#many references to take from the david copperfield film he did as well

[kayrma]

thinking about how dracula has never been accurately adapted into a film and thinking about how dev patel would play the hell out of jonathan harker

[prairiedust]

The Folklore of Supernatural

Part two of a series I started with this post.

I’m reposting this as the second installment of my midseason hiatus “The Folklore of Supernatural” series, even though it was originally written as kind of a long cracky way of looking at the “sleeping beauty trilogy” of episodes in season 14 (The Scar, Mint Condition, and Nightmare Logic.) The original question I was tagged into was “Is Dean actually dreaming?” and I can not find the original post about this, so I won’t tag anyone in particular (you know who you are and I love you because this was fun to write.) I posted it once in the dead of night with no tags, but I’m republishing it as part of my larger take on folklore as a theme in season 14 of Supernatural. Bear in mind that this was written before Optimism, when it became clear that these were not part of an extended dream-sequence, BUT ALSO before The Spear when it was revealed that Michael could repossess Dean. (I’m going to talk a little bit about timing and writing meta, further on.)

I want to say a couple of things before the cut, too. This is a big old Sleeping Beauty post. I know there’s a lot of SB ideas out there in the metasphere but I’ve deliberately avoided them because I wanted to get my thoughts out here and I am Very Slow. Feel free to tag me into other posts, send me asks, whatever, because I think it’s fun to talk about. However, just because this is a “sleeping beauty” meta does not mean I want to go all the way to the end of that metaphor in this series. This particular post is general audience meta. I can’t tell anyone who might read this that no, you aren’t allowed to see a DeanCas parallel in a meta which relies heavily on a romantic fairy tale and one that was a destiel fandom in-joke after Cas died, at that. I will say, though, that I see it, so if you want to duck out now because I’m a lowkey shipper feel free. Also, I can’t endorse predictions based on meta, either, even my own, even when I think there is a big neon “Texan Star” sign saying “destiel goes here;” there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone involved in the show from making a hard left when the signs said we were going right. So rather than seeing this as a defense of DeanCas subtext, let’s call it an experiment in close reading. If nothing else, it will be fun. (Bear in mind that I am a massive dork so my definition of fun involves Charles Dickens.)

Aaand... here we go.

Is Dean asleep, and have the last three episodes (The Scar, Mint Condition, and Nightmare Logic) been a dream? How can we possibly “answer” that question at this point in the show?

We’re trying to speculate about a text that is a constantly moving target. If, for instance, you start to read the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and you know from a blurb on the back of the book that she was an anthropologist who collected African-American and Caribbean folklore, and you get to the place where the protagonist Janie’s second [redacted] ends, but there are a lot of pages left ahead of you, and you think, wow if this happens a third time, I have a theory that the third [redacted, go read this book] would be special based on what I know about folklore and the “rule of three,” well by the end of the book you will know whether or not you were right. Janie either finds a third [redacted], or she doesn’t, and it’s either special, or it’s not.

Supernatural has not ended, so there is no way of saying “Oh, the main theme we are supposed to take away from this show is ____.” I mean, we can put big money on “family” but still. With a television show, it’s hard to even say, “The over-arching themes in this season are____” until the season finale, because it is a text that is being written, filmed, and published serially. The fluid nature of subtext in serial literature was something I studied under a Brit Lit professor– she said, when we set out to read David Copperfield, that sometimes themes in Dickens concluded early or evolved late, or didn’t pan out, because Dickens changed his mind or was pressured by readers to maintain a character that he hadn’t planned to keep around (I think that character was Micawber but I can not find a shred of evidence anywhere, even in my notes from my Brit Lit class, because she kind of mentioned it in passing and I didn’t like Dickens very much when I was younger, so obviously I didn’t learn it well.) And even when you get to the end of a Dickens serial, you still might not get closure– he totally rewrote the conclusion of Great Expectations because his friends wanted angst with a happy(ish) ending.

