the film begins, the viewer’s initial reaction is to delight at the gimmick of a fly lying on its back, juggling what appears to be a blade of grass. As the first few objects change, even 100 years later, the sense of novelty is tempered by an impression of disposability. It seems as though the film will be like many a gimmicky Youtube video that fascinates for a few seconds before drifting to the most distant backwaters of our memories.

But as the film transitions from the fly spinning a web around a plastic white cup to a fly lying at a different angle juggling a smaller fly, the film becomes both grotesque and deeply fascinating. The lighting of the initial shot allows us to see the fly’s transparent wings as well as suggesting its body is comprised of several colours. As the lighting and positioning of the fly shifts for the first time, the uniform blackness of both flies is accentuated. A few shots later, the two large flies weave a large black ball that the larger fly struggled to balance him/herself (see image below), and the allegorical nature of these images deepens.

It is a fruitless exercise speculating whether this was the directors’ intention, but there is no denying the effect this transition has a potent effect on the viewer; whereas before, the fly’s repugnant exterior was offset by how it was lit and the action it was partaking in, now its repulsiveness is accentuated by the fact that it is balancing another fly. Involuntarily, it is an image that has resonated and replayed in my mind for the last few days, as I could not shake the unerring feeling that this symbolism had significant depth and may in fact function as mirror for its audience.  

Unable to word this scene’s effect on my mind, the best inclination I can give my reader of this sense of apprehension is to say that I feel there is a significant overlap between this scene in the film and the following short story by Borges (which can be found in this collection):

Inferno, I, 3

From the half-light of dawn to the half-light of evening, the eyes of a leopard, in the last few years of the twelfth century, looked upon a few wooden boards, some vertical iron bars, some varying men and women, a blank wall, and perhaps a stone gutter littered with dry leaves. The leopard did not know, could not know, that it yearned for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing flesh and a breeze with the scent of deer, but something inside it was suffocating and howling in rebellion, and God spoke to it in a dream: You shall live and die in this prison, so that a man that I have knowledge of may see you a certain number of times and never forget you and put your figure and symbol in a poem, which has its exact place in the weft of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you shall have given a word to the poem. In the dream, God illuminated the animal’s rude understanding and the animal grasped the reasons and accepted its fate, but when it awoke there was only an obscure resignation in it, a powerful ignorance, because the machine of the world is exceedingly complex for the simplicity of a savage beast.

Years later, Dante was to die in Ravenna, as unjustified and alone as any other man. God told him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, astonished, learnt at last who he was and what he was, and he blessed the bitterness of his life. Legend has it that when he awoke, he sensed that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something he would never be able to recover, or even to descry from afar, because the machine of the world is exceedingly complex for the simplicity of men.   

1910 - An Animated Masterpiece - The Hasher's Delirium - Emile Cohl

The most surprising aspect of early animation is how wildly inventive and playful it can be; both qualities can be found in abundance in the pioneering work of Emile Cohl. As with his first film Fantasmagorie, the main image in The Hasher’s Delirium undertakes a series of transformations.

Unlike his first film, however, there is an image onscreen which remains constant for the majority of the film: an inebriated man. The large white bubble in the middle of the screen represents his drunken thought dreams. As the images within the bubble become more disturbing, the bubble disappears and the man’s body takes centre stage as his body bends like Mr. Fantastic and he kicks himself on his own behind.

By focusing on the inebriated man’s ‘delirium’, Cohl is able to focus his transformations on a specific but broad theme. Furthermore, by experimenting with the effects of alcohol (the words ‘wine’ and ‘absinthe’ both appear within the white bubble) and showing the audience several images which are meant to provoke fear within the inebriated man, Cohl is touching on certain elemental fears which will be exploited routinely in the great horror films of the forthcoming decade. And by having an ‘everyman’ onscreen, Cohl is ensuring that this figure serves as a symbol for our own drunken fears.

The Hasher’s Delirium is not the first film to deal with issues of chemical excess; similar issues were dealt with in the 1906 live action film Dream of a Rarebit Fiend. Film’s interest in exploring this subject matter is unsurprising.

The hallucinatory effects of such activities is a strange blend of what we visualise, think and dream. In Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, this allows Edwin S. Porter to apply Méliès- esque visual trickery to a ‘normal’ scenario (i.e. a man walking home after eating and drinking too much). However, even with modern day films, there are limitations to the rapidity of this particular thought process being examined in a live action film.

