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kathleenkatmary · 4 days

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Silent Short Sunday Mornings: 9/22/2024 Ratings, Reviews, and Rankings

Check out my ratings, reviews, and rankings for all of the movies I’ve watched for Silent Shorts Sunday Mornings so far at my letterboxd.

Click the title of each short to watch on Youtube.

01. Manhatta (1921): 5/5

A remarkable documentary short about Manhattan. It takes some of Walt Whitman's writings about the city and translates his words into images, using intertitle cards to include the writings, which taken all together creates a movie that really captures the feeling and the spirit of Manhattan: it's giant buildings, the ship-filled water that surrounds it, the people bustling through its streets. It presents Manhattan as almost a living, breathing organism unto itself, and it feels like everything is framed with a certain awe and even reverence for what a city like this really is, and what a marvel it is that it exists. I think it's a great piece of filmmaking, but especially so when you put it into the context of the time that it was made, when cities like Manhattan had seen such a rapid change over the previous 50 years or so.

Cities like this really stood as an emblem for the massive cultural and technological changes that were happening at the turn of the century, and that's something that Manhatta captures in a way I haven't seen with any other 'travelogue' (though that's not remotely what this is) shorts, as much as I love them. I think the closest one has come is In and Through China: China in the present day, but I feel like that was trying to capture something a bit different about its location.

02. Across Brooklyn Bridge (1899): 4/5

Not gonna lie, the first person POV of this makes it feel like I'm watching a cutscene from a videogame. That's not a bad thing. I think it's kind of cool that so early on the technology and medium of film was being used to create this sort of first person view of a site so many would never get to see otherwise.

And it really is tremendous. As someone who has a pretty significant fear of bridges, when I was in NYC 15 years ago I adamantly refused to walk the Brooklyn bridge. It's not necessarily something I'd say I regret, as I recognize that my very real phobia is not something that I can just overcome through sheer force of will, and as such any attempt for me to walk across the bridge would have been agonizing, for me and my grandma, who I was there with. But having something like this, that allows me to see a first person view not just of the bridge, but the bridge as it was 110 years before I visited NYC, is pretty damn special.

03. The Tramps and the Mattress Makers (1906): 3.5/5

What a fun and pleasant surprise! Most of what Melies is remembered for are his fantastical effects heavy shorts, and that certainly makes up the bulk of his shorts that I've watched. So I always enjoy it when I find a short from him that deviates from that, and The Tramp and the Mattress Makers does so in a big way. Honestly, if I didn't know it was a Melies film going in I probably would never have guessed it.

Rather than having very visible, bombastic effects here, Melies instead uses effects very sparingly, and when they are used it's really quite subtle. There's actually something of a narrative here, and it actually ends up being a pretty effective comedy, which is probably not something most people think of when they think Melies. I really like that this movie is just kind of about the chaos, however contained it ends up being, caused by one drunk guy's bad decision. It's simple, but effective, which is a lot more than can be said for a lot of attempts at comedy from this era.

04. Little Red Riding Hood (1922): 3.5/5

What a fun early animated short from Walt Disney, part of his Laugh-o-Grams series which, I believe (I could be wrong) he animated before starting his company. I think there's a lot that's of interest in this short. While modernized re-tellings of classic stories is extremely common to the point of being considered sort of played out by many these days, it wasn't nearly as common in 1922. So it's really fun to see Little Red Riding Hood modernized, and the things that were tweaked in the story to make it fit that modernization.

One of the reasons I like early silent animation so much is that, so often, it feels like the animators and storytellers really did realize the potential for the medium to do things that simply would not be possible in live action film, or just in real life in general. And as such they just let their imaginations loose and came up with so many kooky ideas, even if it doesn't make total sense or necessarily serve a narrative purpose. Little Red Riding Hood is filled with that kind of stuff. The cat skeet shooting with the woman's baking in the beginning, the wolf man being able to shrink his car down and keep it in his coat, etc. It's just a lot of a fun, even if it's not the most narratively amazing thing in the world.

05. Old London Street Scenes (1903): 3.5/5

Anyone whose read even a little bit of my reviews for Silent Short Sunday Mornings probably knows that if here's a short that's just a non-narrative collection of scenes from a place in time, I'm going to watch it and I'm going to enjoy it. Old London Street Scenes is no exception.