But this particular “sleeping” symbolism that has been pointed out is really, really structurally sound and can be very well supported. What it means is (shrug emoji)

Going back to the first post in this series, the support for this reading comes from an understanding of folk tales. I’ll be primarily using European Sleeping Beauty stories, as that is what is most accessible to an American/Western audience. And, it was deliberately alluded to in the text of the show. But first let’s talk about formula tales in more depth because that is what sets this theme up in the very first episode of season 14.

Michael met with three different beings in the season opener Stranger in a Strange Land and asked each of them “What do you want?” This is in no uncertain terms a formula tale found in folklore all over the world, and you know about the rule of three even if you’ve never actually acknowledged it. In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, for instance, Goldilocks tries two bowls of porridge before finding one to her liking. She tries two chairs before settling on Baby Bear’s chair. She tries two beds before falling asleep in the one that was “just right.” There were three challenges, two of which failed and one that satisfied her. Goldilocks is an original work (and please read the Wikipedia article, it is fascinating how many revisions this story has gone through, and in fact “Goldilocks” wasn’t even the original main character) but it was based on a folk formula and has entered American oral tradition. Similarly, in the German folk tale The Three Little Pigs, the first pig’s house is destroyed because it was made of straw, the second house failed because it was made of sticks, but the third house was made of brick and withstood the huffing and puffing of the wolf. So the pattern in the rule of three is often two challenges that fail or are flawed and one that finally succeeds or satisfies the necessary conditions. For short, I’m going to call this grouping 2/1. In the Michael story, 2/1 is human, who fails, then angel, who fails, then monster, who Mikey likes. In addition, there is a primer to the rule of three in that first scene, just to make absolutely certain that the audience notices it-- Michael has Jamel guess his identity three times.

This 2/1 formula could be just something Dabb did because he wanted to do it. It’s ancient, and Michael is an ancient being. But. Can it also mean that “folktales” is a theme on the show now?

As the saying goes, “Once is an occurrence, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.” Folklore continues into the season in many different ways.

In Gods and Monsters, the scene where Dean shakes loose and punches the mirror probably lit up everyone who saw it with “mirror mirror on the wall” vibes, from the story of Snow White. The enchanted mirror is such a common “trope” in folklore that it has an index number that folklorists and others use to refer to it in their scholarship– it’s Aarne-Thompson index number D1163. So, another solid subtextual reference to folk tales. There is so much more in that episode about storytelling and retelling and  the concept of sequels, but that’s for another discussion.

We get to The Scar and Jack mentions Sleeping Beauty and no lie I ascended for a full minute. “Sleeping Beauty” is Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification of Folk Tales number 410 because this is another story that is found freaking everywhere. (I have to make an aside about the use of the term “folk tale” just because it is in my nature not to leave things like this ambiguous– it isn’t completely certain that the Sleeping Beauty we know of Brothers Grimm and Disney fame is 100% for shore an oral tale, or at least isn’t a tale that got a little finessed when it was first written down. See, a guy in pre-Renaissance Naples named Giambattista Basile included a version of it in a collection of child’s tales hundreds of years ago (it’s horrifying btw, cw for non-con at the very least if you go looking for it) then Charles Perrault (of Puss in Boots fame) got hold of it and rewrote it in French, and folklorists are pretty certain that the story of “Briar Rose in the Forest” that the Grimm brothers collected was the Perrault story that had made its way back into oral tradition in Germany. And, like, it’s not a huge reach to say that the history of the Sleeping Beauty story that is explicitly mentioned in the show’s dialogue by Jack is more subtext about how stories are transmitted, how they are told, what happens when they get loose in the wild, etc. That’s how allusions work, and that’s coming up in my third post.)

So, three times means green light to consider “folk tales” an official thing this season, at least for a while. And the cherry on top is that Sleeping Beauty was the third story referenced. It’s neat.

