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CharlasThe Silent Screen & Early Sound Film
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1LolaWalser
Sorry about the shoutiness, but I'm hoping it's eye-catching.
THIS IS GREAT: Geschlecht in Fesseln (Sex in Chains), 1928
First, argh, I'm afraid it's German only, BUT, it IS a silent and if you read on the topic you'll definitely be able to follow.
Second, the deliciously lurid but ambiguous English translation notwithstanding, there is no, er, "sex" in chains--the topic is sexual frustration in prison and how that inevitably leads to homosex--but the treatment is sympathetic and this, along with Anders als die Andern, may be considered one of the important early classics of gay cinema. The gay man, for instance, the one the (heterosexual, but...) hero partners with for years in prison, is shown as a regular person, not caricatured or abused or condemned, which is really amazing considering how gays would be depicted in later decades.
Third, while you can probably find other versions online, this one has been cleaned up, restored and digitised in 2020, so presumably it's the best there is.
Forgot to add: expires on November 29!
THIS IS GREAT: Geschlecht in Fesseln (Sex in Chains), 1928
First, argh, I'm afraid it's German only, BUT, it IS a silent and if you read on the topic you'll definitely be able to follow.
Second, the deliciously lurid but ambiguous English translation notwithstanding, there is no, er, "sex" in chains--the topic is sexual frustration in prison and how that inevitably leads to homosex--but the treatment is sympathetic and this, along with Anders als die Andern, may be considered one of the important early classics of gay cinema. The gay man, for instance, the one the (heterosexual, but...) hero partners with for years in prison, is shown as a regular person, not caricatured or abused or condemned, which is really amazing considering how gays would be depicted in later decades.
Third, while you can probably find other versions online, this one has been cleaned up, restored and digitised in 2020, so presumably it's the best there is.
Forgot to add: expires on November 29!
2thorold
Thanks! I vaguely knew about that — Vito Russo gives it a paragraph and one still — but had never seen it. Very worthy and sometimes a bit short on dramatic subtlety, but, as you say, remarkably sympathetic.
Striking that they got permission to film it in an actual Berlin prison (although there was a fuss about that afterwards). You have to wonder if Dieterle’s character could have met Franz Biberkopf inside (not sure which prison it was in the film: it might have been Moabit, in which case he wouldn’t have).
I loved the hand-painted intertitles, they were almost the best bit...
Striking that they got permission to film it in an actual Berlin prison (although there was a fuss about that afterwards). You have to wonder if Dieterle’s character could have met Franz Biberkopf inside (not sure which prison it was in the film: it might have been Moabit, in which case he wouldn’t have).
I loved the hand-painted intertitles, they were almost the best bit...
3thorold
BTW: Russo gives the English title as Sex in bondage, stretching the ambiguity even further! I suppose it’s the Mädchen in Uniform principle: the more in-your-face the title, the more respectable the content...
4LolaWalser
Ahh, so glad you caught this! Yes, I adored the intertitles too. It is both over-the-top melodramatic (self-castration, wha...?! and the wife charging the prison doors like a moth to the flame? and the ending?) and very very subtle, or rather shy, as it couldn't help being, in dealing with the gay bits. I love the scene when Alfred writes his and Franz's name in a circle--which really should have been a heart, no? Hans Twardowski (obligatory Veidt reference: was in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari too) actually was gay, openly so IIRC. Dieterle (obligatory Veidt reference: was in Waxworks too), as far as I know, wasn't--but wasn't the only straight dude not to think twice about playing gay back then (Schünzel, for example--and more than once). Tell me everything didn't go bust after the brilliant 1920s!--it feels more and more we're still just catching up on their best trends.
The prison scenes were the best--did you notice that smashing bird's eye view of the promenade, with the prisoners walking in a circle? Beautiful.
The ending cries out for a fanficcy improvement, though. :) Poor Alfred with his roses, he breaks my heart.
The prison scenes were the best--did you notice that smashing bird's eye view of the promenade, with the prisoners walking in a circle? Beautiful.
The ending cries out for a fanficcy improvement, though. :) Poor Alfred with his roses, he breaks my heart.