It's different than a lot of other shorts of this type I've watched in that it doesn't really feel like a travelogue. While some major London landmarks/tourist spots are features, the focus seems to be far less on presenting these sites in a tourist friendly way, and far more on the traffic in the streets around these places, the people bustling through the city, living their lives. London was a pretty fascinating city at the turn of the century, and it really does feel like the point of this short was to capture a little bit of what that time, with all of its rapid changes, was like there.

06. Motor Pirates (1906): 3/5

Motor Pirates is pretty damn weird. There's some serious tonal whiplash happening, as it's hard to tell if it was actually meant to be comedic or if it's just the wild design of the bad guys' armored car that makes some of the things happening seem funny.

But it is hard to tell, because there are some scenes that are pretty effectively bleak. The opening sequence which ends with several dead or unconscious bodies of people who have been shot by the thieves scattered around the scene and a small child being the one to discover them and have to fetch the police carries a real chilling bleakness, even with the presence of the silly looking car earlier in the scene. And even the shootout that precedes this moment is well choreographed, enough so that it feel rather suspenseful. I also think some moments during the subsequent chases (because this is, above all, an early car chase film) are filmed in such a way as to feel kind of exciting.

But then... there's that car. And its wild design. Which, even with how silly it looks, I don't think necessarily tips thing into comedic. But there are things the car does, like open up its front to basically eat a policeman, that do feel really funny, even if I can't tell if it was intentional. Which all just means that there's some serious tonal issues here. Either it was meant to be funny and the opening sequence is then just seriously out of place, of it wasn't meant to be funny and they misjudged how ridiculous their car design and the things they had it doing would look. So either way, it's a big tonal misstep.

And that's a shame, because there are a lot of things about this that work really well. It just doesn't all come together in the end.

07. Call for Mr. Caveman (1919): 2.5/5

Call for Mr. Caveman is a really good example of how important intertitle cards can be when used in interesting and creative ways. While there are comedic bits here and there throughout the short's 10 minutes, the primary source of humor for the whole of the runtime is the juxtaposition of what we're seeing in the action - a bunch of cavemen - and what we're getting from the intertitle cards, which describe the characters and action in very modern terms and language. I think today it would basically be the equivalent of the caveman character talking with modern day language and slang and such, sort of like the Flintstones. But I think there's something particularly effective about getting that juxtaposition through the intertitle cards.

It is a bit that starts to lose its effectiveness as the runtime drags on, though. And that's a problem because for most of that runtime I don't think that many of the comedic bits that happen within the action really work. It's not until the very end, where the filmmakers just went off the rails, that I think any of the action-based humor really starts to work. The ending is actually quite dark and macabre, but in a way that I think does manage to be quite funny. I wish the short had been that dark throughout. It would have been a lot funnier, especially when paired with the intertitle cards

08. Nice and Friendly (1922): 2.5/5

Nice and Friendly is something of an oddity, as it was made as a wedding gift for Lord and Lady Mountbatten, who also star in it, and as such was never meant for commercial release. It really was just meant to be a silly home movie that some friends made as a wedding gift. So yeah, really, when it comes down to it, it's not actually fair to compare it to movies that were made with commercial release in mind. I am of course going to review it rank it among the other movies I watch for Silent Sunday mornings, but with the understanding that in reality what I'm doing is in a lot of ways the equivalent to reviewing, rating, and ranking the dumb silly skits my friends and I made and filmed when we were in high school among more professionally produced stuff.

The first half of this is pretty dull and flat. The Mountbattens, despite their attractiveness, have pretty much zero screen presence and meet pretty much everything that happens to them with a stunning lack of emotion. It's not until Chaplin shows up about halfway through that things get kind of fun to watch, and when I think the fact that this was meant to be a silly home movie meant just for this group of friends actually works to its benefits. Because the stuff that starts happening as Chaplin's Tramps is getting the bad guys out of the house is just so silly and ridiculous and even nonsensical that it's actually pretty funny.

I also really liked the intertitle cards throughout. They're written in a sort of whimsically poetic way that I think does a lot for the tone and atmosphere. They help to keep it all light and breezy, and add a little enjoyable substance to the first part of the short, which is really flat otherwise.