But NOW. On to THE question the OP posed:

Have the last three episodes been Dean’s dream?

I’m going to pass up surface mentions of dream states and solely focus on the actual “sleepers” in these episodes in order to get at the allusion’s architecture.

In Nightmare Logic, the sleeping beauty OP has identified is Sasha’s father, who is locked in a dream-state by a djinn. In Mint Condition, the sleeping beauty is Stuart, who is in a mysterious coma-like sleep after an attack by a possessed chain-saw. In The Scar, Lora is in a sleep-adjacent death-state after being hexed by a witch. (I saw that her name on the iTunes subtitles is “Lora” which is a variation of Laura but spelled this way evokes “of lore” and that was pretty neat. Another tiny detail that bolsters the theme.)

Is Lora really a sleeping beauty, though, and why is that important?

Remember our rule of three pattern that we were given in the premiere– 2/1. Two people in this group will be more similar to each other than to the third. Both Stuart and Sasha’s father are alive, while Lora is technically all the way dead when she is in the sleep-like state. Superficially, Stuart and Sasha’s father are men, whereas Lora is a woman. Just throwing that out there. If I were writing this post for a grade, that right there is called “padding for word count.” But it is also a valid point, so we’re going to use it. Neither Stuart nor Sasha’s father are shown to resume consciousness by the end of their episodes– Stuart not at all, and Mr. Rawlings only stirs fitfully. Lora is revived when Jack breaks the spell. On the other hand, Stuart is never in continued danger in Mint Condition after his “touch and go” operation (he’s presumably safe inside the salt circle) and is expected to recover naturally, whereas both Mr. R and Lora will die/stay dead if the threat against them isn’t neutralized. Mr. Rawlings is similar to Lora because they are both under “medical care”– Mr.R is ostensibly in hospice and Lora is in the Bunker’s sick bay, and to top things off Stuart is the only one who was treated by an actual doctor: Mr. R‘s nurse was a djinn and Cas is not a doctor he just played one on TV.

The thing about close readings is that anything you can argue is probably valid, but one thesis might be better supported than another. I’m really really tired and there might be more differences and similarities that I am missing. But when you’re gathering the evidence to support a theory about a text, you can end up going a bridge too far and you’ll find yourself staring into the void, completely unable to make any progress, so at some point you just have to stake out your foundations and start digging. (Yeah, I mixed metaphors, I mixed three of them, it’s awesome, get off me.)

So. There is more evidence that Stuart and Mr. R are more similar to each other than either one is to Lora. If we apply the 2/1 template, Lora is the character who satisfies the parameter of being “odd man out.” That still might not make her a sleeping beauty for the purposes of answering the “Is this Dean’s dream” question, and here’s why.

(This is the speculation part. I love this stuff, but again I offer the caveat that using subtext to make plot predictions in Supernatural is like trying to write on a cloud with smoke. Anyway.)

If she’s the sleeping beauty, the subtextual message is that Dean might actually be dead (or might have to die to satisfy the condition that Michael is destroyed.) That possibility was brought up in both 14x01 and 14x02, before Dean came back. And eugh no one wants that. It also means that we had to have read these three episodes backwards to find the character that fits the template, because if Lora is a sleeping beauty, and if she is “the” sleeping beauty for subtextual purposes, she actually came first in the series, and you have to run the episodes backwards to get to the 1. That is subverting the trope. However, if you get the thing you want the first time why go on to the other two challenges? There is a lot in this season about calling back to earlier parts of the narrative to contextualize the present– for instance, in Gods and Monsters, Michael says to the werewolf, “You think you were picking me up in that bar?” or something to that effect and then revealed that he was, in fact, the one stalking her. In Mint Condition, we are introduced to the Janitor Victim as a Dean mirror, but we do not know for certain yet that Hatchet Man is a post-Azazel John Winchester mirror, so that scene is given greater meaning by information that is revealed later in the episode. Structurally speaking, it would be fair to say that the information we have now, that Lora the dead girl is “the” sleeping beauty, based on having seen the other two candidates, means a dead Dean reveal has been primed by the subtext. And like, no thank you?

