Nosferatu (1922)

R: Around Halloween every year, the Michigan Theater does a screening of Nosferatu, with organ accompaniment (of course). This is my second time going, and my first time staying awake all the way through. As I recall, the screening last year was fairly late at night.

The film has several interesting technical moments, as one might expect from a very early horror movie. There's some crude stop-motion animation (what struck me as very crude, but on reflection I can't come up with an earlier example of any kind, so there's some leeway), several scenes shot in "fast motion" (fear Count Orlock's super-stage-coach!), and a few scenes where they used the film negative instead of a positive. The last one is an interesting effect, especially considering that a real night-time shot would have been out of the question.

I have to say that the film felt slow. Having seen Caligari recently, I don't think that the 80 year gap between filming and me is the whole explanation. There are several places where the intertitles explain the action on screen, rather than adding something to it. In no case are they at all subtle, and a lot of them were a bit over the top. In addition to this, the director spent a lot of time getting from one place to another -- in fact, that's most of the movie. Hutter goes to Count Orlock's castle (wait wait wait), Hutter and Orlock interact with each other (not bad), Orlock travels by boat to where he's going (travel travel, some dead sailors), Hutter travels too (wait wait wait wait), Orlock is defeated. Orlock doesn't have a lot of chances to establish himself as a Scary Dude, since he has so few scenes with other people.


Kate:

In Brief: Worth seeing at the Michigan next year, if only for the organ playing.

Last night, Ross and I went to the annual Halloween showing of the 1922 silent film, Nosferatu. This is the first full-length treatment of the Dracula story, though the director, FW Murnau, altered some things to avoid copyright issues. As a result, this vampire is not exactly the familiar Dracula character. Instead of a bat, his animal form is a rat, and he makes his victims sick with the plague instead of turning them into more vampires. However, it shouldn't be surprising that changing the villain's name and animal of choice didn't save the director from a lawsuit. Murnau lost the suit and was ordered to destroy all prints of the film. Obviously, some of them survived, including one print found in a Romanian insane asylum!

On the whole, I thought that this film was entertaining, but not particularly outstanding. The story is engaging, and it has its technical moments, but it *is* a popular horror movie--the 1920's equivalent of Creature from the Black Lagoon--so you should expect a good story--not a cinematic marvel. Also, it may be the modern eye, but this film just isn't that scary. Count Orlock (the vampire) is very eerie-looking--he seems to be all arms and legs and fingers--and some of his scenes are genuinely frightening, but I was never on the edge of my seat (and that's saying something--I'm particularly susceptible to horror films). Part of this may have been that the whole film has the appearance of daylight. We saw this film last year too, and I was totally confused--the count would say "it's nearly midnight" while standing IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. In retrospect, I realized that it must be because of the difficulty of filming in dark conditions. Near the end of the last showing, I figured out that the blue-tinted scenes were supposed to be darken scenes, and the brown-tinted ones were supposed to be in the light. With that information, this viewing was less confusing. But the brightly-lit scenes lack the claustrophobic feeling that you associate with the dark, and are thus much less effective.

The plot was also very thin in places. Our hero visits the castle of count Orlock, is initially entirely unconcerned about his surroundings, despite his host looking like something out of a Tim Burton film. Suddenly, he becomes scared out of his wits after reading a book about vampires and presumably making the connection to Orlock. How the information in the book helps him draw any kind of conclusion is unclear, since it mostly contains broad statements about blood. He escapes from the castle through a window (despite there being no indication that he is imprisoned in any way) and races home to rescue his love from the demon, who he has already sold the house across from his. Once he gets there, he apparently becomes convinced that the book caused him to hallucinate, and warns his wife not to read it (I would have thrown it out, personally, but I guess the plot must go on). Of course she reads it. They also move back into the same house--despite the vampire living across the way and the wife being convinced that he is watching her. Throughout, we have comic relief from our hero's boss, who is apparently Orlock's disciple, despite never being in the same place as orlock, or interacting with him in any way. He also gets put in an insane asylum right before Orlock arrives, but there is no explanation why. Hmmm...

