Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora (1912)

Amongst the early animation pioneers, the name of Wladyslaw Starewicz stands as one of the most revolutionary animators of all time, as his work in puppetry and stop motion animation has proved to be enormously influential. Born in the Russian Empire (in what is now Lithuania) Starewicz entered animation while working at the Museum of Natural History in Kovno, back in 1910. Trying to make short educational documentaries for the museum, Starewicz found himself unable to film a battle between two stag beetles, which as nocturnal creatures weren't too keen of the lighting needed for filmmaking. An inspired Wladyslaw Starewicz decided to recreate it through stop motion animation and the result was "Lucanus Cervus". To this first puppet animation with insects followed many more, which earned Starewicz international acclaim thanks to the great care he put to his animation. Amongst his oeuvre, his most famous films remain his shorts with insects, of which the best known is a funny masterpieces titled "Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora" or "The Cameraman's Revenge".

In its barely 12 minutes of runtime, "Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora" tells the tale of Mr. and Mrs. Beetle, a normal looking marriage between insects. However, behind the apparent happiness of the Beetles household, Mrs. Beetle is having an affair with another insect while Mr. Beetle is at work. As soon as Mr. Beetle leaves the house, she calls her lover, an artist, to spend the afternoon with her. Nevertheless, the cuckold husband Mr. Beetle isn't exactly an example of fidelity himself, as he leaves work early to visit his favorite club, "The Gay Dragonlfy", where his mistress (a Dragonfly) sings and dances. However, a Grasshopper is also in love with the beautiful Miss Dragonfly, which results in him getting beaten by Mr. Beetle. However, Mr. Beetle doesn't know that the Grasshopper is a filmmaker, and he films Mr. Beetle's extramarital affair in order to have his revenge. Going back home, Mr. Beetle finds his wife's lover and also beats him out. After his violent outburst, Mr. Beetle decides to forgive Mrs. Beetle and takes her to the movies, not knowing that the cameraman is ready to show his film.

Written and directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz, "Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora" is apparently a pretty simple story about an adulterous couple (in fact a common topic in short comedies of the era), however, there's more than just that in Starewicz' film, as the movie also presents the possibility of film as evidence of an act. Cinema as a weapon of sorts as in a way, Mr. Grasshopper's camera becomes the instrument of his revenge revenge on Mr. Beetle. In his writing, Starewicz also shows a taste for irony in his sharp criticism of the hypocrisy of the social values of his time. This is best represented in the moment when Mr. Beetle discovers his wife's infidelity, as the cuckold husband becomes furious and, after beating the lover, shows his "generosity" and forgives his wife, even when it's already clear that he is not really an innocent beetle. Certainly, her posterior violent outburst is not caused by her husband's infidelity, but by his blatant hypocrisy.

However, beyond the film's touch of comedy (which is great), what truly makes "Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora" a remarkable movie is without a doubt the innovative use of puppet insects to tell the story. In "Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora" can be fully appreciated the great amount of care that filmmaker Wladyslaw Starewicz put into his projects, not only in the extraordinarily detailed props and costumes built for the movie (to the point that the Beetles wear boots), but in the extremely fluid stop motion animation he achieves. It's almost as if the insects were really riding motorbikes or operating a camera. Also, using purely visual narrative, Starewicz manages to give personality to his insects, he fully humanizes them in remarkable ways. This isn't an easy feat, because since Starewicz' puppets are real insects, they obviously lack facial expressiveness, so what Starewicz does is to use their actions to tell who these people are, showing an enormous understanding of cinema as a storytelling medium.

As written above, the work of Wladyslaw Starewicz would give the Russian filmmaker international acclaim, and the chance to keep improving his technique. Eventually, Starewicz would experiment with many other styles, including directing live action films (like "Noch pered Rozhdestvom"). The October revolution would briefly pause his career, as he and his family fled to Paris. It would be in France where Starewicz would polish his style and move towards a more surreal vein. Of great influence for animators across the globe, Starewicz' "Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora" remains a testament of its maker's great imagination and his great domain, not only of stop motion animation, but of cinema's purest visual narrative.

9/10
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Efpeum (1965)

The decade of the 1960s was a decade of many social changes across the globe, as a new generation was rising to find its place in history. Inevitably, such changes would be reflected in the arts, and in the case of cinema, in many places it meant the closure of an era, such as the decline of the American studio system or the end of the so-called Mexican "Golden Age". But it also meant the beginning of a new one. A renewal of ideas of sorts, reflected in the New Hollywood and the French Nouvelle Vague. In the South American country of Venezuela it meant the arrival of a new generation of filmmakers eager to break with the realist tradition of Venezuelan cinema. Amongst this new generation of filmmakers was Mauricio Odremán, a writer who had been working at several production companies and whose first produced screenplay was the 1964 film "Isla de Sal". Deeply interested in surrealism and metaphysics, Odremán reflected his ideas in a short film written and directed by him: Venezuela's first science fiction movie, "Efpeum".

"Efpeum", which actually stands for "Estructura Funcional para Encontrarse uno Mismo" (literally, "Functional Structure to Find Oneself"), begins at the University, where an Architect (Samuel Roldán) is giving a lecture about his new idea: a building, or better said, a structure that more than serving as a housing project could actually help its inhabitants to transcend this dimension. The audience explodes in laughter and the Architect is humiliated and leaves the University. He wanders around, until he is told that there's a man who can help him, an Alchemist (Carlos Guerrero). The Architect meets the Alchemist and explains his project, and proposes him to combine their knowledge in order to create EFPEUM. The Alchemist agrees somewhat reluctantly, and the two begin their work. The two of them have differences, but soon the Architect begins to learn the way of the Alchemist, who begins to consider the Architect as his equal. The arrival of the Alchemist's partner Andreina (Bertha Mantilla) will make them become one.

As can be imagined by the plot, Mauricio Odremán (who wrote the screenplay) uses the conceptions of science fiction in "Efpeum" as the way to express his metaphysical and philosophical beliefs. Basically, "Efpeum" is to the science fiction genre what Jodorowsky's "El Topo" is to the Western. In fact, while in terms of style there is no apparent influence from the Chilean filmmaker, thematically Odremán's "Efpeum" covers topics that are pretty similar to the ones explored by the director of "The Holy Mountain". In "Efpeum", Odremán implies the search for a higher state of mind, and represents two viewpoints in the film's two main characters. The Architect, symbol of reason, pursues knowledge and has the willpower to achieve the project, though his view is narrow due to what society has taught to him. The Alchemist, represents a knowledge closer to nature, a freedom the Architect lacks. However, both are needed to transcend, and the catalyst for this is the female figure, Andreina, and in sexual union the three of them become one.

Visually, Mauricio Odremán's film is a very symbolic work, in which the imagery captured by cinematographer Tony Rodríguez is of a quite allegoric nature. The world of Odremán is a desolated land, in which the human figures seem to be alone looking for meaning, while the University has an oppressive architecture, reminiscent of the German Expressionist style. In his vision of future, Odremán contrasts nature and science, echoing the themes of his screenplay, and this duality is played through the film in its many different set pieces. The narrative is disjointed, though not incoherent, and it follows several stages in the relationship between the Architect and the Alchemist as EFPEUM is being constructed and Andreina appears in their lives. Through the film, Odremán uses sound in pretty interesting and strange ways, aiming to disconcert and disturb in some way. However, the most bizarre of this is his use of romantic ballads to narrate passages of the story (for example, a love song to EFPEUM opens the film), which is quite odd to say the least.