The other possibility is that Lora, since she was dead and not unconscious, is not “the” sleeping beauty. The third “sleeping beauty” (IF there is one) would show up in 14x06 Optimism. (That title is really stressing me out.) Why would that be Dean and not some other random character? Because if we exclude Laura, the pattern resets from 1/2 to 2/1 beginning with Stuart. Stuart is a Castiel mirror, though, which is not quite right. Mr. R is a John mirror (although that episode is a lot murkier and I’ve said before if someone wants to say he’s a Dean mirror because of the djinn connection I’d agree, in which case BLAM we already have a winner.) [editor’s note, I only left Jack out because we already knew he was dying and thought this subtext was priming a twist, more at ten, this aside has been brought to you by the letters LOL.]

But then, where have the last three episodes come from? If he is dreaming, it could be one reason why the djinn couldn’t wring a nightmare out of him, and that the moment before he killed the monster with a bookend was his subconscious trying to signal to him that something is wrong…

I have said a couple of times that subtext isn’t always predictive. Some authors will have multiple subtexts or will use subtext to straight-up fool you (*waves to thriller writers.*) But the exception proves the rule here– we as readers/viewers rely on subtext to prepare us for what might be coming next. Subtext helps provide that slow build to climax that makes, say, Neville Longbottom’s absolutely stunning house cup win in The Sorcerer’s Stone such a stand-up-and-cheer moment, or that makes Harry Potter’s realization that it is his patronus, not his father’s, that saves his past self in the Prisoner of Azkaban so satisfying. Lack of subtext is the reason there is so much grumping over Mary/Bobby. I mean, they what? Had a walk in the woods together? She called him “old man” once, is that even a term of endearment??? [full disclosure I never liked those two together until after Nightmare Logic.]

And scene!

That up there is where I stopped, and now it’s clear that the person who all this was pointing at was Jack, who fell into a dramatic swoon at the end of Optimism. There were two “sleeping beauties” in that episode, too in the 2/1 pattern of the folktales we’ve discussed– the zombie, who is in sort of a dream state, and Charlie, who is knocked out by fly guy. (Again, fully dead is a red herring and doesn’t count. That’s some positive subtext.) That was basically a lot of words to be able to summarize that, yes, sleeping beauty and dreamstates is a thing so far, but where it was going was hard to predict.

There is something really important that can be taken out of this close reading, though, that is carrying throughout the season.

Jack was the character who actually said the words “Sleeping Beauty.” Jack sort of volunteered himself as tribute. Another theme this season that was made explicit by Subtext Primer aka Mint Condition is that the words characters are saying are more important than they ever have been.

AND ONE MORE THING! The above was written before Unhuman Nature and Byzantium and The Spear! Dean has been put back to bed by Michael! But but Castiel stepped into the Sleeping Beauty deal! Where are we going! There’s no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going…

Anyway in the next installment of this really long meta that will probably never end I want to explore what the history of the Amero-European Sleeping Beauty brings to bear on this season.

[longforgottenunofficial]

The Séance Circle Part Two: Davenports, Cabinets, and Other Furnishings

There's obviously a significant gap between the aquatic critters and bat-winged cats flying around St. Anthony's head in an old painting reproduced in an old book on the one hand and a Marc Davis concept sketch for the Haunted Mansion Séance Circle on the other, and there's another gap between that sketch and what eventually was built into the ride.  By now, that's what we've come to expect around here.  In many cases, the gaps are such that you can't recognize any traces of the original inspiration in the finished product. Not here.  Davis's squiddly creatures and airborne felines notwithstanding, for the most part the Séance Circle is the place in the Mansion where the line between source material and finished product is the thinnest.  At times, the Imagineers merely reproduced an effect directly. Hey, I wonder where they got the idea of hanging a bell by thin wires so it could float around overhead?