So yeah, looking at Nice and Friendly as a film, it's got some good things going for it but is plagued by how flat that first half is and how completely lacking in screen charisma its leads are. But as something that was just made among friends and never intended for commercial release, it's sweet and silly and I'm sure they all had a good time making it.

09. Katchem Kate (1912): 2/5

I love the premise of this - Mabel Normand as a lady detective going undercover as a dude to infiltrate and stop a group of bombers - but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Now, admittedly, there were clearly intertitle cards missing from the version I watched, so it's possible those missing cards added some more clarity to the narrative. As such, I don't want to hold the parts that were harder to follow too much against this short.

But this is a very early Keystone short, made in the same year (1912) that the studio was founded. And it shows. I don't think that Keystone really figured out how to make their comedies, and particularly these sorts of 'suspense' comedies, work until at least the next year. A lot of their shorts from 1912 and even 1913 have a lot of the same problems: pacing that's too slow, amusing premises that aren't used to their best potential, and difficulty in really understanding how to sustain comedy and humor throughout even a short runtime. Those problems are all on display here, which is such a shame because the premise is gold.

10. Won by a Fish (1912): 1.5/5

I've seen at least a few silent comedy shorts like this by this point, where someone (or someones) plays a a trick that seems to be presented as rather light and silly but that really just seem downright meanspirited and cruel. I kind of get a kick out of it, out of how awful these people are to each other, but it does make me wonder what was going on in the 1900s/1910s.

The whole plot here really is the joke. Dad doesn't like daughter's boyfriend because the boyfriend teases Dad about his inability to catch a fish (which just seem a shitty thing in the first place, so I guess it's unsurprising that he's come up with such a mean trick), daughter and boyfriend play a trick to make him think he's caught a huge fish when he hasn't, and then reveal what they did after Dad's made a big deal about his catch to everyone else. I think the issue with this whole thing for me is that it just doesn't really work as a 'comedy'. The whole thing is more like an amusing anecdote someone would tell you in one or two sentences, but stretched over a 10 minute runtime. The only thing that's slightly amusing is the premise. There's nothing in the actual action that's funny at all. Which is a problem because this is very clearly a comedy. And even if it wasn't a comedy it still wouldn't work because very little of substance actually happens as a result of the prank. It's like Mack Sennett was just like "hey, that would be a funny prank to pull on someone", and then figured that as such it would be a funny movie. Which I feel like misunderstands both pranks AND movies.

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kathleenkatmary · 10 days

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Silent Short Sunday Mornings: 9/15/2024 Ratings, Reviews, and Rankings

Check out my ratings, reviews, and rankings for all of the movies I've watched for Silent Shorts Sunday Mornings so far at my letterboxd.

Click the title of each short to watch on Youtube.

01. Skyscrapers of New York (1906): 4/5

I really love the opening establishing shot of NYC. I can imagine some might say that it lingers too long, but since this movie is about people building skyscrapers, I feel like that opening shot showing the buildings of New York and just how much a part of the city's identity skyscrapers are is important.

This is similar to The Tunnel Workers in that there is a narrative here, but there's a lot of time dedicated to just showing people working at this real location and how everything operates. There are some big differences though, particularly in he way that Skyscrapers doesn't take the diversion into a constructed set that leans into the fantastical.

All of the scenes that take place at the skyscraper location seem to have been filmed at an actual skyscraper that was being constructed. And I think it's all done in an extremely clever way. Much of that time early on where we're just seeing the way the construction site operates without any narrative is used to establish the suspense of the climax, where the two men get into a brawl on the top of the construction site. I imagine that they used some simple and clever tricks to keep the performers safe (like, I'm betting they weren't just brawling on the beams super high in the air). But because we saw the site operating like an actual construction site, seeing how high up everyone was while working, seeing multiple men hanging off of a crane while it dangles in the sky, with the real city in the background to show just how off the ground they are, it cements the danger of the location in our heads. And that makes the tension and danger in that final confrontation feel extremely palpable and real.

So yeah, the narrative here is pretty flat and forgettable, but I'm okay with that because I think that it does such an incredible job of using its location to sell the tension and fear of what the narrative leads up to. It's such an incredible way of constructing the story around the location.

I also have a lot of appreciation for this as a piece of history. The 1900s really was when New York City started to look and feel like the kind of city we know it as today, and so much of that comes from the skyscraped boom of this time period. Having these great shots of New York City, especially as part of a narrative film rather than a travelogue, is so special. And centering the story on the skyscraper serves as an example for just how much skyscrapers were a part of the popular culture at the time.