The performances by the cast are a bit stagy, though given the allegorical nature of "EFPEUM", it's probably meant to be this way. Still, it's perhaps the film's weakest element, as the work is unfortunately of a mediocre quality. The only saving grace is Samuel Roldán, who plays the Architect, carrying the story with a natural charm and a certain dignity that makes the outlandish film a tad more believable. Sadly, it can't be said the same about fellow cast-members Carlos Guerrero and Bertha Mantilla. Guerrero, who plays the Alchemist, is too hammy in his role, and even given the nature of the film his work looks out of place. As the mystic Alchemist, Guerrero unfortunately makes more a parody of his role and diminishes the power of the film. However, even worse is Bertha Mantillo, who plays the Alchemist's partner Andreina. While Andreina is meant to represent the sensuous being, an unleashed magic in pure form, her performance is too wooden to be taken seriously, and sadly feels more like a robot than like the wild force of nature she should be.

As can be seen by now, Mauricio Odremán's "Efpeum" is not exactly the typical science fiction tale, it's more a full expression of its maker's metaphysical ideas. An allegoric exploration of themes in which the message between lines is far more important than the actual story. As written above, given its surreal take on philosophical themes, the cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky could be a considered a close relative to Odremán's film, and as such, this 30 minutes short film is equally as cryptic. However, "Efpeum" suffers of several problems that somewhat difficult its enjoyment. Not only the afore mentioned low quality of the performances is off putting, what's perhaps the greatest problem in Odremán's film is how badly it has aged. And this is not about any technical issue, but about Odremán's abuse of distorted pop culture elements, particularly his use of very 60s romantic ballads, which with time has stopped from being daring or avant-garde and has become pure kitsch.

Certainly a product of its time, "Efpeum" belongs to the most reactionary style of filmmaking of the 1960s. Completely beyond of any classification (certainly, the science fiction genre is only the one that seems to describe it best), Mauricio Odremán's film is one that despite not having aged that well, still can be a fascinating glimpse to the mind of its maker and the topics that interested him. Of great historical importance, this first Venezuelan science fiction film can be difficult to appreciate given its allegorical nature and crude style, though it's still a fascinating example of Latin American surrealism.

6/10
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Yira, yira (1930)

Certainly, one of the greatest figures of Argentina is without a doubt singer, songwriter and actor Carlos Gardel. The most prominent figure in the history of Tango revolutionized the culture of his time that despite having died tragically at the height of his career (in a plane crash), his name is the one most often associated with the culture and music of Argentina. Born in 1890, Gardel arrived to Buenos Aires at a very young age, and grew up in the Abasto neighborhood. Like many singers of his time, Gardel began his career working at bars, but soon his singing talent and charming look took him to the studio to make recordings in 1917. That very same year cinema found Gardel, and his talent made its way into the film "Flor de Durazno". Naturally, Gardel's career on cinema didn't make much progress in the silent era, so he focused on singing. However, by 1930 sound in film was now a reality, and so Gardel and cinema met again, in an early series of musical short films directed by sound pioneer Eduardo Morera.

"Yira, yira" (often known in English as "Go round... and round...") is one of those musical shorts, which basically consisted in an introduction to the song and then the execution of the song by Gardel himself. In the case of "Yira, yira", the introduction is done by Gardel and the song composer, the legendary Enrique Santos Discépolo (at the time a young 29 years old man), with Gardel asking Enrique Santos about the meaning of the song. Enrique explains Carlos that the song is about despair, hopelessness and loneliness; to which Carlos answers surprised that such is the feeling he had received from the song. Enrique praises Gardel's singing, though Carlos wonders with a little naiveté if the song's main character is a good man despite the brooding tone. Enrique makes a joke about it, which Carlos doesn't seem to catch at first, though he later does and both men laugh. The film then cuts to Gardel's interpretation of Santos Discépolo's "Yira, yira", with a musical group.

As in most of Morera's shorts, the centerpiece of the film is Gardel's singing "Yira, yira", however, the introductions to the songs, while probably scripted by Morera or Gardel, give a glimpse of the magnetic personality that the famous singer had. In the case of "Yira, yira", the introduction is twice interesting as it showcases Enrique Santos Discépolo, the composer of this popular tango. Whether the dialogs recited were scripted or are in fact improvised is sadly not known, though two things can be noted in the film: the great camaraderie and respect between both artists, and the natural charm and ease in front of the camera that Gardel displays. It's clear that both Morera and Gardel understood very well the possibilities of the film, and thus the image of the singer is carefully detailed in the brief introduction. Gardel is shown as a humble singer, respectful of the composer, and owner of a child-like curiosity. The fact that Morera makes the joke be on Gardel is part of this: Gardel owns the spotlight, but he shares it willingly with his friends. With his people.

Now, the interpretation Gardel makes of "Yira, yira" is one of his best, capturing in his performance the very same feeling of despair and loneliness that Enrique Santos Disépolo was explaining in the introduction. The touch of irony that the song has is not lost, though perhaps a bit diminished by Gardel's strongly melancholic performance, which adds a bit of optimism to the song. Tango singing (specially of Gardel's time) often requires a bit of dramatic emphasis on the voice, not only because of its common themes of loneliness and lost love, but also because of its very rhythm. In this aspect, Gardel delivers a masterful performance, and "Yira, yira" proves that Morera wasn't wrong when he decided that no matter what may had happened in the failed experience of "Flor de Durazon", Carlos Gardel was truly worthy material for cinema. In the introduction, Carlos Gardel wonders if the character is a good man. In his performance, it's clear that when Gardel sings it, the brooding main character is a good man indeed.

As expected from an early experiment in sound film, Morera's set up is fairly basic, with cinematographer Antonio Merayo framing both scenes (introduction and performance) in a simple yet effective manner. Certainly, Merayo's work is much more interesting when Gardel is singing, though that's perhaps the result of a directorial decision rather than a flaw on Merayo's side. "Yira, yira", along nine other of Morera's short films were later compiled in 1931 to form a longer movie called "Diez canciones de Gardel" or "Encuadre de canciones" (literally "Ten songs by Gardel" or "Assortment of songs"); however, Morera's shorts work much better on their own, as they were intended to be. In this aspect, Morera's Gardel shorts can be seen as precursors of modern music videos. Given the quality of Gardel's performance, and the fact that Morera's succeeded in what he was set to achieve (to prove Gardel could be a major film star), it can be said that his humble experimental short films more than fulfilled its goal.

10/10
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La Casa Muda (2010)

The cinema of Uruguay is not exactly known for its ventures into the horror genre, as outside the work of independent filmmaker Ricardo Islas (whom by the way, works and lives in the U.S. since 1997), the horror production of the South American country is exceedingly rare. So, with this in mind, the mere release of a new example of Uruguayan horror, Gustavo Hernández' "La Casa Muda", is certainly an event that creates lots of expectations. However, beyond its genre and nationality, "La Casa Muda" is a movie that has a couple more of interesting particularities that make it a unique film: it is one of the very first films in the world that are made using a handheld high-definition digital single-lens reflex camera (Canon EOS 5D Mark II to be precise), and on top of that, the majority of the film consists of a single continuous take (78 of a total of 86 minutes). Certainly, those three elements make "La Casa Muda" an interesting experiment to witness but, while Hernández succeeds in many aspects, "La Casa Muda" also has important shortcomings.