In an animated film like The Hasher’s Delirium there is no such problem, and the constant shape-shifting of a man’s ‘delirium’ can be explored with more accuracy. And when the bubble disappears and the inebriated man’s body starts to bend, Cohl manages to capture the moment at which the man’s drunken imagination consumes any semblance of his rational mind and takes complete control of his senses.       

The film has a hypnotic effect on its viewer, as each image transforms seamlessly and at breathtaking pace. As with Fantasmagorie, I found myself watching the film several times to fully digest the range of images that the film presents in less than ninety seconds.

The film has also aged remarkably well, it is the perfect film to introduce your friends to this period of film. Its breadth of imagination and dark humour make it a remarkably modern film.

1910 - Film's first sex symbol - Afgrunden (The Woman Always Pays) - Urban Gad

Silent film’s greatest strength is the universal language of the visual image. When this is combined with the fact that a global economic framework was beginning to develop and thrive for a brief few years before the calamitous events of 1914, the rapidity of the developing artistic maturity of the medium of film on a global scale becomes more comprehensible.

In 1909, we saw film’s from Italy, France and the USA begin to harness the dramatic consciousness of film. Yet only a year later, a Danish film called Afgrunden becomes the first film to flourish and exponentially expand this dramatic consciousness (please click on the video above to watch the other three parts of the film on Youtube).

Afgrunden explores and dissects the themes of desire and female sexuality. The film concerns a young piano teacher (Magda) who goes to meet her fiancé and her parents. When she goes to visit a circus with her fiancé, she is drawn to an artist working there and runs away with him.

At more than twice the running time of any film we have watched so far on the Film: Ab Initio list (the film’s running time is just under forty minutes), the ability to interrogate a broader range of ideas is expected. But the subtlety of action and complexity of emotions conveyed marks a quantum leap from anything we have witnessed so far.

The first five minutes of the film serves as a tribute to the Lumiere Brothers. The opening shot of the film, where Magda walks towards the tram, is reminiscent of an early Lumiere actuality film. And the scene where her train arrives at her fiance’s train station is almost identical to the Lumiere masterpiece, ‘Arrivee d'un train en gare a La Ciotat’. This homage serves the film well, as it is exquisitely shot. The growing confidence of director’s in selecting certain angles and unique ways of transitioning between scenes is a delight to see.

From the opening moments of the film, where Magda climbs onto a tram and meets her fiancé for the first time, it becomes clear that silent film may in fact be a more effective medium for exploring ideas about relationships and desires than talkies are. An overemphasis on body language and the removal of any verbal language heightens the visceral nature of the lovers’ bond. The deliberately misplaced glances and awkward physical movement of the two characters possesses a delicious ambiguity that would not be allowed to exist if the two characters could converse with one another.

Later in the film, Magda’s fiancé attempts to persuade her join him and his parents on a walk. As she refuses and watches them walk away, the screen is engulfed with the void of loneliness.  For now this sense of despair is silent, but as the film continues, this despair will be expressed in a far more physical manner.

Therefore, the film can divided in to three acts, with each act culminating in Magda’s reaction to a certain situation. If gazing onwards at her fiancé and his parents was her reaction at the end of the first act, at the end of the second act she attacks a girl on stage when she believes that her lover is making amorous glances towards that girl. And finally, when her lover tears her dress and physically confronts her after she is caught talking to her ex-fiancé, she stabs and murders him.

On each occasion, Magda refuses to either conform to or accept society’s pre-ordained role for her. Furthermore, the violent intensity of her indomitable spirit increases on each occasion. Magda repels each cage she is placed in: first the country house, then the circus until the film ends with her being led away by policeman to prison.  It is important to note that in 1910, Danish women would not receive universal suffrage for another five years. Magda’s irrepressible nature must surely have resonated with its contemporary audience, and the film’s English title ‘The Woman Always Pays’, is misleading. Despite the majority of the film involving her affections oscillating between the two male leads, she ends up with neither party. And although we have to assume she will spend the rest of her life in prison, it is the heavy price she ends up paying for her independence.  

Magda is quite comfortably the most complex and intriguing character we have encountered to date, and this is largely due to the fact that she is played by the magnificent Asta Nielsen – film’s first siren and sex symbol. During the first half of this decade, only Max Linder would rival her in terms of popularity. The excellent Bright Lights Film Journal highlights the scope of her influence as well as discussing her role in Afgrunden:

Some of the most memorable images from films of the 1930s are based on the idea of strong women who resist, even dissolve, gender boundaries: Dietrich, dressed in a man's suit, offering a rare lesbian kiss in Blonde Venus; Hepburn convincing us she's a boy in Sylvia Scarlett; Garbo as a mannish ruler, staring into the camera at the end of Queen Christina. If audiences were not entirely unprepared for such imagery, it was probably because of another star with a single name who was doing the same thing more than two decades earlier. This is not mere speculation; Garbo herself acknowledged the woman who co-starred with her in The Joyless Street, saying "she taught me everything I know."...