The rest of the reviews are behind the cut...

02. The Tunnel Workers (1906): 3.5/5

I found this one really interesting, but for its sets/aesthetics more than its narrative (though I do have some thoughts about that as well). Outside of bookend scene that take place at the characters' home, the entire film takes place at the location of the tunnel. But that time is split. We start at the above ground part of the location, which looks to be a real location. It really does seem to have been an actual operation site. I suppose it could just be a really good set, but I don't think it is. Because once we get underground, that IS a constructed set, and any idea of realism is pretty much thrown to the wayside. It creates such an interesting juxtaposition, especially since we spend a considerable amount of the runtime at the above ground part of the location, just watching how things operate.

And then when we get underground, the set looks a lot closer to something you'd find in one of Melies's fantasy shorts than the simple reality of what we've just seen above. I think this was the good way to go, because I doubt they would have been able to succeed at making the tunnel look starkly realistic (and I imagine they wouldn't have been able to film in an actual tunnel of this type), so leaning into the artificial and somewhat fantastic feeling probably did work better. But I also think it works well for the narrative. It's when we get underground that the emotion of the story really kicks in and we get the emotional confrontation between the two men. So I think having the set look and feel more fantastical in nature really highlights those heightened emotions.

And that brings me to my thoughts on the narrative. I'm still kind of torn on how it all shakes out. Ultimately, it feels like there's a lot of runtime dedicated to showing stuff that really has nothing to do with the story. We spend quite a bit of time at the above ground part of the tunnel, and during that time we're mostly just seeing how it operates. I think that's fascinating to watch, but it's kind of a strange choice for the narrative and I don't know how I feel about it.

Overall, though, I think this ended up being a really creative and original way to tell a story that could have easily been straightforward and kind of dull otherwise. 03. The Hilarious Posters (1906): 3.5/5

When you watch a lot of silent shorts, Melies's stuff, as impressive as his effects were, can start to feel really repetitive. Eventually it does start to feel like the same stuff over and over, with either no plot or plots that exist simply to justify the effects.

So I found The Hilarious Posters a nice change of pace for him. It's a simple narrative framing, a bunch of posters essentially coming to life. But it does feel more like he had the idea and then found the effects and such to make it happen rather than the other way around.

And I really like how he did it. There are multiple posters coming to life at once, and it seems to be a combination of practical set construction for some of the posters and superimposition for others. I really appreciated that he used different techniques for different posters and went with practical on-set stuff where it would work rather than option for special editing effects for everything.

This is a nice change of pace for Melies.

04. Harlequin's Story (1907): 3.5/5

I feel like movies like this from the silent era are uniquely European, that they never could have been made in the US. While there are a few scenes that take place on constructed sets (which carry a nice dark fairy tale feel to them), I think what really sells the fairy tale feeling of so much of this is the fact that some of the outdoor scenes seem to have been shot in locations with actual castles.

Overall, I think that's what really stand out in this short. That fantasy fairy tale feeling really shines through. There is a kind of horrific moment that I don't think was meant to be where the main character is collecting the body parts of his beloved-turned-doll, but outside of that one moment everything else really feels distinctly and palpably "fairy tale".

Narratively, it's a lot more iffy. I feel like it would have been better served by more time establishing the relationship between the main character and his beloved before she's captured and he has to rescue her. That would have allowed for a more solid narrative an a better emotional resonance. There's a lot of time at the end dedicated just to dancing and stuff like that, and it's shot pretty uncreatively, which is a shame considering how well shot I think the rest of the piece is. So that time would have probably been better spent on building the narrative a bit more.

05. Passionate Drama (1906): 3.5/5

Okay, first thing's first… were 1906 swans just a lot more chill than swans now? Because I know from personal experience that if swans even so much as suspect that you might have food they get VERY aggressive. Those swans were too chill.

As for the actual movie… Pretty flat for something that's literally called "Passionate Drama". But I actually have some more thoughts on this one.