Translated literally as "The Mute House", but better known in English as "The Silent House", the film is the story of Laura (Florencia Colucci), a young woman who travels to an old cottage located deep in the woods, in order to help her father Wilson (Gustavo Alonso) to repair the place. Wilson has been hired by the own Néstor (Abel Tripaldi), as he wants to sell the house. Néstor gives Wilson the keys and leaves to the city, as father and daughter will spend the nigth there, and the work will begin the following morning. The two of them prepare to sleep when a loud noise is heard in the upper floor of the house. Wilson knows that the upper floor is too damaged and it's dangerous, so he asks Laura to wait for him while he goes upstairs to check out. Laura waits for her father, but something or someone viciously attacks Wilson and apparently kills him. Alone and in the dark, Laura begins to look for her father, knowing that something else is in the house with her, waiting, stalking, in silence.

Inspired by an unsolved case of the 1940s, director Gustavo Hernández and producer Gustavo Rojo wrote the story for "La Casa Muda", which writer Oscar Estévez adapted to the screen. In "La Casa Muda", the story follows Laura as she wanders through the house in the dark, looking for her father and trying to make sense of what's happening. The key is the mystery, and the writers play it well, leaving just enough clues to keep the ball rolling, and the plot twists with a touch of subtlety that aims to keep the film ambiguous until its revealing (and problematic) conclusion. And all the classic elements for a scary movie are there: creepy sounds, nursery rhymes, an abandoned house and a terrible dark secret. Certainly, "La Casa Muda" doesn't offer something new or original in its story, but that's never its intention. Instead, "La Casa Muda" is entirely based on the execution: the precise use of those clichés and atmosphere to tell its tale. And precision is key in this particular case, since the execution pertains one single long take.

And well, speaking strictly in purely technical terms, the execution of this feat is absolutely remarkable. Director Gustavo Hernández truly manages to tell the mystery of the silent house in apparently one long take, with his limited budget and his DSLR camera. Hernández' builds up his tale with great care, and a great emphasis on purely visual narrative. His great eye for compositions result in a real accomplishment for this kind of experiments: no shot (or better said, movement) is a waste. Instrumental for this achievement is without a doubt the remarkable job of cinematographer Pedro Luque, who must had faced a great challenge in bringing to life Hernández' vision. Specially the use of light and darkness (at times, only a candle lights the place). Certainly, not an easy feat to accomplish, though unfortunately, "La Casa Muda" is one of those films where the gimmick overshadows everything else. And sadly, not only because of the gimmick is amazing, but because everything else isn't that good.

Nevertheless, the work of actress Florencia Colucci truly receives praise, as she's the one who drives the film, with the camera following her wandering through the silent house. Coluuci looks pretty natural, and her reactions to the events in the house feel so real that add a lot of verosimilitude to her character. Granted, certain actions that Laura are more than questionable, though that's more the fault of the scriptwriters, because Colucci never feels artificial or over-the-top. Like Hernández and Luque's technical achievement, Colucci's performance as Laura is worhty of great praise, as she manages to add a lot of verosimilitude to a problematic screenplay and an underwritten character. As Néstor, Abel Tripaldi is effective and natural, though nothing really too amazing. Granted, neither Abel Tripaldi nor actor Gustavo Alonso (who plays Laura's father Wilson) are on screen that much compared to COlucci, so it could be said that both do their work efficiently given their limited roles.

Sadly, beyond its merit as a technical achievement, there is little to find in "La Casa Muda". Certainly director Gustavo Hernández creates a haunting atmosphere of dread, playing with silence, light and darkness, and he aims to the ancient fear of the unseen. However, he never really dares to go for something beyond and the story limits most of its time to follow a scared woman as she wanders through the somber house alone. And when it finally goes beyond, it opts for a dissapointing conclusion that not only is contrived, but ultimately betrays everything else that has taken place before. The ending credits include photographs that attempt to justify such twist but just make it worse. Anyways, even this unfortunate finale would be more forgivable if the journey to reach it had been more enjoyable, but sadly it's not. While Hernández' camera captures the actions with a certain dark beauty, the actions are tedious, as following Laura wandering around in the dark soon gets tiresome and boring.

British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock once said that "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out". Perhaps those dull bits are the greatest enemy of films that attempt to be done in one single long take. Despite its haunting beauty, "La Casa Muda" fails to avoid that dullness, and leaves its character underdeveloped and alone. It's undeniable that Hernández achieved a lot with his very limited resources but, while it is true that pretty often "less is more" in filmmaking, Hernández' film went to the extreme and ended up at "not enough". In the end, there is enough "good" in Hernández "La Casa Muda" to make it worth a watch, but at the same time enough "bad" to make impossible to call it a satisfying experiment.

5/10
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L'Âge d'Or (1930)

In the mid 20s, a young and enthusiast Luis Buñuel was decided to get involved in the French film industry after having been fascinated by the works by Fritz Lang. This determination took him to get a job as a production assistant in Jean Epstein's 1926 film, "Mauprat". Buñuel's dedication soon made him assistant director in later works by Epstein and Mario Naplas, where he would learn the basics of the craft. Finally, Buñuel would debut as a director in 1929 with a 16-minute short film titled "Un chien andalou" (literally, "An Andalusian Dog"). Written by painter Salvador Dalí and Buñuel himself, "Un chien andalou" was an experimental film that followed a surreal storyline composed of a series of allegoric (and often nightmarish) scenes based on dreams that Dalí and Buñuel had written. The innovative short film was a success amongst the French artistic community, and increased interest in the Spaniard filmmaker. French nobleman Vicomte Charles de Noailles and his wife, Marie-Laure de Noailles, decided to produce Buñuel's first feature-length film: "L'Âge d'Or".

Known in English as "The Golden Age", "L'Âge d'Or" opens with images that seem like a fragment from a documentary about scorpions, detailing their nature and habits, making emphasis in their lack of tolerance to others and their poisonous sting. Then the "main storyline" begins properly, which presents the efforts of a man and a woman to love each other despite the forces that conspire against them, namely society, authority and religious organizations. This story unfolds through a series of vignettes tied together without any apparent structure; however, these vignettes in fact represent Buñuel and Dalí's own subversive ideas about society, put together in accordance to the surrealist principles they were familiar, pretty much in a similar way to their previous effort, "Un chien andalou". Nevertheless, while "Un chien andalou" works as a nightmare (or better said, a vision) come to life; "L'Âge d'Or", works more like a graphic representation of the train of thought that these two artists had at the time. Is it a revolution or a joke? Perhaps, "L'Âge d'Or" tried to be a bit of both.

Written by director Luis Buñuel and painter Salvador Dalí (though Buñuel argues that Dalí's collaboration was minimal), the vignettes of "L'Âge d'Or" contain a darkly perverse brand of humor, employing an apparently light-hearted comedy to deliver its sharp, merciless attacks. Nothing escapes from Buñuel's sting, from the Catholic Church to the militia, the happily ignorants and the arrogant intellectuals, the civil authority, the government and of course, at the top of all, the bourgeoisie society. The message being, apparently, that love can't reach its full potential because it suffers under the oppressive moral of society, which represses sexuality while at the same time breeds and propagates vices of worse nature. Violence and its absurdity is also tackled by Buñuel, as violence seem to be the only available escape for the otherwise repressed passions. Violence that goes from the abuse of a little dog to the cold blooded murder of a child. Of course, all this is handled with the same light-hearted tone that Buñuel uses through the film, accentuating its absurdity.