Afgrunden was important in establishing from the beginning key components of her legend: scandalous eroticism and a uniquely minimalist acting style... In a startling sequence of sexual intensity, she lassos her boyfriend and does a lewd dance, bumping and grinding against him. This vulgar "gaucho-dance" was what most viewers remembered, but critics of the time also applauded Asta's naturalistic acting, unknown in a silent cinema noted for its wild theatrical gesturing and overwrought grimacing. In her autobiography, the actress commented on this: "I realized that one had to detach oneself completely from one's surroundings in order to be able to perform an important scene in a dramatic film. The opportunity to develop character and mood gradually, something denied the film actor, can only be replaced by a kind of 'auto-suggestion." Throughout her career she used this trance state at key moments to force the viewer to respond imaginatively to what was happening — an effect that, combined with her masklike face and minimal gestures, gives the strange feeling of watching a present-day actress who has dropped suddenly into silent movies.

Much has been made of her ‘lewd dance’, but there is a moment of equally daring eroticism earlier in the film, where the artist breaks into her bedroom. After appearing to reject his advances, they then share a passionate kiss (see image above). It is a moment of forbidden passion where the viewer very much plays the part of the voyeur. 

Although it is not as risqué as the latter dance is, it is equally dazzling. Sensuality and desire are deconstructed and stripped bare in a manner that is unique to film. There is nothing suggestive or over-pronounced about such a moment, the carnal desire on display is electrifying.

Interestingly, Nielsen’s ‘lewd dance’ (see image below) was cut from both the British and American films, in what must have been one of the earliest examples of censorship in the film industry. But it would be a great shame for such a brilliant film to be remembered only for its most erotically charged moment. However, there is no denying that this dance is the most important moment of the film. Through the medium of dance, Magda is finally able to unleash her sensuality in a manner independent of either man. The potent symbolism of her lassoing her lover is undeniable.

The highest praise I can bestow on Afgrunden is that I can think of few films from any era that deal with its subject matter as well as it does. What a fantastic way to kick off a seminal decade in film history.

The Top 10 Films of the 1900's

Film’s first full decade was remarkable by any art form’s standards. The one common thread that the thematic kaleidoscope these films share is that they all value exploring new ideas and uncharted artistic territory as much as they did narrative and form. It rivals any decade in film’s history for innovation and unbridled creativity.

For example, the constraints of time (no film on our list runs over eighteen minutes) meant that limitation did indeed breed innovation; this, coupled with the rapidly expanding technology of film itself, meant that film was a fertile breeding ground for a plethora of ideas and genres.

The century began with actuality films and trick films as the two most popular genres. By the end of the decade, these genres popularity’s faded away, as genres such as prestige films (i.e. adapting a Shakespeare or Dickens text), tragedies and romantic comedies began to captivate their audience.

The following list was quite difficult to compile as the decade contains a number of films which deserve greater attention and acclaim (and given that the list has been limited to the films I could find on Youtube and the Silent Shakespeare DVD, I am sure that there are a number of other excellent films form this decade that also deserve to be discussed).

Surprisingly, the two most famous films of the decade, Le Voyage dans la Lune (The Voyage to the Moon) (1902) and The Great Train Robbery (1903) do not make it on to the following list. This decision was not made to raise controversy.

Instead of stating that the films’ technical innovations were the most important criteria for judging the following films, the major criterion in judging these films was the same as would be applied to a film released today: how enjoyable was the film, what interesting ideas/concepts did it tackle, etc.

This in turn makes the films more relevant and more accessible to audiences, as every film on this list makes for compelling viewing, regardless of their historic background. I do not believe that these films only exist to be watched by silent film fans. And thanks to Youtube, these films now have a far greater audience than they have had since they were released over a hundred years ago.

Given the nature of this blog and the chronological approach it is taking towards viewing film, I feel like it would be cheating if I gave any retrospective thoughts on any of the films in isolation. Therefore, under each film you fill find excerpts from the articles I wrote on that particular film (the titles of each film all have hyperlinks which will take you to the main article on each films), as well as the thoughts that certain readers have left in regards to that particular film. As I have said elsewhere, the aim of this blog is not to merely to convey my thoughts, but to start a conversation in regards to these early films. So on that note, please leave your own Top Ten films of the decade in the comments section below.