I'm really torn on the intertitle cards. While I think that intertitle cards are a great way to add a lot to a movie when used creatively, I also think that they can be incredibly effective when they're short and to the point throughout the entirety of a piece. That's how there's used here. The copy I watched didn't have English translations of the French intertitle cards, but because they were so brief and to the point I was able to pretty much get the gist of them. But this is a case where I think they would have worked better being a littler more flowery or over the top. Again, I have to point out that this is called "Passionate Drama", so the cards really could have been a good way to inject some of that passion and drama into everything else.

I think the bones of this story are good and there was a lot of potential here for a solid drama. Considering where the story goes, the wrong done to the main character by the man needs to be something that can really get us on her side. So I think making it more than just "she love him and they're together for awhile but then he leaves to marry someone for money" by adding a child to the mix, which makes the situation so much worse in multiple ways, really does that. It creates a solid justification for the way the main character feels.

The thing I appreciated most was just how it ended. I suspect some of that has to do with the fact that this is a French short rather than an American on. I'm so used to seeing films from this era being extremely moralistic in their storytelling, taking stories like this and making them about being a good person and doing the right thing and suffering making them better. So it's actually really refreshing to see something that doesn't do that. I feel like if this was from America it would just be a lot of the woman struggling in abject poverty with her child, wallowing in heartbreak and still loving the man from afar, but never hating him and never thinking of revenge, and then like making some awful martyr choice to like, raise his kid he had with the other woman or something. I love that instead of that kind of stuff she is presented as not just heartbroken, but angry, and rightfully so, that she takes such huge revenge, and that the movie then just ends without any kind of punishment or moralizing. It's a lot more satisfying to see a piece of shit man get what's coming to him rather than watching the woman who didn't so anything wrong be the one to suffer.

So yeah, this is extremely flat and lacking in any kind of emotion, but the basics of the story are doing so much that I appreciate that I can't help but really like this one and give it a pretty solid rating.

06. Silver Wedding (1906): 3/5

Really, when you think about, stealing gifts from a wedding is kind of the perfect kind of heist for a silent short, because it's not really something that needs a lot of planning and logistics, so it's something that can be showcased in a short runtime. I do think, though, that the drawback of that is the fact that a lot of the fun of heist and caper type stories is the planning and seeing the logistics and how they figure out to make it work. It's a lot less fun just seeing a couple of guys locking a door and filling their bag with stuff.

That doesn't mean this isn't fun, though. I think the scenes that bookend the actual 'heist' are where a lot of the entertainment of the short comes from. Getting to see everyone in this group of cheats and thieves getting ready for their scams and schemes, and then coming home with their spoils.

Really, I think the idea here was creative and fun, but there could have been more done with it, even with the limitations of filmmaking in 1906.

07. The Paymaster (1906): 3/5

A nice little drama that, unfortunately, can get a little hard to follow at points due to how poor the quality of the print is. It can make it difficult to tell characters apart sometimes. But even with that minor inconvenience, in the end it's still pretty clear what's going on in the narrative.

The shot composition here is nice, though everything being filmed in static wide shots does kind of kill moments that could be more suspenseful. Still, it's clear there was a lot of thought put into precisely how to frame the shots. Almost everything takes place outdoors (if I recall correctly there's only one scene that doesn't), and there are some really great locations, in terms of both just how lovely the outdoor scenery is and the choice of location made for each scene.

Overall I'd say this is a decent narrative short for 1906.

08. An Obstacle Course (1906): 2.5/5

Sam Reich should use this short as inspiration for an episode of Game Changer.

This is an interesting twist on the 'chase' comedy, which by 1906 was already pretty old hat for film. So it is nice to see a take on that kind of story that's centered on people willingly taking part in a silly 'chase' for fun and a prize rather than some wild comedy of errors. But because the whole premise is based around a voluntary obstacle course, so much of the things that typically make chase comedies work, like the escalation of chaos, just don't exist here.

It's all shot outside, though, so there are some great location shots.

09. Bobby and His Family (1906): 2.5/5

The coloring here is quite nice. It's clear that it was very carefully done as it's a lot more precise than a lot of other hand colored shorts from this era.

Everything else is pure nightmare fuel.

10. The Stepmother (1906): 2/5

Kind of a reverse Cinderella, but without the fantasy aspects to take the edge of off what really is an upsettingly realistic story. With the camerawork just being static wide shots, and without and kind of narrative flourishes, this really does just feel like a documenting of bad situation, so I really don't know how to feel about it.

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