Call me crazy, but I think that possibly they got the idea from séances where a bell was suspended by thin wires so it could float overhead.

Our sources are 19th and early 20th century séances and ghost shows, of course.  The period from about the 1850's to the 1920's was the heyday for mediums, spiritualists, and "spirit photography," as well as a heyday for theatrical and parlor magic shows—not coincidentally.  It's hardly worth the trouble, for our purposes, to try to sort out the tangled continuum between real, sincere spiritualists and real, sincere attempts to contact the dead via séances at one end of the spectrum and openly-stated illusioneering for entertainment purposes by stage magicians (in the David Copperfield sense of the word) at the other end.  There were those, and there was also everything in between.  You had fraudulent mediums who insisted they were genuine even while admitting to using tricks now and then, and you had stage magicians who flatly denied they were mediums but also claimed that the ghosts they produced onstage were real.  Harry Houdini was a famous skeptic and used his knowledge and expertise in professional stage magic to debunk spiritualists and mediums.  These efforts did nothing to keep some people from believing Houdini was himself gifted with psychic powers.  The blurring of lines makes sense if you think about it, since a good fraudulent medium is almost by definition a good illusioneer, a good magician. Some of the Haunted Mansion Imagineers were card-carrying magicians (Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump), with a natural interest in all of that stuff.  Is it really a surprise that apart from the spectacular Madame Leota effect (which nevertheless may owe something to 19th c. magicians like Harry Kellar), the main difference between the HM séance and a "real" 19th-early 20th c. séance is the fact that one is an honest fake while the other is a dishonest fake?  Otherwise, they're both going about the same business: creating realistic-looking spiritualistic effects that could fool a gullible soul under the right circumstances.  In fact, the HM version is historically realistic enough to require some annotation.  And that's our job. Begin with the ectoplasm ball floating around behind Madame L.

(pic by Jeff Fillmore, SCL photography)

Ectoplasm was commonly produced at séances, usually manifested as a white-ish substance oozing from somewhere on the medium's body.  In photos it looks suspiciously like chewed up gauze or paper, and even if you're a true believer, those photos are embarrassments.  Real eye-rolling stuff.  There's some ecto on the face of the medium in that earlier photo.  In "spirit photography," you sometimes saw ectoplasm leaving glowing trails.  Not much different than the Disneyland version, really, even if they couldn't figure out how they wanted to spell "ectoplasm" on the Effects blueprints.

Even when the Disneyland version started making faces at guests early in 2006, they weren't departing from tradition, since faces often appeared in clouds of ectoplasm at the "real thing."

The Davenport Brothers

So far we've been talking about the 19th-early 20th c. phenomena in general.  If there was a specific historical inspiration for the HM Séance Circle, it was the stage act put on by the Davenport brothers.  These are the guys who disclaimed being mediums while suggesting that the ghosts were real.  They started in the 1850's and were a very big act throughout the '60's.  It all came to an end when one of the brothers died unexpectedly in the 70's.

What they really were were top-notch escape artists and illusioneers, with an excellent staff of assistants who never got caught and never blabbed.  The Davenports would be tied up good and tight, and then as soon as the lights went out musical intruments started flying around and ghostly hands and arms appeared, touching people and scaring 'em good.  On with the lights, and there are the D bros, still tied up. They invented the "spirit cabinet" for their act.  It was a large cabinet in which they both sat, all tied up, sometimes with an audience member sitting between them.  After the lights went out, the usual levitations and creepy manifestations followed.

It didn't take long for professional mediums to recognize the advantages of having a large cabinet to work with.  The "spirit cabinet" very quickly became a standard fixture at séances.  With perfectly straight faces the mediums spoke of the cabinet as a kind of "spiritual storage battery."  Seriously.  Most often, the "cabinet" was not a wooden chest but a tent or a booth in the corner of the room.  The medium might sit in it or at its entrance or in front of it, while spirit manifestations appeared in front of the cabinet.