Also, the acting was on the whole pretty bad. Acting in silent films is certainly more exaggerated than we are used to, but the melodrama was way over the top. The leading man was really bad--he seemed to have two settings: maniacal laughter and melodramatic horror. There two most convincing performances in the production were count orlock (who is, as I said earlier, very well-played) and orlock's disciple, the house agent. Since the house agent is a comic character who never actually interacts with Orlock, this leaves many weak actors reacting to Orlock.

Then there are some things that are just objectively funny--how can you not laugh at orlock carrying a giant coffin under his arm?

However, despite all of that, I would still recommend seeing it, if you have the chance. There were a couple of moments that stood out as being particularly worthwhile. There is a scene where the shadow of the vampire's long thing fingers closes over the heroine's heart that is really fantastic. There are several scenes where the action is sped up--a spirit horseman riding through the night, Orlock moving coffins onto a cart, and coffins moving themselves around. The entire scene on the boat is frightening--maybe because it actually achieves the claustrophobic feeling that the rest of the film lacks.

Also working in its favor, at the Michigan the film was accompanied by live organ music, played by the Michigan's staff organist, on the in-house organ*. As always, the organist was fantastic, and after 3 minutes, I forgot that the performance was live. He constructed the score by writing a theme for each character and then elaborating on the theme throughout the film. In this case, he took the themes from folk music native to eastern europe.

Finally, it was interesting in part because it gave you an idea what a popular silent film might have been. Like a 1920's independence Day--it is interesting from a purely sociological context.

*For those who don't know, the Michigan is one of 40 movie houses in the nation that has retained its organ. The organ was one of the things that motivated a small group of people to save the theater from destruction in the 70s. The organ is massive, and fills the walls of the theater.

Five Months - One Post

Because of the ~5 month gap between when we joined the theater and when we started this blog, we're going to run through what we saw so far this summer. We're reconstructing this from flyers, so some of the months might be wrong.

It's funny -- students have to see 30 movies to make the membership pay off. It looks like we've already managed that. In July, we saw nearly three a week! October has been slow, because the semester started and graduate school sucks. The first parenthetical is Ross, the second is Kate. If there is only one, it is generally Ross, because he got there first.


June
Goldfinger (Yeah, baby)(The source of 90% of James Bond cliches)

Mad Hot Ballroom (Dancing Kids are cute -- but what might be cuter?)

Mondovino (Incoherent AND irrelevant -- we almost walked out of this one)

Dr. Strangelove (Fantabulous)(One of my favorite films)

Eros (Interesting, but not essential. We both liked Wong Kar Wai's best)(More than that, I felt the three parts declined in quality: one, two, three)

Travellers and Magicians(The story is very simple, but the camera/digital work very effectively make the mythical parts feel like a separate world. We both liked this one; it definitely benefits from the big screen.) (The acting was great. Now I want to visit Bhutan)


July
Turtles Can Fly (Absolutely gut-wrenching)(The writeup indicated that it was the first film to come out of occupied Iraq, so we expected it to be sad. What we didn't expect was children disarming mines--in some cases, with their teeth, because they had lost their arms. One of the better movies we saw)

3-Iron (Watch it. Now. No really, drop everything and rent it. The director captures time so effectively that we were comparing him to Tarkovsky. That, of course, is just about the highest praise I can give) (I felt this was hands down the best current film we saw)

Saving Face (Fun! Not terrible deep/clever, but more so than most romantic comedies.) (I liked this one much better than Ross did--it examines issues of culture very deftly.)

March of the Penguins (What's cuter than a baby penguin? A WHOLE PILE of baby penguins. We grew to hate this film, but only because it played so long at the Michigan that lots of other films -- like Grizzly Man -- never opened there.) (The audience was also composed of small children and old folks who apparently hadn't been to a movie for 20 years. Managed to make a nature documentary 1)interesting 2)genuinely sad 3) sexy)

Apres Vous (Kate liked it ok, I walked out. Read a cursory description, and you'll probably know whether you like it or not.) (On the whole, not worth your time unless you're really into french romantic comedies).