In this his first feature length film, Buñuel certainly showcases his domain of cinema as an artistic expression. "L'Âge d'Or" is a film that oozes symbolism, and practically every vignette was carefully planned to convey a certain, very specific message. Still, while even at this early stage Buñuel's mastery of cinema as a language is out of the question, at the time when "L'Âge d'Or" was made Buñuel was still learning the technique, and it shows in several parts. The disjointed, surreal narrative, while powerful and effective in "Un chien andalou", feels broken and incomplete in "L'Âge d'Or". Buñuel's editing is still abrupt and forced, and some vignettes would benefit of an easier transition (granted, "L'Âge d'Or" was not meant to be a film easy to digest). Albert Duverger's work of cinematography is truly exquisite in certain scenes (the famous scene of the religious statue for example), but there are points in which it feels surprisingly amateurish. Certainly, Buñuel's eye was still developing his very own style, but as a whole, it feels a work a tad amateurish at first glance.

Acting through "L'Âge d'Or" is for the most part effective, considering the goals of the film, as it should be noted that given the nature of the film, the performances tend to be hammy, overacting every emotion and expression. It's after all, a parody of self-righteousness, and a film done in the style of silent cinema. As one of the two protagonists, Lya Lys plays the young girl (the characters lack names), and she basically portrays an archetype of femininity (feminity as understood by Buñuel of course). The young girl is fragile and elegant, yet at the same time full of passion. Gaston Modot, delivering a truly remarkable performance, plays her counterpart, the equally unnamed man (as if was to represent all men). Modot's character is also filled with passion, but as the authorities oppress him, his passion finds an outlet in violence, and begins his struggle to satisfy his love (or is it lust? Both are equally important in "L'Âge d'Or" as purer expressions of humanity). The rest of the cast is effective, for the most part, though nothing particularly surprising.

Certainly, "L'Âge d'Or" is quite an ambitious film, with its cruel yet humorous attacks to social order and its complex symbolism; nevertheless, I personally found it a bit too full of itself for its own good. Some of Buñuel's targets are pretty obvious and, since the attacks are anything but subtle, the film can feel less witty and more childish than what was expected. Of course, the disjointed narrative also becomes a bit of a problem as the movie, being of a higher complexity and longer runtime than "Un chien andalou", tends to lose its point at several parts, and some vignettes do feel forced within the narrative. It's clear that Buñuel had in mind something big with the making of this project but, it seems that it was a project still too big for his creative mind at that moment. Granted, "L'Âge d'Or" was designed to be more symbolic than explicit, more an experience than an entertainment, and definitely more emotional than rational; but the overall experience is one of an unfulfilled mission.

Of course, Luis Buñuel would tackle surrealism later in his career, with the crowing pieces of his surrealist oeuvre being his 70s films, "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" ("The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie") and "Le Fantôme de la liberté" ("The Phantom of Liberty"), which would earn him the title of master of surrealism. While probably not entirely satisfying, "L'Âge d'Or" was a clear signal of the interests of the young Buñuel and, despite its many flaws, shows that even at this early stage of his career the vision of Buñuel was already developed (His technique would improve and blossom later, during his exile in Mexico). "L'Âge d'Or" or "The Golden Age", is a difficult film to watch (personally, it wouldn't be my first choice for an afternoon), but truly a key one that has to be experienced to discover the origins of Luis Buñuel and the core of surrealist cinema.

7/10
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Watch "L'Âge d'Or" (1930)

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

One of the most famous short films in the world is definitely Luis Buñuel's debut, "Un Chien Andalou" (literally, "An Andalusian Dog"), and not without a reason, as this 16 minute film's influence extents beyond the cinema and is considered a milestone of the surrealist movement of the late 20s. After watching Fritz Lang's "Der müde Tod" in 1921), Buñuel became fascinated with cinema, and decided to learn as much as possible about it. He became acquainted with filmmaker Jean Epstein and began to work with him as an assistant in Epstein's "Mauprat", and also looked for work in every production he could. Through this experiences, Buñuel not only learned the technique of filmmaking, but also met some of the cast and crew that would help him in his first experiment. 1929 saw the release of the brainchild of director Luis Buñuel and painter Salvador Dalí, "Un Chien Andalou", which has become an enormously influential work of art, necessary to understand the work of these two masters of surrealist art.

Conceived as a series of scenes without an apparent order, the film has no explicit plot and instead it follows a dream logic where the "dreams" share only actors, characters, themes or motifs, without being explicitly "connected". This logic (or lack of logic) makes the film very much akin to Freudian free association, as while there is no apparent link between the scenes, a subliminal bond exists between them, making "Un Chien Andalou" an visual experiment that expresses the dreams that its creators had. The surreal scenes include the famous scene where a woman's eye is slit by a razor blade, an androgynous woman poking at a severed hand in the street with her cane and ants emerging from a man's hand. It's definitely a pure and raw form of surrealism that attempts to provoke feelings and emotions with its images rather than with its storytelling. It is not that he film lacks any meaning, but that such meaning is expressed in symbols, not with words. It is because of this domain of image and symbology over any traditional plotline that "Un Chien Andalou" has been labeled as a precursor of modern music videos.

Due to its nature, the film depends on the visual impact of its images, and Buñuel manages to make the most of his resources giving the scenes a haunting beauty and a powerful impact to its meaning. It was not only a surrealist statement, "Un Chien Andalou" was also Buñuel's experimenting with film and learning a lot in the process. Cinematographer Albert Duverger, whom first met Buñuel on Epstein's film "Mauprat", employs a quite dynamic technique for its time; and with clever use of lighting, creates an unsettling atmosphere that conveys that aura of mystery and fantasy that exists in dreams. Following the film's dream logic, one could say that Duverger and Buñuel achieve to make the movie flow from dream to nightmare and viceversa. Rich in symbols (that may or may no thave any real meaning) and full of haunting images, "Un Chien Andalou" is certainly one of the movies in which the visuals carry the sense of story in its most extreme form. While unsettling at times and definitely aggressive, the movie is a joy to watch even when the experience is more akin to watch moving canvas rather than a movie the way we are used to it.

The film is hard to understand, and ambiguous enough to the point that probably only Buñuel and Dalí knew exactly what it was supposed to mean. However, that's probably the point of it, to create emotions rather than to simply transmit them. As he states in his autobiography ("My Last Sigh", 1983), the film was made with the intentions that "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted". In the way that Dalí made his paints, Buñuel crafted his entrance to the artform that would become his life. While one could nitpick the production values of the film (or the acting, which at times is a bit awkward), the whole artistic meaning of "Un Chien Andalou" minimize those problems to the point of making them irrelevant. The whole dreamlike imagery that Buñuel and Dalí have created in this short film trascended the normal way of storytelling, and finished to create the surrealist cinema. It's not a movie easy to like, but it's certainly one impossible to forget,

"Un Chien Andalou" is definitely one of Buñuel's most important films, not only viewing it globally, as a landmark of the surrealist movement; but also on a personal way, as the many things Buñuel himself learned during the process of making it had an enormous influence over his career. While both Buñuel and Dalí feared a bad response from the public, "Un Chien Andlou" became quite popular, and became the beginning of Buñuel's promising career (a career that was unfortunately put temporarily on stand by because of the Spanish Civil War). Original, thought-provoking and enormosuly ambiguous, this short film is a must-see not only for Buñuel fans, but also for everyone interested in film as an art form.

