One of the nice things about modern digital life is how easy it is to preserve everything that we do. Blogs can exist online in perpetuity - billions of words written by millions of people over every topic imaginable. I joined Facebook going on nine years ago and every single post, picture, and update lives on in that forum. A nine-year record of my life.
In the broader spectrum, movies keep getting made, music recorded, and books written. They continue to get added to the pile of those things already in existence. If a person is interested in "keeping up" with all of this, it can quickly become completely overwhelming. There aren't enough hours in the day. There aren't enough hours in a lifetime.
Not all of these things really deserve preservation. And I suppose popular taste goes a long way towards dictating what remains in the public eye. But the more competitive - the more saturated - home entertainment markets get, the deeper the catalog labels have to dig to find things to release. Boutique DVD companies like Blue Underground, Severin, Cult Epics, and Panik House (amongst dozens more) have shed light onto some very obscure corners of entertainment history, for better or worse.
If you are like me and have a particular interest in the sorts of trashy gems these companies specialize in, each new release fills you with anticipation. But there is a law of diminishing returns that applies. Not all releases are that great - some are pretty terrible. Even "presented uncut, fully restored from original vault materials" isn't enough to make a truly terrible movie worth shelling out hard earned cash to purchase. You get burned enough times, and you learn to ramp up your powers of discernment.
That's what's nice about movies from the silent era. I read that a staggering 75% of everything produced during the silent era has been lost forever to the ravages of time. I can't even imagine the treasures that no longer exist. But it stands to reason that a lot of what was produced then (like what is produced today) was not really worth holding onto anyway. Which means that silent films that still do exist
do so by virtue of their value - generation after generation preserved
and maintained them for the future. While forgettable melodramatic
potboilers were left in the basement to moulder, someone had the
presence of mind to pay closer attention to, say, the works of Charlie
Chaplin. It thins out the playing field, in a way, and lowers the intimidation level of really digging into the world of this cinematic forebear.
Although I didn't plan it, 2013 ended up being my year of exploring silent cinema. I watched probably a dozen, across multiple genres, and I ended up enjoying them all. Granted, it wasn't that big of a stretch since I didn't watch one that wasn't considered a classic in some way. "Battleship Potemkin," "Nosferatu," "Metropolis," "City Lights" - this is culling from the top of the heap, for sure. Slowly but surely, each of these movies crumbled down my walls of prejudice against silent cinema in general - the "crusty old dinosaurs," and made me see them as vital, living, breathing works of art that can amaze viewers even today.
I thought it would be a grand idea to end 2013 by knocking another title off my "cinematic bucket list." I chose to end the year with Dziga Vertov's 1929 experimental non-narrative feature "Man With a Movie Camera." The movie is often hailed as the eminent "effects movie" from the silent era. Compared to the overblown, noisy, juvenile spectacles that pass as "effects movies" today (the works of Michael Bay spring immediately to mind), the idea of an 84 year old effects-driven motion picture piqued my curiosity.
The idea is simple - a day in the life of, well, the world, as viewed through the lens of a "man with a movie camera." The "man" is the only recurring character in the movie, and he is being filmed in the act of filming life as it occurs around him. To get his shots, he does things like lay on train tracks and balance on the sides of moving cars. Dangerous stuff, to be sure - no CGI in 1929! The effects are generated through tricky photography and processing - mostly multiple exposures that superimpose images together, as well as (by far) the fastest editing I have ever seen in a silent movie. It's no great shakes compared to what is the norm today, but by 1929 standards it is whiplash inducing.
There is no dialogue in the movie - a welcome choice considering it allows the movie to do away with clunky inter-titles all together. This makes the viewing experience very fluid - more than in any other silent film I've seen. There were surprises content-wise, from nude beach-goers slathering their bodies in mud, to a very unexpected (and explicit) shot of a baby being born. All part of the circle of life, and perfectly logical within the framework of the movie, but still somewhat shocking, and further proof that silent movies are definitely warm-blooded creatures.
I could see the stamp of "Man With a Movie Camera" all over later experimental films like "Koyaanisqatsi," and "Baraka," other dialogue-free movies that marry images with sound to create a sort of universal commentary on modern life. "Man" did it first - by about fifty years. I can't imagine the impact it must have had on audiences of the day. But the mere fact of its continued existence means that someone saw the value and took care to keep it out of the dank basement of history.
Movies, even more than books, music, or still photographs, can give us a true glimpse of what life was like at a particular moment in time. And movies like "Man With a Movie Camera" show us that, while fashions and modes of transportation may change, the basic concerns of daily human life remain pretty universal. We are born - we live - we die. Silent cinema is a portal to the past that also acts as a mirror to the present. After all, 84 years is merely a blip on the vast spectrum of eternity. We keep working and moving forward in the hopes of creating a better future. Maybe audiences 84 years from now will look back on the movies of 2013 and marvel at how much we were able to accomplish with the "primitive technology" available to us today. Maybe they will see a world of violence leavened by hope and the unyielding passion of the human spirit.
Maybe they will see themselves, as I see myself in the faces of "Man With a Movie Camera." As I see my life in the dreams held in those eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment