13. Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu is the second great Expressionist film on the 1001 list (here's the first.) Its director, F.W. Murnau was one of the poster boys for German Expressionist cinema and one of the most influential directors of the Silent Era in general. He spent the first few years of his career making a name for himself in Germany, and then immigrated to the United States in 1926 to work in Hollywood. He would die of injuries sustained in a car crash at the tender age of 42, but he achieved great heights in his relatively short career.

Nosferatu is Murnau's best known film, but the origins of the film began with producer Albin Grau. When he was fighting in World War I in 1916, a Serbian farmer told Grau that the farmer's father was one of the undead, a vampire. A lifelong student of the occult, Grau was intrigued.

Fast forward to 1921. Grau and partner Enrico Dieckmann established Prana Film for the purpose of producing films with supernatural or occult themes. Remembering the Serbian farmer's tale from five years earlier, Grau decided their first film would be about vampires.

Grau and Dieckmann hired a writer experienced in dark romanticism to write a screenplay based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. The playwright renamed the characters and changed other aspects of the story enough that the filmmakers hoped they could get away with not having film rights to the book.

The resulting screenplay was detailed and rhythmic, filled with copious notes on lighting and camera angles. Murnau would rewrite some portions of the screenplay, but he kept the rhythmic feel in tact, even using a metronome during filming to keep the actors' movements in time with his script notes.

Murnau hired actor Max Schreck to play the film's version of Dracula, Count Orlok. His involvement in the film would become legendary in its own right (more on that later), but in real life he was an actor who had both stage and film experience before he was offered Nosferatu.

Filming took place in Germany (the town shots) and Slovakia (Count Orlok's castle). The production could only afford one camera, so there was only one original negative of the film (!!!).

Dracula is an epistolary novel, where the plot is told through a series of documents--diary entries, letters, newspaper articles, etc. The film keeps this format in tact, using the documents as title cards.

The beginning of the movie starts out just as Dracula does: young lawyer travels to visit Transylvanian Count on business.

Near the middle, it starts to deviate a little: the Count, now revealed to be a vampire, makes his way to Germany (England in the book.)

The ending of the movie differs more widely from the book than the rest of the story (I won't spoil it here).

The character of Van Helsing is almost completely left out of the movie, which made me really sad because I read the book a couple years ago and Van Helsing was my favorite character by far. It would have been nice if the studio had made a part 2 focusing on the Van Helsing parts of the book, but sadly, they never got the chance.

The film was released in 1922 with an ad campaign and a lavish release party and the producers had high hopes for its success. But the fate of the film's legacy was threatened when Bram Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement and won. At Mrs. Stoker's request, the court ordered that all the existing prints and negatives be destroyed.

Luckily, at least one print survived outside Germany. Copies were made and the film surfaced again in the late 20s. This is why the release date is sometimes listed as 1929: that's when it was first shown in the United States.

The costs of the lawsuit caused Prana Film to declare bankrupty. Albin Grau's vision of a studio producing only supernatural-themed films would be short lived. But in its brief existence, Prana Film did give the world one groundbreaking classic.

Another part of the film that miraculously survives to this day is the shooting locations. Almost all of the buildings used in the film survived World War II and are still standing in Wismar and Lübeck, Germany, and northern Slovakia. One could feasibly make a pilgrimage there. Maybe Nosferatu tours already exist?

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One interesting thing about reading/watching stuff about vampires is you get to see how vampire lore has evolved over time. Most modern depictions of vampires show the influence of Stoker's characterization of Count Dracula as a cool, suave aristocrat. Nosferatu's vampire is a Count, but has none of the gentlemanly manners of the Count in Stoker's book. He's 100% creepy and is more of a rat/lizard creature than a human.

In addition to the indelible images of Count Orlok that this film contributed to the world, Nosferatu is also the point of origin for the idea that sunlight is fatal to vampires. That was not in earlier vampire fiction, but it entered the canon of vampire lore starting with this film. It demonstrates how much movies play a role in shaping public consciousness. An earlier example from the 1001 list is Birth of a Nation, which established burning crosses and white costumes as KKK iconography.

Nosferatu has inspired at least two feature-length films. The first was Werner Herzog's 1979 film Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night, starring Klaus Kinski (awesome in whatever role he plays). By 1979, Dracula had entered the public domain, so Herzog restored the original character names from the book. He wanted to make a stylistic homage to Nosferatu because he considered it the greatest German film ever produced, and he even copied some shots verbatim. This movie is on the 1001 list, so I'll be watching it at some point. 

The second feature film based on or inspired by Nosferatu was Shadow of a Vampire in 2000. Its plot is based on the legend that Max Schreck really was a vampire and director F.W. Murnau (played by John Malkovich) convinced him to appear in Nosferatu, but Murnau doesn't tell the rest of the cast and crew that they're dealing with a real vampire. The myth about Schreck began when someone claimed there was no evidence he had been in any other movies (this was later proved to be false). If it were true, that would have been the greatest casting move in history. Shadow of a Vampire is not on the 1001 list, but I might watch it anyway, because the premise sounds pretty entertaining. The role of Max-Schreck as real vampire" was reportedly written specifically for Willem Dafoe (more inspired casting).

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So that's the general story of Nosferatu. A little more about the nuts and bolts of the movie:

It's one thing to look at pictures of Count Orlok and think he is creepy, but it's a totally other feeling to actually see him in motion.

The first time he appears on screen is some of the most awesomely creepy footage I've ever seen. He only blinks once in the entire movie, and he appears to slither across the screen as he moves with quick, tiny steps and hunched over shoulders. Like I said before, he seems like more of a rat/lizard creature than a person, and his character development doesn't go much further than that. 

This film has all the striking visuals and effective use of shadow that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari does, but the main difference is that whereas Caligari was obviously shot on a stage with matte paintings as backgrounds, Nosferatu was shot on location. That does give the film an air of realism, and the Count's movements are all so perfect that I can see why some people did not believe Max Schreck was just playing a role. This movie probably has the widest range of visual effects I've seen yet in a film on the 1001 list.

I was sad they greatly diminished Van Helsing's character, but the changes to the plot make for a movie that's just right in pacing and length. It's available to watch on Netflix. I suggest you check it out.

Hitchcock Part 2

I finished the Hitchcock book.

There are a whopping 18 films by Hitchcock on the 1001 movie list, more than any other director, and they span 1929 to 1972. Does that make mean he's the greatest director in history? Not necessarily, but that's for you to decide. Hitchcock remained experimental throughout his career, even at the very height of his fame, and he was incredibly prolific--53 films in all, and he was even working on plans for a 54th at the end of his life until he realized he didn't have enough time left to finish it. These are among the reasons it's impossible to tell someone to watch just a couple Hitchcock movies. You have to see at least two from every decade.

In contrast to all that's been written portraying Hitchcock as a control freak who terrorized actresses, this book presents him as a much more benign character. It feels like there are two Hitchcocks: there's the concrete Hitchcock of everyday life, the man who loved food and wine, told dirty jokes, and prized his wife's opinion above all else. And then there's the more abstract Hitchcock, the one whose psyche is played out in his films.

The parts of the book that most interested me weren't about the making of his best known films, but what happened in between filming, the creative process he followed - how he would create an entire movie around an experimental technique or an idea for a single shot that had been floating around in his head. Sometimes ideas would slowly evolve for years, even decades, before he could actually spin them into something bigger. One of his more experimental pictures is Rope, the whole of which consists of ten long shots, a huge stylistic risk. North by Northwest came into being because Hitchcock had the idea of filming people crawling over the faces of Mount Rushmore.

In addition to being prolific and experimental, Hitchcock was also impressively resilient. In between all the hits and classics, there are the missteps like Under Capricorn and Torn Curtain, but he always bounced back. Just when everyone thought he was too past his prime to direct anything else worth watching, he directed Frenzy, his "late masterpiece." Whenever he tried something new and it didn't pan out, he would so "whoops, OK, that didn't work," but he never stopped creating.