9/10

Le chaudron infernal (1903)

While an enormously influential pioneer on the field of special effects, French director Georges Méliès was oddly not that interested in making color films in his career. The reasons behind this apparent lack of interest were probably related to how costly and laborious was the process of hand-coloring frame by frame, as while his first hand-colored movie was done in 1897 ("L'Hallucination De l'Alchimiste"), he wouldn't attempt to make another one until 1903, when the hand-colored movies done by Edison's Studios became to be as popular as his films. That year, right after the enormous success of his masterpiece, "Le Voyage Dans la Lune" ("A Trip to the Moon"), Méliès directed 3 shorts that he colored himself: "La Guirlande Merveilleuse", "Le Cake-walk infernal" and "Le Chaudron infernal". Of the three, "Le Chaudron infernal" (or "The Infernal Cauldron") is the most well-known, mainly because this film followed Méliès' interest in the horror genre.

"Le Chaudron infernal" (also known as "The Infernal Boiling Pot" by some sources) is a movie about an evil green-skinned Demon (Georges Méliès, of course), who works as an executioner in Hell. Another demon in charge of bringing him the condemned, begins his work by sending a woman to the Executioner, who joyfully ties her and throws her into the big cauldron he has in his room. His assistant brings him another two condemned, this time two male courtiers, who follow the woman to her fate inside the boiling pot. As the bodies enter the cauldron the infernal flames grow bigger and reach an enormous size. After putting the three inside the cauldron, the Demon stirs up the remains and suddenly the smoke that comes from the cauldron begins to form images that resemble the bodies of the condemned. Realizing that this are the souls trying to escape, the Demon will raise the fire from Hell to stop them from escaping.

Among Méliès' many fantasy films, "Le Chaudron infernal" is definitely one of the most impressive of all despite its short runtime, as the addition of color takes the film to a whole new level, making Méliès' many tricks look even more amazing than before. To his usual array of dissolves and camera tricks, Méliès added the effects of drawing over the celluloid (an effect made famous years later by the "Godzilla" films of the 60s), using the hand-coloring technique not only to make the film look nicer, but to make an effect in itself. On a completely different subject, it's interesting to see that in this movie Méliès continues his preference for themes of horror and black magic, as he knows that it's in the horror genre where he'll be able to exploit his special effects to shock and impress his audience.

Being objective, the only problem of "Le Chaudron infernal" is definitely its runtime, as considering that by 1903 Georges Méliès had already done "Le Voyage Dans la Lune", one would think that this film is a bit too short. However, there is a reason for this considerably shorter runtime: it's short because the process of coloring the film was lengthy, and Méliès wasn't able to make longer colored films (and as written above, that's why he only made 7 colored shorts in his career). Despite this problems, "Le Chaudron infernal" is definitely one of the most interesting movies done by the legendary French magician, not only because of its inventive use of color as a special effect, but also because of its place in the history of the horror genre. This movie is definitely pure Cinemagic.

8/10

Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894)

It was on a day in 1891 when Scottish inventor William K.L. Dickson surprised his boss, Thomas Alva Edison with his remarkable work in the development of motion pictures. After many experiments, Dickson was now able to capture scenes of real life with his camera, and reproduce them through his invention, the Kinetoscope, as if a fragment of time were preserved in celluloid. Soon, Dickson's Kinetoscope would become an enormous success as a new way of entertainment, with many people eager to pay the nickel that was charged to be able to watch people dancing, or acrobats performing stunts through the "peepshow" of the Kinetoscope. However, the invention wasn't complete, in order for it to capture on film the real life as we know it, sound was needed on the movies. So Dickson kept experimenting and this short experiment, Kinetophone's first film, was the result.

In this experiment, codenamed simply as "Dickson Experimental Sound Film", director William K.L. Dickson stands in front of a recording cone for a wax cylinder (earliest method of recording sound), with his violin on hands, playing a song named "Song of the Cabin Boy". The idea was to record the song into the cylinder at the same time that the camera was recording his movements. In order to show that this was a motion picture, two of Edison's "Black Maria" laboratory decided to do a little dance in front of the camera. Unlike what author Vito Russo claimed in his book, "The Celluloid Closet", this little dance had nothing to do with homosexuality as it obviously is a reference to the environment of loneliness of the lab, akin to the lonely sailors to whom the "Song of the Cabin Boy" was dedicated to (the title Russo suggests, "The Gay Brothers", is actually anachronistic as "gay" had no homosexual connotation in the late 1890s).

Sadly, Dickson was unable to achieve the desired effect, and the Kinetophone never could really produce the synchronized audio with images. While he had the cylinder with the sound and the celluloid with the images, the synchronization of the two elements was not exactly effective, and the sudden appearance of Auguste and Louis Lumière's Cinématographe prompted Edison's team to focus on projecting systems and eventually Dickson left the company. Fortunately, in 1998 Dickson's cylinder with the movie's sound was rebuilt and film editor Walter Murch made a restoration of the experiment as it was intended. Finally, "Dickson Experimental Sound Film" could be heard with synchronized sound, just as its creative inventor had intended. While it was not a successful attempt, this outstanding film is a testament of the enormous genius of the father of Kinetoscope.

8/10



Buy "Dickson Experimental Sound Film" and more American early films from 1894-1931

Dickson Greeting (1891)

When during an afternoon in Leeds, England, french inventor Louis Le Prince tested his latest invention and shot the first movie in the world, he didn't realize the magnitude of what was just starting that long lost day of 1888. Sadly, Le Prince would not live to see the results of his experiments, and it would be other people would be the ones in charge to improve on his idea and create what we now know as cinema. One of those who would become the first filmmakers would be the Scottish inventor William K.L. Dickson, who while working in America along Thomas Alva Edison invented the Kinetoscope in 1890. The Kinetoscope was a device that showed short movies individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components, in a manner that would earn it the nickname of "peepshow machine". However, the birth of Kinetoscope wasn't easy, and many experiments had to be done before its public release in 1893.

The first experiments were of course the famous "Monkeyshines" films, three movies where the camera captures (or tries to capture) the images of Edison's workers as they move in front of it. While not exactly successful (image looks pretty bad), those movies were the very first films shot in America and showed Edison the enormous potential of Dickson's invention. After many experiments, Dickson achieved the quality he desired and made the movie that would be shown to the press and 150 members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs in a private demonstration of the invention that took place on May 20, 1891. The first movie shown was this one, nowadays aptly titled "Dickson Greeting" because it consisted of a short 3 seconds scene where William K.L. Dickson appeared bowing and smiling, as if he was indeed greeting the first audience of his Kinetoscope. There were rumours that this film was also the very first movie with sound, with Dickson saluting his employer as he greeted him, but those rumours were probably created by Edison to increase the attention (not the first time he would use this tactic), and because Dickson was really working in making "talkies" (and he would be close to really make it, I must say).

Watching how Dickson's work improved from the "Monkeyshines" experiments to this movie is an amazing experience, as the quality of his movies improved drastically from bizarre images without any shape that appeared in his first three films to the high quality of his image moving gracefully in "Dickson Greeting". The fact that all this improvements took him less than a year is certainly a testament of the enormous genius of this man, who singlehandedly put Edison's company on the race towards motion pictures. On that day of May, this along with two other Kinetoscope movies (probably the two shorts about boxing) were shown to an audience for the first time, in what would mark the birth of the first device invented to watch movies. Kinetoscope, cinema's "granddaddy" had just been born.