10. Corner in Wheat – 1909 – D.W. Griffith

Corner in Wheat is the first film on the Film: Ab Initio list to tackle a contemporary political issue on film.

The film portrays three different elements of the corn industry: the growers, the speculators and the eventual buyers of wheat. The ease with which Griffith moves between the three different worlds is impressive. In particular, he makes the most of the technique first seen in The Great Train Robbery, crosscutting. This allows him to juxtapose the plight of the working men struggling to afford the bread with the lavish opulence of the successful speculator who attends a dinner with his society friend

Rob: The film as a whole (unlike Milton's superbly tragic verbal characterisation of Satan, say) operates in a purely visual way - the opening juxtaposing the dignified vertical plough lines of the farmers with the buzzing shirt cuffs of the owners; the second sequence mirroring left/right two tables: opulent feast and barren bread. This makes the choice of such a visual 'downfall' perfect, and brilliantly symbolic. 

 

9. Panorama from Times Building, New York – 1905

It is not an over-exaggeration to state that Panorama from the Times Building, New York provides the audience with a new way of seeing. Panorama is similar to some of the Lumiere Brothers’ ‘actualities’, except that it provides us with a breathtaking view of New York from the top of the Times Building. Within the space of a decade, film has gone from a still shot of workers outside the Lumiere Brothers’ factory to a daring aerial shot of a substantial part of New York. 

Christian Hayes: Writers online don't write often about non-fiction but it's a major part of silent film production, there is so much of it, and this is a great example. There is something about the design of New York, the rigid shapes of the buildings, the layers of corners in the background and foreground, and the puncture-holes of windows that dot every building - that is endlessly fascinating, and it's in this period that modern New York we know was born.

8. Nerone – 1909 – Luigi Maggi

The tone of Nerone is different to any film that we have observed so far, it is the first tragedy that we have encountered...

The most imaginative moment of the film comes towards the denouement of the film, as we see Nero lying on a chair, with his imaginative thoughts unfolding in the background; a pastoral scene gives way to what appears to be Rome on fire, causing Nero to collapse in fear of his own thoughts.

It is as powerful a scene as we have witnessed in any film so far, and makes great use of the medium of film to explore the apocalyptic visions the film’s protagonist. 

7. Dream of a rarebit fiend – 1906 – Edwin S. Porter

There is a lot more to Edwin S. Porter’s oeuvre than just The Great Train Robbery. Dream of a Rarebit Fiend may well have been another forerunner for the surrealist movement.

In the latter moments of the film, such as where the protagonist’ bed is flying through the city, it is clear that the protagonist is dreaming. But at the moment where he approaches the lamppost, the two worlds amalgamate with one another, and it is at this moment that the initial defamiliarisation occurs. This is also the film’s most exhilarating moment. The energy of the protagonist combines with the dizzying whirling of his surroundings to draw the audience into his drunken revelry and subsequent dreaming. 

6. Le baromètre de la fidélité (The Fidelity barometer) – 1909 – Georges Monca

 In Le baromètre de la fidélité, we have the great comic of this era attempting to expand on the slapstick humour he perfected in films such as Début d'un patineur, thus allowing him to take advantage of film’s rapidly increasing length.

Rob: What a sublime opening shot. Taking up a quarter of the screen time of the entire piece with that gliding river scene suggests a deliberate artistic consciousness that was harder to spot in some of the earlier Linder films... Again, it seems that film is entering its first mini-maturity here.

The moment that camera dips under the tree branch, in particular, is stikingly ahead of its time. A similarly mobile camera still takes the viewer by surprise in Murnau's 'Sunrise', 18 years later!

5. Fantasmagorie – 1908 – Emile Cohl

Cohl’s film did manage to lift ‘cartoons out of the realm of trick films and started them on the path toward animated features’. In Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, we are presented with separate vignettes of various characters. In Fantasmagorie, there is a remarkable fluidity throughout the entire film; each scene effortlessly interweaves with the next.

Fantasmagorie confirms the notion which Humorous Phases of Funny Phases suggested: animation is a distinctive branch of film that differs significantly to the moving picture. The films’ rapidity and ability to shape-shift demonstrates that animated film can perform different, and on a certain level, more impressive, visual tricks that those found in Méliès’ or Porter’s films.