5thorold
Yes, there were some lovely scenes in the prison. I was struck by the panning shot across the prisoner faces in the chapel, with those blinkered stalls intended so that the prisoners could only see the chaplain, not each other (although that didn’t quite seem to work in practice!) : mind-control straight out of Foucault. There are one or two of those chapels left in former Victorian prisons in the UK, e.g. Lincoln Castle — it really brings home that 19th century spirit of altruistic cruelty to see it in the flesh.
The scene with the apartment door when Franz comes back from prison was very striking, too: in the middle of all that tragic confrontation with his wife and all that unspoken (because unspoken is what the medium does best) guilt there’s suddenly his comic rediscovery that doors come with handles on the inside, his inability to resist trying that out, and the Homer-Simpson-like way that joke is carried on just a little bit longer than is altogether comfortable to watch. And then they go back to being awkward and tragic...
The plot summaries I saw all seem to assume that Alfred turns up with his roses just to blackmail Franz, but I had the impression that the film was leaving that deliberately ambiguous. As you say, it ought to be reworked. Perhaps with the three of them sitting down over a glass of beer and working out a modus vivendi for their new situation, and a closing number performed by the Comedian Harmonists.
But the really striking thing, when you watch it with hindsight, is the way they clearly all believed “reform is just around the corner, all we have to do is point out these injustices and they will be repaired”. We’ve all been there a few times...
The scene with the apartment door when Franz comes back from prison was very striking, too: in the middle of all that tragic confrontation with his wife and all that unspoken (because unspoken is what the medium does best) guilt there’s suddenly his comic rediscovery that doors come with handles on the inside, his inability to resist trying that out, and the Homer-Simpson-like way that joke is carried on just a little bit longer than is altogether comfortable to watch. And then they go back to being awkward and tragic...
The plot summaries I saw all seem to assume that Alfred turns up with his roses just to blackmail Franz, but I had the impression that the film was leaving that deliberately ambiguous. As you say, it ought to be reworked. Perhaps with the three of them sitting down over a glass of beer and working out a modus vivendi for their new situation, and a closing number performed by the Comedian Harmonists.
But the really striking thing, when you watch it with hindsight, is the way they clearly all believed “reform is just around the corner, all we have to do is point out these injustices and they will be repaired”. We’ve all been there a few times...
6LolaWalser
>5 thorold:
That was a stunning gallery of faces in the chapel scene. Yes, there's nothing about mind control that the church didn't know before fancy-shmancy psychology.
I don't believe for a minute Alfred went to blackmail Franz. On a purely logical ground, Alfred must have known Franz was married, so it makes no sense, if he had wanted to blackmail him, to troop into his home with roses and big smiles--the wife immediately understood what had happened between the men. And with her knowing, blackmail Franz to whom--and for what? He was dismally broke before the prison and now had just got out of it, with worse prospects than ever.
But most important is that it's not played that way at all. When Alfred's pal floats the possibility of blackmail*, Alfred just gives him a cold look. And he is visibly shaken at how Franz has received him (shamed and distressed, not happy), and also by the wife's presence. He runs away leaving the roses on the landing... that's a heartbroken man, not a blackmailer getting away. To me this, Alfred running away, is the most important detail, because it spells out how Alfred saw his and Franz's relationship--as truly a relationship, that is, as a love. And surely Franz must have responded in a similar way for it to weigh so dramatically on his future with the wife, to the point that he sees suicide as the only solution.
Partly the kind of story this seems to be is due to the limitations of treatment. The filmmakers did valiantly try to blame lust, sheer animalism, for Franz's tragedy. Franz, the story goes, is a perfectly normal bloke madly in love with his wife, but, if you then sequester such a perfectly normal bloke with other men for years, sooner or later he'll assuage his craving for sex with other men. With more artistic freedom this could have been more clinically presented as the classic "boys will be boys"--hardly worth over-analysing. But, since they were restricted in showing lust, they had to resort to signalling to it with elements of romance--the tender smiles, the intimacy, the schoolboyish note with their names encircled together, holding hands. And this, whether deliberately or as a "side-effect", paints that relationship as something more than lustful.