Murderball (As cool as it looks, though if you're paying to see it, it's probably worth waiting for DVD)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (in 3-D!) (yup.)

The Godfather (Ohhhh...)

The Godfather, ptII (Double Ohhhh...)

The Wizard of Oz (Neat. Kate couldn't go and I [Ross] ended up leaving maybe an hour in. But the new print is really nice.)

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly(70mm. Nuff said.) (The audience was mostly 14 year old boys, but I absolutely adore this movie, and it was gorgeous on the big screen. A fantasitically well-paced film. A must-see for everyone, even those who think they don't like westerns)

August
Broken Flowers (Pretty good. I didn't like the ending, for reasons that don't fit in parentheses very well.) (I liked the ending, also for reasons that don't fit in parentheses)

The Beautiful Country (Not paced incredibly well, but some of the scenes are pretty amazing.) (The lead actor is fantastic.)

2001: A Space Odyssey (70mm! The Starchild is HUGE)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (Very cool -- especially because they opened it with the original Looney Tune that accompanied it. Does anybody know if this was originally in color?)

Double Indemnity (Not bad -- maybe noir fans have more to say about it?)

A Night at the Opera (Also accompanied by a Looney Tune -- "What's Opera Doc?")


September
The Aristocrats (Surprisingly coherent.) (Ross really liked it, but Kate thought it got kind of old after a while. Highlights were Whoopie Goldberg, Steven Wright, and the guy from Full House)

Psycho(R. hadn't seen it before. Yes, indeed, it is a classic.) (It is surprisingly scary, concidering that you don't actually see all that much violence. I'd take this over a gore-fest any day. I jumped at least twice)

The Animation Show (x2--someone loves animation. I'll give you two guesses)
(yes he does! And Ross firmly believes that anybody who gets the chance should see it!)

Junebug (Ross liked this ALOT. The leading man is really flat, but everything else was great.) (The highlight of the whole thing was the crazy artist)

2046 (I have a theory about this being an elaborate reply to the New Criticism, in addition to being really good (post a comment if you want elaboration). I think it's a rare example of a movie without a lot of exterior shots that is still much better on the big screen) (This was really visually striking. I think that I need to see it again)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (The staff organist wrote a new score the night before, and it was amazing. Have we mentioned that The Michigan is awesome?) (The Michigan is one of 40 theaters in the nation with its origninal organ, and the only one to employ a staff organist. The score was so seemless, I forgot it was there. The film was also fantastic, although it would probably suffer terribly without the organ.)


October
Wild Strawberries(Indeed, it is a classic) (I had not seen it, and I thought that it was one of the best films I'd seen all year. It struck a deep deep chord. Perfect pacing. Those clever swedes...)

Thumbsucker(One word...ballsucker. We hated this about as much as we hated Mondovino, though we didn't walk out since we were always waiting for another scene with Keanu. Others have pointed out that alot of the acting was pretty good, and the cinematography was at times interesting -- R. maintains that this just shows how incompetent the director is.) (Ditto. I should never find myself bored in a movie, yet there were several times when I was bored for upwards of 10 minutes at a time! And I should never be in the position of wanting Keanu Reeves to come back on the screen. The main three actors were very good, which only served to highlight the badness of the rest.)

Hey there

This June, Kate and I were concidering whether to get a membership to the Michigan Theater. We were excited about the movies, but the prospect of free popcorn was what really pushed us over the edge. We've been watching almost everything that plays there since. Our friend Brooks recommended that we keep a "blog" with our thoughts on what we see. So we're going to do that. At the very least, for each movie we see we'll decide whether you should (1) go see it in the theater, (2) wait for the DVD, or (3) avoid it at all costs.

ross and kate