8/10



Buy "Dickson Greeting" (1981) and the rest of Edison's early films

L' Homme à la tête en caoutchouc (1901)

In less than 5 years, the cinema had made a gigantic jump from the short "documentaries" of the early pioneers (Le Prince, Dickson and the Lumière brothers) to the amazing Cinemagic of french director Georges Méliès, who became one of the first filmmakers to focus entirely in making fiction movies. Ever since he watched a movie for the first time (as a member of the Lumières' first audience), Méliès was convinced of the enormous potential of the new invention as a form of entertainment, as as soon as he could he started to make his own films. By 1901, stage magician Georges Méliès had already 5 years of making films and experimenting with special effects, and his movies were well-known around the world as the finest films of his time. With his many discoveries in the field of special effects, Méliès was able of making films that looked like real magic, and his movies became more complex with time, and even more fascinating.

"L' Homme à la Tête en Caoutchouc" (literally, "The Man with the Rubber Head") is another one of Méliès' many "trick films", which were short movies that showed him making an impossible magical trick. In this movie, an alchemist (as usual, Méliès himself) is preparing a strange experiment in his laboratory. The alchemist puts an odd devise on a table, and connects it to his bizarre creation: a living copy of his own head (Méliès again) that stands over the table without a clue about what will happen to it. Using an air pump he connected to the head, the alchemist begins to blow, and the living head begins to increase its size as if it was a balloon made of rubber. The head reaches a gigantic size, but the alchemist decides to release the air from it as he fears the head may explode. Proud of his invention, the alchemist decides to show it to his assistant (quite probably played by his wife Jeanne d'Alcy, but this is not confirmed), but the assistant may not be as careful as he was.

As in many of his early shorts, this movie is a "gimmick film", in other words, a movie devised around a special effect in order to show it like a magician would make a trick. In this case, the movie combines an excellent use of multiple exposures and editing to create the two heads, and a remarkably creative use of zoom to create the illusion of a head increasing its size. While a quite simple trick to our modern standards, the effect achieved is one of Méliès' most amazing and better done special effects, making "The Man with the Rubber Head" one of the best "gimmick films" in the Cinemagician's career. However, this short is more than an excellent gimmick, as what makes "The Man with the Rubber Head" different from his earlier films (and the similar movies of his competitors) is the care Méliès put to create a "story" to his trick.

While in his first films he simply appeared as a magician doing his show, in this movie there is a set build for the scene (instead of a simple circus stage), and while simple, the movie is clearly set in the middle ages. This gives the movie a distinct atmosphere, and already shows the path that Méliès was taking at that stage in his career, as that very same year he would start making his now famous series of fantasy films, which would be far more complex than his "gimmick films". One can say that it was with in those movies where Méliès tested his craft before making his masterpieces like "Le Voyage Dans la lune" the following years.

8/10

The Hearts of Age (1934)

In 1938, a young actor and theater director named Orson Welles earned notoriety and recognition when his radio play version of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" was broad-casted, shocking the nation and prompting many studios to notice Welles' talent. This success would take Welles to Hollywood where in 1941, he would direct what is now considered by many critics as the best movie ever made, the influential classic "Citizen Kane". At the age of 26, Welles had already made the movie of his lifetime, and was about to begin a career that despite the many troubles he found (mainly studio interference), managed to produce excellent results. However, "Citizen Kane" wasn't the first time this prodigy had made a movie, as before "Kane" the young Welles made 2 short films that helped him to experiment with the medium. The first one was "The Hearts of Age", a film he did when he was only 19.

"The Hearts of Age" is a surrealist film based on ideas about old age, decrepitude and death. Virginia Nicholson plays an Old Woman, sitting on a bell on the top of a house while a black servant (Paul Edgerton) rings the bell. She seems to enjoy the feeling of the bell moving with her on top as she watches people coming by, and gets angered whenever her servant stops to rest a bit. Soon, a sinister man (Orson Welles) appears, acting exaggeratedly polite to her, and becoming interested in her servant. Soon she discovers that the sinister man is Death, as he begins to do his job with some of the people she has seen. The Lady doesn't seem to care much until he decides to go after her servant, whose death would mean that the bell would stop moving. As she watches how his servant dies, she discovers that she is also on Death's list.

Cryptic and strange, this 8 minutes short film was written by Welles in an apparent attempt to satirize the surrealist movies of Jean Cocteau, or at least that's what he said about it many years later. It certainly follows the style and structure (or lack of one) of the works of surrealists (like Buñuel for example), as the plot is developed in a dreamlike fashion, often illogical and filled with metaphors about the main theme. In this case, theme is mortality, the nature of death and how people reacts to it. The movie also touches the subject of the hypocrisy of the attitudes towards black people that people of his time used to have. While this may sound like a honest attempt to satirize what Welles sees as the pretentiousness of surrealist artists, it never truly achieves that purpose and in the end it feels more pretentious and over-the-top as the movies is attempting to parody.

While of course nowhere near the movies he would make later in his career, "The Hearts of Age" does show two interesting traits that would later become trademarks of Welles' style. First, a highly creative camera-work, which even in this experimental stage already shows that Welles understands the limitless possibilities of cinema and its value to tell stories visually. The second of those traits is his stylish use of editing (sadly something he wouldn't be able to show in many of his movies), which in this films still shows a lot of influence from Soviet montage theory, but that later would evolve into the perfect complement for his cinematography. Something that can also be seen in this short film is that even at the age of 19, Welles already knew what to get from his actors, and had the skill to direct them properly into delivering what he wanted.

Considering the style of the short, this last thing may sound insignificant, but one can't deny that while certainly the movie is nothing more than a mere amateurish experiment, it shows that Welles truly had a prodigious talent despite the lack of a properly written script. The cast is good in their roles, although as written above, the main weakness in in the script. It's not that it's bad (it actually handles symbolism in a remarkable way), it's just that it seems to take itself too seriously for its own sake that it ends up making the film a but boring despite the short runtime. Welles himself considered the movie more an experiment on film-making than an actual film, and watching the results, it's hard to disagree with him, as the technical aspects are far more interesting than the artistic merit of "The Hearts of Age".

Wheter he truly intended to make fun of surrealism or actually failed in an attempt of making surreal art, it is truly an impossible thing to know for sure; but what we do know is that this first movie marked the beginning of Welles' interest in film-making as an extension for his work at the theater. An interest that would transform into an obsession that would become the force behind some of the most significant films in the history of cinema. "The Hearts of Age" is not exactly something amazing, but given its historical importance, it is a required viewing for anyone remotely interested in the career of one of the most important men in film-making: Orson Welles. Weak, confusing and a tad pretentious, "The Hearts of Age" is the proof that even giants started small.

6/10

L' Arroseur arrosé (1895)

On December 28, 1895, thirty-three people were witnesses of history being written as the very first audience of the Lumières' Cinématographe, an innovative device that was able to project motion pictures on a screen. Motion pictures were not new for the people gathered on at Paris's Salon Indien Du Grand Café that day, as Edison's Kinetoscope (the "Peep Show") was a popular form of entertainment; however, nobody in the room was prepared to see the images projected on the screen to move as unlike the Kinetoscope, the Cinématographe allowed the movies to be seen by an audience. 10 short films shot by August and Louis Lumière were shown that historic day, most of them depicting everyday scenes like people walking out of the Lumière factory or playing cards, but one among those 10 short films was different: "L' Arroseur Arrosé", the first comedy film.