His legacy has proven to be just as resilient, even after his death. Take Vertigo, for example. Possibly the most personal and enigmatic of all Hitchcock's films,  it received mixed reviews upon its release and didn't do well at the box office, but its reputation steadily rose over the years. Its crowning achievement was displacing Citizen Kane as the #1 on Sight and Sound's poll of the 10 best movies of all time in 2012, 54 years after its original release. Other movies have seen a rise in popularity over the years, but this one is the most impressive. How does something like that even happen? The only way I can explain it is that critics needed that long to digest it. With this film, Hitchcock took us deeper into his mind than we had ever been before and we needed time to process what we'd seen. Even those who were around during the filming said that this film in particular seemed to strike very personal chords with him.

In addition to all his other innovations, Hitchcock worked with a dizzying array of collaborators throughout his career. The ones most interesting to me were the writers. Over the years, he engaged award-winning novelists, playwrights, New Yorker columnists, actors, and everyone in between to write his movies. Another interesting collaboration: composer John Williams wrote the music for Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot.

So Hitchcock was a creative force to be reckoned with, but his greatest strength is his accessibility. And that's why he is so widely appreciated today. He made movies that were replete with meaning, yet not so convoluted that the everyman couldn't follow them. As his daughter said: above all else, he made movies for the audience. He gave people movies they could interpret on their own and keep interpreting long after he was gone.

I don't think there's anything more you could ask of a director.

12. Foolish Wives (1922)

Disclaimer: I've noticed that the films are in a slightly different order depending on which edition of the book you look at. So from now on I'm going to just try and go in roughly chronological order, but I probably won't get it 100% right.

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Remember this guy from Sunset Boulevard?

How could you not? Gloria Swanson makes the movie, but he provides a memorable assist. The character's name is Max von Mayerling and he is described as "one of the three greatest silent directors" who is now working for his ex-wife Norma Desmond as her butler. It's some of the most inspired casting in film history, because the actor (Erich von Stroheim) actually was a famous silent director who had been mostly forgotten in America by the time Sunset Boulevard came out in 1950.

Von Stroheim's story proves as well as anyone's how it's possible to totally reinvent yourself in Hollywood, but you have to work hard to stay relevant and be willing to make compromises. Your ego can only carry you so far.

These days he is viewed as an auteur, which I think is just a fancy word for pain in the ass/batshit crazy. For example, he thought many of his movies should run 6-10 hours because he was obsessed with exploring all the details of a story. All the tales behind his films are about him being difficult and inflexible to work with, and he brought down his career by refusing to compromise on his artistic ideals to make commercially successful films.

Foolish Wives is considered the first "big" movie that he directed. It was also the first movie that was advertised as costing over $1 million dollars. It was originally budgeted for $250,000, but Universal Studio estimated it ended up costing $1,225,000 (von Stroheim argued differently, that it cost "only" $750,000).

Foolish Wives takes place in Monte Carlo and tells the story of a con man (played by von Stroheim) who poses as a Russian count. He's known for being a ladies' man and he zeroes in an the young wife of the American ambassador as his next target. Working with him are two female accomplices who pose as his cousins.

In a strange twist of irony, the theme of a man posing as an aristocrat mirrors von Stroheim's own life:  he was born Erich Stroheim, son of a lower-middle class Viennese hat-maker, but when he arrived in America he registered himself as Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, Austrian noble. He didn't completely get away with the ruse, however; other German speakers in Hollywood outed him as having a lower-class Austrian accent. Others say he didn't speak German at all, and later in life von Stroheim claimed he had forgotten his native tongue completely.

So, you have an enigmatic guy who rewrites his own backstory in America and does the same thing for characters in his films. Despite never having served in the military, von Stroheim often wrote himself into movies as high-ranking military officers.

In addition to casting himself as a smooth playboy-type, this film has another really big hint at von Stroheim's ego in the scene where he first meets his prey as she is reading a book on a hotel veranda. The book's title? "Foolish Wives, by Erich von Stroheim." 

