Reelin' In The Years -- Our Hospitality (1923), directed by Buster Keaton & John G. Blystone

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Hatfield", by Widespread Panic

       Our next stop on the Reelin’ in the Years brings us to the year 1923, and the man who defined the sad boi aesthetic for generations to come, Buster Keaton. Admittedly I know little about Keaton or his work: Aside from a half-remembered film of his I saw years ago, all I knew about him was that he was, along with Charles Chaplin, one of the preeminent comedians of the silent film days. I didn’t know why he was so popular, I didn’t know what made him so influential, that folks almost a century or so later would still be lauding his name and taking such great care to preserve his body of work. At least cinema nerds are, so if I’m aiming for that prestigious label I suppose it’s about time to sit down and get to know him too. Plus Destiny was kind of a bummer, so we need to lighten the mood a bit.

       Released in 1923, co-directed by Keaton and Jack Blystone and written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez and Joseph A. Mitchell, Our Hospitality was the second film by Buster Keaton Productions, which would later go on to put out such films as The Navigator and The General before closing its doors in 1928. Buster Keaton stars as Willie McKay, the last living member of the McKay family after his father was shot and killed by a member of the Canfield family, and a not-so-subtle reference to the real life feuding families the Hatfields and the McCoys. Having been raised in New York City for the past 20 years Willie doesn’t care about any feuds, but a letter of inheritance for his dad’s estate brings him running back to the old stomping grounds, where it turns out the Canfields are still very much interested in stamping out the McKays once and for all. The Canfield men at least, the lone Canfield women just so happens to be the same young woman who befriends Willie on his train ride over, and she just might prove to be his salvation. Because the Canfields may be unrepentant potential murderers, but the one thing they are not are bad hosts, and guess who just got invited to dinner?

       I guess what surprised me most about Our Hospitality while watching it was just how well the gags hold up. There’s this expressiveness to it, this absurdity that feels more timely than I was expecting from a movie a few years removed from World War I. A train in Our Hospitality that happens to run through a forest doesn’t need a clear path for example, the tracks simply run over any logs or rocks in the way. A loaded gun simply refuses to fire until its intended victim shoots it, at which point it works perfectly. Suddenly all that talk of Keaton being so influential starts to make sense, because in these moments you see the foundations of how comedy is built on a visual level. Looney Tunes, Mel Brooks, The Simpsons, all those Zucker/Abrahams movies, it would seem they all share a common ancestor in Buster Keaton. Kinda like how every one in sixteen people is related to Genghis Khan, or whatever that phrase is.

       Along that same track I was also rather surprised and impressed by Buster Keaton as a performer. He has excellent body language, you’re never confused over whether he’s sad or confused or what have you, and yet it feels like he rarely ever emotes locked as he behind this meek, almost vacant expression. At the same time he doesn’t need to, as his tired, sad clown expression asks the perfect mask for whatever the character needs. Willie can be heroic, he can be cowardly, he can be smart, he can be dumb, and it all works, it all makes sense with this chameleonic persona Keaton has created. The rest of the cast is okay, Natalie Talmadge is a decent enough leading lady, Joe Roberts has a nice mustache, but it ain’t called a Buster Keaton Production for nothing.

       Aside from the comedic aspects, I’ve got to give Keaton and Blystone credit for the cinematography as well. For whatever reason they decided this goofy rom-com needed some breathing room, so they start putting in these expansive shots here and there, especially by the end. Huge cliff sides, giant waterfalls and so on, which we just stumble into for no reason other than big dramatic set-pieces. Seems a bit excessive, almost as excessive as what feels like 15 straight minutes of train-related gags in the beginning of the film, but as it was with Keaton’s performance it feels so natural that you just accept it. ‘Buster Keaton falls off a cliff and 2 minutes later has hijacked a locomotive? Sounds about right’.   

       I’ve also got to give a hand to Robert Israel, who composed the score to this release. Very well done, not only appropriate for the time Our Hospitality was made but syncs up well with and enhances the emotional weight of the film as well. A noticeable improvement over Destiny, in my opinion, and a good showing by Kino Lorber. This is probably not the last time we’ll be seeing their name pop up on this list, so we’ll see if they can keep this up.

       My first experience with Buster Keaton and it was a pleasant surprise! There are probably better films to showcase his talents, I know The General is supposedly one of the best films ever made, but as a gateway film I think Our Hospitality did a splendid job. It gets the recommendation, and the official Reelin’ In the Years tour bus rolls on... 