I count as significant also that Franz is never violent to Alfred. He doesn't blame him for coming into his life, or to his apartment. Even before Alfred's arrival, he has told his wife that he can't be with her anymore. Now, I know there's the interpretation that he feels "polluted"--but if so, so was she with her affair. They could part or try to stay as people on the same footing. But, no. Franz actually wants to die. To me the only interpretation that begins to make sense of such a dramatic ending is that he feels not simply guilty of something (guilt can be expiated), but changed--and--I would suggest--probably because still feeling attracted to Alfred.
Goodness how I blather!--but it's these limitations of early film that make figuring out what is/could be going on endlessly fascinating.
*(I think the pal's suggestion of blackmail serves to pin down Alfred's milieu--he's poor, marginalised, a petty criminal of some sort--and to define as clearly as possible what had happened to the audience when it couldn't have been, after all, shown more graphically than in those few scenes of intimate talking, gazing, Alfred's scribble, and hand-holding.)
That was a stunning gallery of faces in the chapel scene. Yes, there's nothing about mind control that the church didn't know before fancy-shmancy psychology.
I don't believe for a minute Alfred went to blackmail Franz. On a purely logical ground, Alfred must have known Franz was married, so it makes no sense, if he had wanted to blackmail him, to troop into his home with roses and big smiles--the wife immediately understood what had happened between the men. And with her knowing, blackmail Franz to whom--and for what? He was dismally broke before the prison and now had just got out of it, with worse prospects than ever.
But most important is that it's not played that way at all. When Alfred's pal floats the possibility of blackmail*, Alfred just gives him a cold look. And he is visibly shaken at how Franz has received him (shamed and distressed, not happy), and also by the wife's presence. He runs away leaving the roses on the landing... that's a heartbroken man, not a blackmailer getting away. To me this, Alfred running away, is the most important detail, because it spells out how Alfred saw his and Franz's relationship--as truly a relationship, that is, as a love. And surely Franz must have responded in a similar way for it to weigh so dramatically on his future with the wife, to the point that he sees suicide as the only solution.
Partly the kind of story this seems to be is due to the limitations of treatment. The filmmakers did valiantly try to blame lust, sheer animalism, for Franz's tragedy. Franz, the story goes, is a perfectly normal bloke madly in love with his wife, but, if you then sequester such a perfectly normal bloke with other men for years, sooner or later he'll assuage his craving for sex with other men. With more artistic freedom this could have been more clinically presented as the classic "boys will be boys"--hardly worth over-analysing. But, since they were restricted in showing lust, they had to resort to signalling to it with elements of romance--the tender smiles, the intimacy, the schoolboyish note with their names encircled together, holding hands. And this, whether deliberately or as a "side-effect", paints that relationship as something more than lustful.
I count as significant also that Franz is never violent to Alfred. He doesn't blame him for coming into his life, or to his apartment. Even before Alfred's arrival, he has told his wife that he can't be with her anymore. Now, I know there's the interpretation that he feels "polluted"--but if so, so was she with her affair. They could part or try to stay as people on the same footing. But, no. Franz actually wants to die. To me the only interpretation that begins to make sense of such a dramatic ending is that he feels not simply guilty of something (guilt can be expiated), but changed--and--I would suggest--probably because still feeling attracted to Alfred.
Goodness how I blather!--but it's these limitations of early film that make figuring out what is/could be going on endlessly fascinating.
*(I think the pal's suggestion of blackmail serves to pin down Alfred's milieu--he's poor, marginalised, a petty criminal of some sort--and to define as clearly as possible what had happened to the audience when it couldn't have been, after all, shown more graphically than in those few scenes of intimate talking, gazing, Alfred's scribble, and hand-holding.)
7LolaWalser
Murnau's Der Gang in die Nacht in the shiny new restoration is available for the next few days (maybe a week, at most).
https://vimeo.com/filmmuseummuenchen
They say that Veidt's appearance in this gave Murnau ideas for the look of Nosferatu.
https://vimeo.com/filmmuseummuenchen
They say that Veidt's appearance in this gave Murnau ideas for the look of Nosferatu.
8LolaWalser
January 15 through 21st there's a chance to see the young unknown Marlene Dietrich in Café Elektric, 1927, here:
https://www.filmarchiv.at/channel/willi-forst/
Posted a couple screenshots here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/320697#7389111
https://www.filmarchiv.at/channel/willi-forst/
Posted a couple screenshots here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/320697#7389111