I will say that the art direction in this movie is fantastic. The recreation of Monte Carlo is exquisite.

There was one scene that stuck out at me as really creative in which the Count uses a bit of mirror to spy on the diplomat's wife as she is undressing. You see a little sliver of what he is seeing, but the focus is on his face and how much he's enjoying being a voyeur.

One of the trademarks that gave von Stroheim the "auteur" label is the cynicism that pervades his films. This film employs the motif of innocence lost that I've mentioned so much recently, but the difference here is that the bad guy gets a lot more screen time and isn't really presented as, well, a bad guy. The blame is placed pretty squarely on the victim--the film's title is Foolish Wives, not Evil Playboys. It reminds me of Goodfellas: the "bad" guys do bad things, sure, but the lifestyle is just so glamorous and fun, how could anyone resist! It's the other person's fault for being such a schmuck! If the message of D.W. Griffith movies is "watch out for bad guys," the message of this movie is, "bad guys are sexy."

I find von Stroheim to be pretty fascinating, so I'm looking forward to seeing his other movie on the list, Greed.

11. Orphans of the Storm (1921)

Orphans of the Storm is the last D.W. Griffith movie on the list, and my feelings about it are pretty similar to what I felt about the rest of them (with the exception of Broken Blossoms): the technical aspects of the film are praiseworthy (the set pieces are particularly impressive), but the characters and plot are formulaic and left me feeling pretty bored. I figured out how this movie was going to end with over an hour of running time left.

Lillian Gish and her sister Dorothy play the requisite innocent heroines in a French Revolution setting, bad guys threaten to tarnish their innocence, etc., a battle between good and evil ensues....you get the idea.

Factoids about this film:

It is based on a play called "The Orphans" that had already been filmed at least twice before 1920; one version starred Theda Bara and was released in 1915. (I've seen some other examples of multiple silent films being based on the same source material--I guess the precedent for the current remake frenzy sweeping Hollywood was set a long time ago!) Theda Bara was one of the film industry's first sex symbols/femme fatales. She made over 40 films in her career but, unfortunately, most of them were lost in a fire in 1937 and very little footage of her survives to this day.

This movie is the last Griffith film to star Lillian Gish, and it's also considered his last big commercial success.

I am so glad to have all the D. W. Griffith films on the list behind me now.

10. The Phantom Carriage (1921)

The frame story of The Phantom Carriage is that whoever dies last on New Years' Eve is doomed to serve as Death's servant for the following year and collect people's souls when they die. The doomed servant of Death must ride around in a ghostly carriage to accomplish the task.

The film opens on New Years' Eve as a young Salvation Army sister lies ill on her deathbed. Her final wish is to speak to a man named David Holm before she dies. The next scene reveals that David Holm is a local drunk, but it's not immediately clear what the connection is between him and the girl. The rest of the movie explains the connection between them, and also what happens next for David Holm.

I absolutely LOVED this movie. It is suspenseful and chilling from the start and never really lets up.
This film is known for its use of extensive flashbacks and special effects: the carriage and the dead characters appear transparent. The effects add a lot to the film and make it extremely eerie.

The effects were created with multiple double exposures. And cameras had to be hand-cranked at that time, so the cameras had to be cranked at exactly the same speed for the exposures to match up. Post-production of this film took a while because of these technical challenges, but it all turned out beautifully.

Telling the story with flashbacks is also very effective. And in an early stroke of marketing genius, the movie was first released on New Years' Day in 1921. It had a big impact on a 15-year-old Ingmar Bergman, who would later become Sweden's most celebrated film director.

This is probably my favorite from the list so far. Highly recommended.
The whole thing is available on YouTube, if you want to watch it.

9. Within Our Gates (1920)

Happy Black History Month! Within Our Gates is the earliest known film by an African-American director. Usually considered a response to Birth of a Nation, it was released during a period of violent racial tension in the United States that followed the Great Migration of southern blacks to the north.