Reelin' In The Years -- Destiny (1921), directed by Fritz Lang

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Bring Me To Life", by Evanescence

       Is there any filmmaker that has gotten so much praise for so little (on this blog at least) as Fritz Lang? I mean I covered a single film of his, Metropolis, six years ago now and yet it feels like he’s constantly showing up in my name dropping sessions? Got a silent movie? Fritz Lang comes in. Science fiction movie? Fritz Lang. Movie that has even a hint of inspiration from German Expressionism? Fritz Lang. The man had been a filmmaker for over ten years before Metropolis and would continue to be one for decades afterward, as much as I loved that film it’s not necessarily indicative of who Fritz Lang was as an artist and filmmaker. Nor would it be for anyone, besides those folks who only ever did one movie I suppose. Conveniently enough, rectifying that problem also coincides with the kickoff of our unofficial Reelin’ In the Years Tour, and you better settle in because there’s a lot more silent black and white movies to come.

We begin our journey in 1921 with Destiny, or Der müde Tod, written (along with Thea von Harben) and directed by Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang, this being his eighth time in the director’s chair. Described as a ‘German Folk Song in Six Verses’, the film centers around a young couple who meet a mysterious stranger while taking a carriage ride into an unnamed village. When they stop off at the local inn the young woman goes off to play with some cats, and when she returns she finds her fiance gone, along with the stranger. Given that he resides in a vast walled structure without any windows or doors next to a cemetery, it should come as no surprise that this stranger is actually Death, and yet this doesn’t stop the young woman from pleading for her lover’s return. So Death gives her a challenge: if love really is as strong as death, then he’ll give her three chances, three lives of different lands and times, in order to prove it. If even one manages to succeed, then her fiance’s life will be returned to him. If not, well, better start making the down payment on that casket. But as long as it’s not chess, it’ll probably be fine.

Our leads here are Lil Dagover (who you might recognize from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), Walter Jannsen, and Bernard Goetzke as the Young Couple and Death respectively, as well as characters within the 3 lives segments. They’re...okay. Lil Dagover does most of the heavy lifting, which makes sense as she was the protagonist as well as the most famous actress in Germany at the time, but there’s not much to lift as they’re all rather simple characters. They try a little bit of comedy in the China story, which has a bit of charm to it. Mostly it’s weird, especially the kissing scene. I’m not sure who thought that looked good.   

       Where the film really shines, setting the stage for Metropolis a few years later, is Lang’s ambitious eye in regards to visual and set design. Not only do we get some nice looking shots in the village, like Death’s vast wall and the room of men’s lives, but then Destiny goes the extra mile and presents us with Renaissance-era Venice, Imperial China and the Ottoman Empire, filtered through the lens of German Expressionism. Lots of large spaces, interplays between light and shadows, warped scenery, and surprisingly not quite as culturally insensitive as you might expect from a bunch of German in the 1920’s. The most intriguing is arguably China, which in Lang’s hands becomes this strange, Carrollesque wonderland of wizards and storybook landscapes, as if you tasked someone to recite Marco Polo’s travelogue from memory while intoxicated.      

The only thing that I would consider enough of an issue to bring up would be the score, or rather how they use the score. It’s very basic, keeping in line with what you expect silent film music to sound like but not always to the context of the scene. The music during the scene where people are celebrating Ramadan, for example, feels very dour compared to the excited atmosphere that the visuals present, and scenes that would expect to be dour, like talking to the personification of death, sound vaguely cheery. Not really the movie’s fault so much as it is the distributor, Kino Lorber, but they’ve done good work in the past so we’ll call it a mulligan. Plus it’s a silent movie, so if you wanted to just hit the mute button and see if you can sync it up with Dark Side of the Moon there’s nothing stopping you. 

In the end, Destiny starts our Reelin’ In the Years tour off right with a recommendation. While I wouldn’t call it an extraordinary film, a solid B in even more solid filmography at the time, it’s an entertaining little tale with that now familiar Fritz Lang flair. Those entering into the world of silent film or love that tasty Expressionist style will find this an easy watch. Those who aren’t can stick with their regular, non-cinematic German folk songs. We won’t judge.

New years, new ideas

Coming up in the recent days/weeks/months is a little series that I'm unofficially calling Reelin' In the Years, where I'll be filling in the gaps in my little tag timeline and thereby covering an entire century of film, from 1920 up to the present day. I don't know if I'll actually manage to finish it by the end of the year or how it'll affect this year's Marathon, but I'm currently in a reviewing mood so why the fuck not?

See you on the other side.

