Man With A Movie List

Director: Alexander Dovzhenko Year: 1928 Runtime: 1 hr 31 min Source: Youtube Zvenigora  is a fascinating film, one that seems utterly unmoored to its time, but its also mystifying - I ultimately couldn't break into the layers of meaning that I know are present.  It's the first film on the list that I was compelled to watch a second time, when a poor print online with Google-translated subtitles got me searching on Ebay for an only slightly better bootleg DVD collection of Dovzhenko's works. But after two viewings, there are still basic questions about this film that I can't answer, such as the complicated feelings that Dovzhenko, as a native Ukrainian, held towards communism and the Soviet takeover.  Many of the images of rapid industrialization are shared with Vertov's nightmarish Eleventh Year , but it's hard to know what to make of them, since so much of the film is shrouded in abstract symbolism.  There's a strange mix of genres on display here, ...

Director: Frank Borzage Year: 1928 Runtime: 1 hr 42 min Source: Youtube Street Angel  is, first and foremost, a wonderfully resonant little romance film.  I use the word 'little' not because it's a short film, but because the plot is minimalist, even for the era.  The silent film forced directors to economize when it came to plot details, so as not to overload the screen with titles.  There have been excellent films on this list that don't compromise, and succeed at telling deep stories by virtue of epic vision (and length).  But Street Angel  is an example of simple, effective, story design, where each scene serves a fundamental purpose, and nothing feels out of place.  Every thing built towards an extraordinarily effective climax with a poignant message about love, that I'm hesitant to share, except to say that it speaks volumes about perception and how we strive to be the people we appear to those we love.  I found it endearing, and hope t...

Director: Charles Reisner and Buster Keaton Year: 1928 Runtime: 1 hr 7 min Source: Youtube I've been talking up Steamboat Bill, Jr . for a while on this blog as a slightly underrated Keaton classic, so it's something of a relief that this film is as good as I remember.  I can see now that it wasn't Keaton at his most innovative - the film contains several large scale callbacks to his earlier works.  We have the collapsing carpentry of One Week , the meta cinema symbolism of Sherlock, Jr. , and the relationship between a man and his machine that underlies The General .  Keaton's general persona of a misunderstood weakling was well-established by this point, and he doesn't bring much new to this character. I would hesitate to say that it's his funniest film either, after having seen The Cameraman  (actually made after this film). Nevertheless, it's the first Keaton film I would recommend anyone to watch, since it just epitomizes what made him so gre...

Director: Fritz Lang Year: 1928 Run-time: 2 hr 30 min Source: Hoopla It's great to see a relatively unknown Fritz Lang film on the list, although anyone looking for another iconic piece of German Expressionism will be disappointed.  Spies  is a much more straightforward action-espionage thriller, more along the lines of Les Vampires  or Fantomas .  The lineage from those predecessors is clear, although Lang's film has benefited from a decade's advances in editing. The first twenty minutes give the impression that our hero, Agent 326, is a suave James Bond prototype - he certainly looks the part, and seems capable enough as he quickly uncovers an enemy double agent in his midst.  However, that impression is dispelled as he gets quickly duped by an enemy spy ring led by an evil-eyed bank president and a femme fatale henchwoman (whose love for our hero causes her to switch sides almost immediately). From my cursory overview, it would seem that  Spies ...