The film follows a young woman (Sylvia) as she runs into various perils while she is trying to raise money for a black school in the south. The movie is pretty straightforward until it nears the end, when Sylvia's father is framed for a crime. The pace really picks up as her family is being chased down by white townspeople. After Sylvia's family is captured, a white mob lynches her parents; Sylvia and her brother narrowly escape. The lynching scene is the most famous in the film.

In contrast to D.W. Griffith's one-sided vision of post-Civil War race relations in the United States, Oscar Micheaux offers a more complex look at some of the issues blacks faced. Not all the white characters are unsympathetic in this film, and not all the black characters are sympathetic. Sylvia eventually gets $50,000 for her school from a white philanthropist, while two black characters are shown "selling out" -- one denounces the idea of suffrage just to please the whites around him, and another turns Sylvia's family in to an angry mob in hopes of personal gain. At the end of a film, a rich white man chases Sylvia down, but lets her go after realizing she is his biological daughter.

The censors objected to this film because they feared it would incite more race riots like the one in Chicago in 1919. The objections caused some cities to show the film only with major scenes cut out, leading to multiple versions of the film. All prints later disappeared and the film was lost for decades until a single copy was found in Spain under the title "La Negra" in the 1970s.

This film isn't exactly one you would settle in and watch with a bucket of popcorn, but it is a very important piece of social history that would make a good teaching tool for classes/modules about the early 20th century in America. it's classified as a "race film," but I don't really agree with that label, since the cast isn't all black and the movie doesn't seem targeted just toward a black audience. It's meant to educate all people about racism, women's rights, and the importance of education.

8. Way Down East (1920)

Do not watch this movie on Netflix! I settled in for what I thought was an 83-minute movie and as it neared the end I thought to myself, "hmm....they have a lot of loose ends to tie up in a very short amount of time." Turns out Netflix only has part 1. The full movie is actually 145 minutes long. Luckily the whole thing is posted on YouTube, so I finished it there.

This film is based on a play that premiered in the late 1800s. It was popular through the first decade of the 20th century, but by the time Griffith released his film version, the Victorian plot seemed tired and outdated. It is old-fashioned and trifling even for 1920.

Griffith's reliable heroine Lillian Gish stars again as an innocent young woman who is wronged at the hands of society's less savory characters. Gish plays a poor country girl (Anna) who goes to visit her rich relatives in the big city and gets swept off her feet by a big city playboy who lures her into a sham marriage. After he abandons her, she goes through the traumatic experience of giving birth to an out-of-wedlock baby and being kicked out of a boarding house because of it. After the baby dies, she wanders until finding work on a prosperous farm. Things seem to be looking up until her ex-quasi-husband appears and starts wooing another girl, and the town gossips expose Anna's past and get her kicked off the farm. Reeling from the humiliation, she wanders out into a violent winter storm and eventually collapses on an ice floe headed for a waterfall. Luckily the farmer's son who has fallen in love with her saves her just in time and the film ends with a triple wedding (did those ever really happen in real life, or just in movies?)

The scenes on the ice floes are by far the most interesting part of the movie. Like I said, the rest of it is kind of corny and melodramatic, but it's notable for being the first Griffith movie on the list that has a lot of comedy in it. There are a lot of moments of slapstick comedy involving the minor characters in the film.

This movie was way too long. I don't mind long movies as a general rule, but the length of this one did not feel justified or satisfying. I didn't enjoy this movie nearly as much as the previous Griffith film I watched, and I'm convinced that what made that one good was the fact that Griffith really reined himself in on the length, didn't waste time on a million supporting characters and subplots, and chose a story that didn't have a cliched happy ending.

The ice floe scenes are pretty impressive for 1920, but that's really the only interesting thing about this movie. And filming those scenes had a lasting impact on some of the people involved: Lillian Gish's right hand was in the icy water for so long during the shoot that she had problems with it for the rest of her life (she lived until 1993) and D.W. Griffith also suffered long-term problems from getting frostbite on one side of his face.

This is the 4th of the 5 D.W. Griffith movies on the 1001 list. I wonder if the last one will be a melodrama like this one, or a more satisfying tragedy like Broken Blossoms.