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bocce
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:41 am Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
watched ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1921) early this morning. i've really got to get better sleep habits but in this case it was kind of a blessing...

despite some problematic elements (some of which were due to reducing the film's run time from 2.5 to 2 hours), it was a fun ride. whatever one may think of d.w. griffith's tendency to caricaturise and polemify, one is not going to be bored with the breakneck editing applied to the overall sweep of the story.

four or five different threads are woven together against the background of the french revolution. lillian gish stars as a foundling given shelter and raised as a sister (played by lillian's own sister, dorothy) to a couple's own daughter. when the girl goes blind, la gish takes her to paris for medical attention. there they become separated in the throes of hysteria surrounding the revolution. the other main thread is the battle for the hearts and minds of the parisians between danton and robespierre. a third is the corrupting influence of revenge on one of the more finely drawn characters: jacques forget not which is balanced by the kindly aristocrat, vaudrey who becomes gish's love object.

this storyline, which follows a literary convention quite popular at the time, is a bit predictable for today's audience. but the way in which griffith handles it cinematically keeps it interesting. never one to let historical fact stand in the way of a good yarn, griffith peoples the film with every imaginable icon of the crowd gone amuck. he has his own "madame la farge", the drunken unruly mob, libertine aristocrats and high minded philosophers. at one point, the intertitles mention bolshevism (as an evil to be avoided) despite that term being used only 120 years later. the point of view of the director is manifestly obvious punctuated by his introduction of thomas jefferson into one scene in which the virtues of american style democracy are extolled.

well, the film may be bad history dubiously exemplified in caricature but it's really good cinema. the way griffith handles the crowd and action sequences are truly marvelous. interior and exterior shots are convincingly lit and the overall set design and costuming are probably the only close to reality aspects of the film. i had never really noticed griffith's attention to detail before, but he must have been obsessive. even very quick shots of extras are handled with obvious care.

as for the acting, as usual gish is excellent but it is the actor playing jacques forget not who steals the movie. he shows a range and a sublety matched by few of the other characters. the danton character is also frequently good altho sometimes overwrought. but nobody really watches griffith for the acting.

all in all, this is a terrific silent film...
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Marilyn
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:21 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8210 Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
I forgot to tape it. Oh well...

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bocce
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:41 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
Marilyn wrote:
I forgot to tape it. Oh well...


well, that's okay. sister roberta is not gonna rap your knuckles with a ruler over it. just don't let it happen again...
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Marj
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:01 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 10497 Location: Manhattan
Excellent post bocce. I saw it too, and I agreed with what you said about Gish keeping us gripped even though the ending is so obvious on various levels.

One question or perhaps correction. When you referred to Jacques Forget-Me-Not, as Gish's love interest, did you mean Lillian or Dorothy? Lillian's love interest was Chevalier, played by Joseph Schildkraut. An actor far ahead of his time who would go on to play the father in both the play and movie of The Diary of Anne Frank.
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lady wakasa
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:41 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 5911 Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
Marilyn wrote:
Hi Lady. Did you get a chance to see Shadows yet?


Hi, Marilyn - yes, Sister Wakasa and I watched it (she even brought it up, not me). I thought it was okay, and you could see some of the skill that Chaney brought to his roles (taking into account how the material would have been treated in the late 10s / early 20s) but I thought The Penalty is a better early Chaney and Broken Blossoms is a better "positive" treatment of Chinese in a movie plot.

You know, I've seen Mr. Wu (and I think it's around here somewhere) but I can't remember what it was about.

I'm glad I got to see it, though - it was another bit of info in thinking about the man's career.
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lady wakasa
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:44 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 5911 Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
Both Griffith and Gish are at the top of their game in Orphans of the Storm (and the audiences agreed with that, if I'm remembering correctly), but I'll always think of Way Down East as the peak of their collaboration (with Broken Blossoms a fairly close second). Gish was, in great part, defining the medium, and Griffith just had excellent instincts and an eye for what was going to work (at least at that point).
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Marilyn
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:57 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8210 Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
Lady - I was really impressed with the supporting performances. I thought Chaney's physical contortions in an attempt to look old just looked awkward and painful. I found it distracting.

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Nancy
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:33 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4607 Location: Norman, OK
lady wakasa wrote:

You know, I've seen Mr. Wu (and I think it's around here somewhere) but I can't remember what it was about.


Mr. Wu is the one where Chaney plays a mandarin (and also his grandfather, in old age makeup) whose daughter (played by Renee Adoree, with Anna May Wong as her maid!) gets knocked up by a Caucasian. To redeem the family honor, someone's got to die, and I'm sure you can guess who. Not really a horror film, with a good Chaney performance.

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Nancy
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:35 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4607 Location: Norman, OK
OK, y'all have done it -- I'm going to have to watch Orphans of the Storm again. (Sigh.) Like I don't have enough movies to watch already.

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Nancy
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:43 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4607 Location: Norman, OK
BTW, according to the IMDB, Mr. Wu was based on a play. Previous British and German versions were filmed, both in 1919.

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bocce
Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 4:27 am Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
Marj wrote:
One question or perhaps correction. When you referred to Jacques Forget-Me-Not, as Gish's love interest, did you mean Lillian or Dorothy? Lillian's love interest was Chevalier, played by Joseph Schildkraut.


bocce wrote:
a third is the corrupting influence of revenge on one of the more finely drawn characters: jacques forget not which is balanced by the kindly aristocrat, vaudrey who becomes gish's love object.


marj...

i thought i'd made clear that vaudrey was gish's dish...
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Marj
Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:45 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 10497 Location: Manhattan
bocce - You certainly did, but which Gish dish had me confused. Not important though. I thought you covered the major elements of the movie very well.

One thing I noticed and wonder if you did too, was the use or lack of title cards. Griffith seemed to use them very sparingly, and rarely for dialogue. Usually I like that, but there were times in this particular film, I would have liked to see them used a bit more often.
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bocce
Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 4:15 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
Marj wrote:
One thing I noticed and wonder if you did too, was the use or lack of title cards. Griffith seemed to use them very sparingly, and rarely for dialogue.


the only problem i saw with the intertitles (other than the bolshevek referrence) was that they tended to telegraph the ensuing action: "let us hury to the gates of paris" (in order to save henriette and vaudrey) is a sure sign they'll make it in time.

just as an historical footnote, the hotel my wife and i always stay in paris is about 300 metres from place de la nation where the majority of the guillotining took place. it is INSIDE the old city perimeter, not outside as the film portrays.

we've had no visitations on our many stays there...
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Nancy
Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 9:00 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4607 Location: Norman, OK
bocce wrote:

marj...

i thought i'd made clear that vaudrey was gish's dish...


I resisted the temptation to say that the confusion was because we had an embarrassment of gishes........OK, no I didn't. Good night, folks.

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bocce
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:22 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
well, i regret to say that this one has pretty much run its course...

we've only a handfull (four or five) contributors any longer. it's run its four months and run up the number of pages and posts lady W had hoped for, and then some. but i'd rather see a swift demise via the scymitar of the archive than the slow death ala LA BOEHEME...

we can always talk about silents in COUCH, but i think it's time to look for a new specialty forum...whaddaya think???

i'm going to post this over in the lobby as well to see if we can generate some fresh topics or directors...
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