"L' Arroseur Arrosé", literally ("The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), is basically about a practical joke committed by a mischievous boy (Benoît Duval) to annoy a Gardener (François Clerc) who is working with his plants in Lyons. The movie begins with the Gardener watering his vegetables when the boy steps on the hose he is using to water the plants. The Gardener is surprised as the water stops flowing so he inspects the nozzle to find out what's happening. As he checks it, the boy releases the hose and the water continues flowing, spraying the gardener as it comes out of the hose with strength. Surprised by this, the Gardener quickly realizes that he's been tricked, but the boy responsible escapes running away in order to avoid being caught. The Gardener decides to chase the boy in order to punish him for his actions.

When compared to the other 9 movies shown on that first screening, "L' Arroseur Arrosé" always stand out as it was remarkably different from any of the other movies in the sense that it wasn't an "actuality film", but the very first staged fictional comedy shot on film. The Lumière brothers had a preference for documentaries (actuality films) as they weren't really interested in other uses for their invention besides the scientific documentation of real life events; so it is because of this reason that the creation of "L' Arroseur Arrosé" is truly a real oddity among Lumières' movies. Anyways, not only is this movie special for those reasons, it is also one of the best looking of the 10 (and one that has survived almost intact to this date), with the brothers showing a great early use of cinematography to frame the film.

In its barely 50 seconds of duration, "L' Arroseur Arrosé", opened the way to slapstick and pantomime in film, as the movie showed that it was possible to use the new invention to make pure entertainment, and that there was an extremely high unused potential in the Cinématographe. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to claim that comedy films were born in this movie. While the reasons behind the inclusion of this film among 9 documentaries is odd, it was quite probably that this was the film that inspired a notable member of that first audience to make fictional movies aimed to entertain: Georges Méliès, who would later become a famous filmmaker on his own (and would direct a remake of this very film too).

9/10



Buy "L' Arroseur arrosé" (1895) and other films by the Lumière brothers and other early cinema pioneers

Le Voyage à travers l'impossible (1904)

In 1895, a stage magician named Georges Méliès witnessed how the Lumière brothers changed the history of entertainment when he attended the first public screening of their projected motion pictures, and was marveled at the idea of moving images. Seven years and dozens of short films later, Méliès was a successful filmmaker on his own account, releasing a movie that would become legendary, "Le Voyage Dans La Lune" ("A Trip to the Moon"), a monumental achievement in which he would finally prove that cinema was more than documentaries and "gimmick films", and that there was something that the Lumières couldn't see: that it was a natural medium for telling stories. So, after having great success with "Le Voyage Dans La Lune", Méliès prepared his next major project as another adaptation of a Jules Verne story: "Le Voyage à Travers l'impossible", or "The Voyage Through the Impossible".

Better known as "The Impossible Voyage", "Le Voyage à Travers l'impossible" is the story of a geographic society (presumably French), which decides to make the ultimate trip. As one can imagine, this won't be a normal voyage, as they will use every vehicle they can use in an attempt to travel across every corner of the world. So, with this in mind, they prepare a train at the Swiss Alps with their advanced machinery and begin their journey. However, first they must arrive to the train, so they use "The Impossible Carriage" to get across the mountains, and after several difficulties, manage to get to the train. With their specially equipped train, the group manages to fly high in the sky, and are literally swallowed by the Sun. The group will face more difficulties, as their voyage will take them to many fantastic places, from the Sun to even the bottom of the Ocean.

The film's source, "Le Voyage à Travers l'impossible", was a play written collaboratively by Jules Verne and French dramatist Adolphe d'Ennery in 1882, in which the writers adapted to stage the style and themes that Verne had been used in his popular novels. Naturally, Méliès' adaptation lacks the benefits of having dialogs, but his version of "The Impossible Voyage" does keep the same atmosphere of Jules Verne's literary work, capturing the spirit of science fiction in each act of the film and mixing it with that magical fantasy and charmingly whimsical humor that Méliès used to employ in each one of his films. With a runtime of only 24 minutes (something unheard of at the time of its release), "The Impossible Voyage" shows a progression of what Méliès did in "A Trip to the Moon", as the narrative is built in a tighter way (despite the similarities with that previous masterpiece).

As usual in a film by Georges Méliès, the real magic of the movie lays in the extremely clever and detailed way in which Méliès creates his special effects, and in the beautiful art direction he uses to make his fantasy come alive. The world of "The Impossible Voyage" seems like a more detailed trip to the same universe of "A Trip to the Moon", where insanely courageous scientists and inventors use their wonderful and crazy machines to conquer the limits of their fantastic world. In this there's a difference with Verne, as while in the writer's novels there's always a certain factuality in his devices, Méliès versions have more of magical than scientific, which goes perfectly with the comedic tone he uses in his adventure films. A magician until the end, Méliès creates wonderful special effects using every single photographic trick he had discovery at the time (there's a wonderful use of miniatures in the movie).

While the legendary classic "Le Voyage Dans La Lune" is certainly an iconic masterpiece (it'll always be Méliès' most famous work), personally I found "Le Voyage à Travers l'impossible" to be a superior film. Maybe it was that I saw it hand-tinted (which gives it an even more beautiful look) or the fact that it gave me the feeling that in this movie Méliès just let his creativity run completely free, but I just enjoyed this one (a bit) more. True, it's a bit tacky for our standards, but even today it holds up surprisingly well and remains as fun as when it was originally done, more than a century ago. "Le Voyage à Travers l'impossible", or "The Impossible Voyage", definitely makes a perfect companion piece to "Le Voyage Dans La Lune", and it's a nice introduction to the magic of Georges Méliès, the Cinemagician.

10/10



Buy "Le Voyage à travers l'impossible" (1904) and more films by Georges Méliès

Les Cartes Vivantes (1904)

Few persons have meant as much to the history of cinema as Georges Méliès, the now legendary French stage magician that revolutionized film-making with his enormous narrative creativity and his many discoveries and inventions in the field of special effects. As a member of the first audience that experienced the Lumières' first screening, Méliès discovered cinema and immediately realized the enormous potential it had as a narrative art. During the following 15 years, Méliès would become one of the most important producers of movies, and he went from making amusing "gimmick movies" (films about Méliès making an impossible magic trick) to creating some of the most amazing stories of those years, using his skills to enter the genres of horror, fantasy and science fiction. By the year of 1902, Méliès was focusing more on his major projects than on "gimmick movies", but he still made several ones to test some new tricks. 1904's "Les Cartes Vivantes" was one of those shorts.

As usual in his "gimmick films", "Les Cartes Vivantes" (literally, "The Living Playing Cards") is about a Magician (Méliès) performing an amazing magic trick. This time, the trick involves a simple deck of playing cards, and a large cardboard that resembles a blank card. The trick begins with the Magician making one card grow bigger, to the size of a book. Then, by simply throwing the card towards the cardboard, it becomes an enormous version of the card the Magician threw. As if that wasn't enough, the Magician transforms the giant card (a 9 of Spades) into the card of the Queen of Hearts. With that card on the cardboard, the Magician proceeds to to make the image come alive by transforming the drawing into a real life Queen of Hearts who walks out of the card. To finish the trick, he returns the Queen to the card and decides to transform the card into the King of Clubs; but the trick may be really on him.

As written above, for Méliès this kind of short films were more than a way of having a fresh and original catalog of movies in his theater, they were a chance to test new or improved tricks and special effects he could later use in his major projects. "The Living Playing Cards" is a prime example of this, as it is composed of many of the tricks that Méliès had used in many previous occasions (dissolves, multiple exposures and several editing tricks), but the way they look in this movie is considerably better than when Méliès used them for the first time. When one watches the movies Méliès did before 1901, the effects look marvelous but primitive; "The Living Playing Cards" is the direct evolution of his talents, and it's easy to notice that his work of editing has improved considerably since his early years. His use of props and set design to build up an atmosphere has also improved, and he captures perfectly what his real performances as a magician would had been.