 

4. San Francisco Earthquake: Before and After Journey Down Market Street – 1906

Living in an age of twenty four hour news media, we have become somewhat anaesthetised to the impact of the moving image (Of course I do not mean that we are not moved by terrible events such as the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill. I simply mean that we do not fully appreciate the fact that we have access to such images) in regards to natural disasters. But before this earthquake, all we had to rely on were eyewitness accounts of such terrifying events. Film would allow such events to be captured as they were, rather than how they were experienced by a limited group of people.

Rob - Amazing film...

"The latter half of the post-earthquake film feels as though we are watching the first zombie film. A mass hoard of people walk by the camera and appear listless and lifeless. The moving image not only created a new art, but also managed to alter the eye of history."

That is the most haunting thing I've read on this blog.

3. La fée des grèves (The Fairy of the Surf) – 1909 – Louis Feuillade

There are certain films that only make a notable impression on their audience after the film has concluded. They do not radiate brilliance throughout as many of the great films do, but their appreciation greatly increases when they considered in their entirety: Louis Feuillade’s The Fairy of the Surf is one of these films.

Another reading of the film is that it is an allegory for the battle between reality and the imagination. The Prince represents reality and the fairy represents the imagination.  As the Prince captures the fairy and marries her, it appears that reality is harnessing and taking control of the imagination. Yet as the imagination has a violent reaction against reality and realises that it cannot exist on this plain so must return to her river of imagination, reality secedes its attempt to control the imagination and enters the world of the imagination. It is on this plain that the two are able to happily coexist (see image below); the allegory serves as an excellent lesson for any artist, and may also function as Feuillade’s mission statement for what will be an extremely successful decade for him.

Rob: I'd have never guessed that 7 minutes of such strangeness and beauty were just sitting there on YouTube. Thanks for bringing this one ashore.

The two worlds in this film - the land castle, and the sea - are both handled with visual flair, aren't they? 

The blazing light surrounding their little boat is unnerving, too. The strange 'grain' seems almost prophetic of the Trinity test, 36 years later....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFZvCJYDme0&feat...

 

2. Le Voyage à travers l'Impossible (The Impossible Voyage) – 1904 – Georges Méliès

Le Voyage dans la Lune is often considered Méliès most important film; I would argue however, that Le Voyage à travers l'Impossible is of equal importance...

There is a sense that Le Voyage à travers l'Impossible is very much about the second wave of the Industrial Revolution and its limitations. Led by an engineer called Mabouloff (which translates as ‘Scatterbrains'), a group of travellers embark on an ‘impossible’ journey, which manages to entail a trip to the Swiss Alps as well as the sun (see above). You can draw parallels with their trip to the sun and Icarus flying too close to the sun. Perhaps Méliès is suggesting that man’s flirtation with technology will see it share Icarus’ fate.

1. The Story of the Kelly Gang – 1906 – Charles Tait

The climax of the film is the most thrilling we have witnessed of any film thus far; unfortunately, it also one of the most damaged sections of the film. However, the distortion of the damaged reel seems to enhance the dramatic denouement of the film. In this climactic scene, Ned Kelly makes his last stand, wearing metal armour (see picture below) to protect his face as he is finally captured by the police. The scene can be seen to symbolise the shift from a semi-anarchic, chivalrous period to the more functional, bureaucratic (and sometimes totalitarian) modus operandi of the 20^th century. The armoured plating is an outdated, futile yet heroic method for Ned Kelly to make his last stand. His tale will endure, but the ways of the outlaw bushranger ended with him. This aspect of the film may have resonated greatly with the audience, as the film was shown around the country for close to a decade.

By focusing on the sections of the film that have endured, I would argue that even in its current state, The Story of The Kelly Gang is a seminal film which must be brought to the forefront of debate of the early silent era. In terms of both importance and enjoyment, it stands alongside any film we have witnessed so far.

Rob: Well, all hail Charles Tait! 

This is the most impressive find I've come across on this blog so far -- a really powerful film, dating back 104 years, that I have NEVER heard mention of anywhere before. 

The celluloid image has a unique power over reality, and I think that even the (slower) first half of these fragments are worthwhile in 2010, offering the strange sensation of a sepia Civil War photograph hobbling into life... In my opinion, there is always a case to be made for abandoning the Quest for Authenticity, and reveling in the 'weirdness' of an Inauthentic vision of the past such as this. I might even be tempted to speculate that this 15 minutes of distorted footage on YouTube is greater than the c.70 minute film that spawned it.