Delicatessen (1991), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Meat Grinder" by Madvillain

       It’s always something of a treat when you see a couple of creative people just click together on a project. Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor for example: Great on their own, and absolute dynamite when put together. Or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, although I’d give anybody credit for hanging out with Jerry Lewis for any length of time. People who may not be friends per se, may not even like each other, yet they are not only understand each other but elevate each other to heights they may not have achieved on their own. It’s a fascinating thing to see, and as someone who is often trapped in his own head and unable to get any creative writing done, thoughts racing ahead of my ability to act upon them, it’s something I’d like to experience myself at some point. Of course some of those famous pairs ended up hating each other, but I figure if you go in hating yourself you won’t have anything to worry about.

Those of you who understand where I’m going with this might not agree with the idea that French-born filmmakers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro fit this description. They only really worked on three films together after all, one of which was Alien: Resurrection of all things, and Jeunet’s most successful period both critically and commercially didn’t come until afterwards, while Caro’s film career is basically non-existent as far as I can tell. Not much ‘elevating’ going on. Yet City of Lost Children was a big, Ron Pearlman sized treat, and I feel like I’ve name dropped these two enough times over the years that it’s finally time to cover the film that introduced me to these two in the first place. Years before the blog got rolling in those halcyon days when hulu actually had stuff you could watch for free, I stumbled upon a strange little film by the name of Delicatessen, and decided then and there to never shut the hell up about it. And now we’re here.

Released in 1991, co-written by Gilles Adrien, Delicatessen was the feature-length directorial debut of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. France, and possibly the entire world, has been reduced to a blighted, miserable wreck, much like your average town in the Rust Belt. Meat has become scarce, and rather than switching to a vegetable-based diet, the landlord of an apartment building (who happens to be a butcher and the owner of a delicatessen) and his tenants have arrived at the most sensible solution: Lure folks in with the promise of room and board as the maintenance man, murder them in the night and cannibalize their bodies. Such is the fate intended for Stan Louison, ex-circus man, eternal optimist, played by Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon, and at his best when pan-fried and served with soup or a fresh garden salad. However poor Louison is not without allies in this den of wolves; Julie, the butcher’s daughter (played by Marie-Laure Dougnac) is determined that this handyman will not suffer the fate of the others before him. He’s gonna get out, and this apartment building is never going to be the same. Partially because of the severe water damage.

Delicatessen was one of those films that, in hindsight, seated as it was in that collection of weird surrealistic fantasy and science fiction films that have since become my wheelhouse. Our tenants are as motley a crew of misfits as you’d ever see, even if they weren’t cannibals . There’s the woman plagued with voices in her head who plots out elaborate suicides, the brothers who make those little cylinders that moo when you flip them, the pistol packing postman, all folk that would seem right at home in your average mental institution. It’s also nice to see the ‘debut’ appearances of several actors that we would later see in City of Lost Children and Amèlie, like Dominique Pinon, Rufus (who played one of the cow box brothers here and Amèlie’s father) and the late Ticky Holgado. Pinon especially, who so projects this aura of the everyman schlub that it allows him to slip from the likable clown Louison here, to the moronic minions in City, to the misogynist loser in Amèlie without ever skipping a beat. 

Despite that, things never quite come together as it feels they should with this movie. There’s the core of good satire there, that in a time of crisis these folk would literally kill friends and family rather than give up the morning sausage, but it never really comes together in a way that’s completely satisfying. The setting feels a bit too self-contained for the world they’ve established, which makes plot points that happen later feel too convenient. Louison never feels like enough of the doe-eyed optimist to counteract the negativity around him, and while things move towards that direction it feels less like his worldview being challenged and more things happening to him. Which is fine if he’s more of a plot device, a catalyst, and Julie was the main character, but it never definitively moves in that direction either? Delicatessen is a movie full of people moving in a straight line it seems like, they're the exact same person when they come out as they were when they went in. Which I guess doesn’t matter if they all died an agonizingly slow death from starvation after all this, but then that’s true of everything.

Thinking about how to wrap things up, and my mind instantly flashed with comparisons to Jabberwocky, Terry Gilliam’s first proper movie outside of the Monty Python umbrella. Ok films, films that have that spark of something unique that make you perk up your ears and take notice, but trip before the finish line. A prelude to something better, in hindsight. So it was with Gilliam, who proved himself a few years later with Time Bandits and so it was Caro and Jeunet, though to this day it unfortunately has been their last. Delicatessen gets the recommendation, and maybe this short, barely coherent ‘review’ will be what you need to get interested in the works of Jeunet, just as this film was all those years ago. Or at least it might slightly tip the search algorithm in his favor, because apparently he’s hard up for movie-making funds at the moment and needs all the help he can get. I dunno, the internet doesn’t make sense.