Honestly, there's nothing really remarkable in "Les Cartes Vivantes" besides its amazing display of special effects, but like every Méliès film, it has a special magic that makes difficult not to enjoy them. Méliès had an enormous charm as a performer, and despite the shortcomings of the technology of his time, he really knew how to use cinema's potential to entertain his audience the best he could. While in the end, "The Living Playing Cards" may not be anything more than a "gimmick trick", one has to remember that in 1904, the legendary Méliès was preparing his most ambitious project to date: that often forgotten masterpiece named "Le Voyage à Travers l'impossible", better known in English as "The Voyage Through the Impossible".

8/10

Eraserhead (1977)

Considered as one of the most creative filmmakers of the modern era, American director David Lynch has developed a very peculiar and highly recognizable style through most of his work. A style where surreal images are overtly present, and linear plot lines are thrown away in order to focus mostly on the emotions created. This style has its roots in the fact that Lynch started his career as a painter, making his films an extension of that previous work, and very different to what is the classic definition of cinema. This background is probably the reason why he tends to move away from "normal" films (although movies like "The Elephant Man" and "The Straight Story" prove that he can make that kind of films too), and prefers to let his imagination run wild when making a movie. His first movie, "Eraserhead", is also probably the best example of Lynch's style of film-making.

"Eraserhead" is the story of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), a timid factory worker in a nightmarish industrial work that one night, during an uncomfortable dinner with the family of his girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), receives the news that Mary had his baby. Henry agrees to marry Mary, as he truly feels that he loves her, but when Henry discovers that the baby is a mutant that cries all the time, life doesn't seem that easy anymore. Mary can not stand the screams of the child, so decides to leave Henry and return to her parent's home. Alone in his decayed apartment, Henry will have to live with the constant screaming of the deformed baby, facing his nightmares and fears about parenthood, as well as the temptations that live outside his room. And the only thing that can help him to survive is the idea that probably, in heaven everything is fine.

Written by David Lynch, "Eraserhead" is a movie built with the logic of a dream, that is, without a linear plot and moving between a series of hallucinations and dream sequences that while apparently random, allow us to enter the twisted mind of its solitary main character. While ambiguous and cryptic, "Eraserhead" is an incredibly original character study about a man's fears about concepts such as fatherhood, compromise and responsibility. As written above, it follows the logic of a dream, but given it's dark nature, it would be more appropriate to say it is the vivid representation of a nightmare. Despite the apparent lack of narrative (or maybe because of it), we follow Henry closely, almost intimately, through his twisted, yet oddly very human, descent into madness as he is tormented by his demons embodied in the shape of the screaming mutant baby.

In "Eraserhead", David Lynch brings his nightmare come to life in a wonderfully horrific fashion thanks to his great imagination and his noticeable care for details. With an outstanding use of sound and the cinematography by Herbert Cardwell and Frederick Elmes, director David Lynch creates the perfectly haunting atmosphere of dread and decay that impregnates Henry's depressive industrial world, definitely symbolizing his bleak view of life. Many have said that "Eraserhead" is more a visual experience than a narrative, and I for once agree with that statement, as it is visually where we get the most clues about the film's obscure meanings, as Henry's vivid dreams and terrible hallucinations are opened windows to his troubled psyche. The pace is certainly slow, but it flows smoothly, allowing the film to express itself via the emotions of its images, like a beautiful yet frightening moving canvas.

As the disturbed Henry Spencer, Jack Nance is simply amazing, as if he had been born with the sole purpose of playing this role. What I mean is not that Nance is an extremely talent performer (honestly, that is not the case), but that he managed to convey exactly what Lynch wanted to do with his character in the most natural and believable way possible, effectively making Henry Spencer a honest portrayal of a man facing his most terrible fear: becoming a parent. The rest of the cast ranges from average to very good, with Charlotte Stewart being one of the latter, delivering a subtle performance as Mary X, Henry's girlfriend. In supporting roles, Allen Joseph and Jeanne Bates are good, but nothing spectacular, and the same could be said about Judith Anna Roberts, who plays the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall. Finally Laurel Near is great in the now iconic role of the Lady in the radiator.

While a powerful and wild exercise of imagination, "Eraserhead" is definitely not everyone's cup of tea, as due to the atypical way its constructed and the dark nature of its themes, it probably won't be easily accepted by those expecting a more linear, classic narrative style. However, a way to face "Eraserhead"'s cryptic plot is to let the images do the talking and simply experience the emotions Lynch's film attempts to convey. As written above, Lynch was a painter and performance artist before becoming a filmmaker, and "Eraserhead" carries a lot of this background in its conception; so the watching of the movie as a visceral experience, instead of intellectual, may be helpful in its enjoyment. A very personal movie for Lynch (a lot of the film's darkness comes from his own experiences in the different stages of his life), "Eraserhead" is like the pure expression of the director's troubles and fears on film.

Due to a constant lack of money, it took David Lynch 5 years to finish "Eraserhead", but one can truly say that the wait was worthy. Thanks to "Eraserhead", David Lynch would be noticed by Mel Brooks, who would help him to establish his name with "The Elephant Man". But even if Lynch's career had remained in the underground, "Eraserhead" is without a doubt, one of the most interesting and thought provoking films ever made.

9/10

Buy "Eraserhead" (1977)

Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890)

In 1888, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison had an idea that would serve as the basis to what we now call "movies", that idea was the Kinetoscope and soon a new source of entertainment would be created by the wild imagination of Edison's team. According to history, Edison heard rumors about the invention of motion pictures (they were indeed invented in 1888 by Louis Le Prince in Leeds, England) and quickly his mind began to craft his very own devise to achieve the same effect. Edison figured out that the images had the illusion of movement because they were sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter, and soon put the conceptual idea on paper; however, it wouldn't be Edison who would transform Kinetoscope from an idea to a reality, the man in charge of the project would be one of Edison's most rusted workers, a Scottish man named William K.L. Dickson. The series of short films codenamed "Monkeyshines" were Dickson's first attempts to produce motion pictures.

The "Monkeyshines" films were three experimental movies shot in the Edison laboratories in order to test Kinetograph, a camera invented to shot the movies that would appear in the Kinetoscope. With the collaboration of William Heise (who would become a prolific director of Kinetoscope films), Dickson shot one of Edison's workers in front of the camera doing gestures and movements. As actual experiments of their work, this movies do not have a plot or a theme, and only consist of Edison's workers moving in front of the camera to see if their images were captured. Due to age and the poor quality of this early experiments, it is impossible to know who appears in each movie, although it is often considered that G. Sacco Albanese is the one appearing in "Monkeyshines, No. 1". (some say that it is actually John Ott, but the debate continues)

While it was never released to the public (Dickson's second movie, "Dickson Greeting" has the honor of being the first American movie to be shown), "Monkeyshines, No. 1" is indeed the very first movie shot in the United States, marking the birth of the Kinetoscope and the beginning of the age of cinema as entertainment. After this monumental invention, Dickson would dedicate his most of his work in improving his machine (including an attempt to add sound!) although he also started making the kind of short films the people wanted to see in what was now known as "The Peep Show machine". While not exactly real cinema, William K.L. Dickson's amazing invention would be another big step ahead in what would culminate in 1895, with the Lumière brothers' invention of the Cinématographe.

7/10