"And look how fast that button spins when I pull these back and forth!"

Wow, how do they do that?

Okay, nevermind.

It's easy to make fun of these phonies and the people taken in by such simple tricks, but many of these mediums were highly skilled magicians in their own right.  It takes practice.  I mean, how many people can control their urine stream like this?

Spirit cabinets are present at the Haunted Mansion séance, although it's doubtful if many guests recognize them for what they are. Both types can be seen behind Madame Leota.

It originally looked more like this under show conditions, of course:

As previously noted, the Séance room in the Haunted Mansion is yet another idea that goes all the way back to Ken Anderson, and if I'm reading this sketch correctly, the novel idea that the medium is herself a ghost is also his.  Notice that she is emerging from a spirit cabinet, already in this early concept artwork.

Just like the real thing.

Or the real real thing.

Hat tip to Craig Conley.  From Puck magazine (1884), perhaps a political cartoon

But getting back to the Davenport brothers, we know about them mostly from written accounts, of course, and one famous description of their act appeared in the London Post.  Compare the description of the musical instruments at a Davenport show with what we find in that earlier Davis sketch and in the inner circle of the actual attraction.

Floating tables, even high-flying, large tables, are nothing new to séances.

"Great Caesar's ghost, look at all the old gum wads!"

Marc may have wanted flying animals, but I think even he realized that furniture and musical instruments were more authentic.  He still couldn't resist throwing in a cat, though.

The musical instruments are the more interesting feature.  Madame Leota refers to most of them in her incantations, as you can see right there in her open spellbook . . .

. . . or hear isolated in this sound file:

Leota's Incantations in the Ride [Audio Link]

That gives us a bell and a tambourine.  For the horn, drum, and some kind of stringed instrument, we have to cite two incantations that were recorded but never used. Leota's Incantations Never Used [Audio Link]

Horned toads and lizards, fiddle and strum, Please answer the roll by beating a drum. Harpies and Furies, old friends and new, Blow on a horn, so we'll know that it's you. No one knows why these weren't used.  It could be something as simple as a head movement during filming that misaligned the face at that point. If you examine the instruments in the posters for the Davenport brothers, you'll see four kinds, the now-familiar horn, tambourine, and bell, plus something to "fiddle and strum," a guitar.  It doesn't take much thought to see why the guitar wasn't kept for the HM séance.  That instrument has undergone a complete reinvention in popular imagination since the 19th century and now has utterly different connotations.  It is no longer even remotely associated with the exotic or the quaint. Oddies and Endies, out of the past, come to us now, and we'll deal with you last. We've noted the connections between the Séance Circle and its historical sources; now it's time to wrap up a few curious odds and ends. Madame Leota's wooden spirit cabinet originally served a very practical purpose.  It was going to house the projector that produces her face.  Back then, she was going to face in the opposite direction.  You would see her face as you enter the room and swing around behind her.  This was the plan up until three or four months before the Mansion opened, at most.  It was probably ditched because you wouldn't be able to prevent people from seeing the projector at some point as they went by. Looking at the outer ring of floating objects, here are some random observations.  The wicker table is part of a set, and other pieces from the same set have been kicking around in the Attic for years and years.  The banner on the longhorn says "X = ?"  I think it's a sly tribute to X. Atencio, or maybe they're teasing him ("X? What the heck kind of name is 'X' anyway?").  The gong was originally going to be a cluster of three bells.  Oh, and you know that floating candelabra back in the Endless Hallway?  It was originally supposed to be here in the Séance Circle. The second drum has been missing at Disneyland for a long time.  The last time it was certainly seen was in 1991.

Perhaps it will show up on eBay some day.

Forget about the Phantom Drummer of Tedworth; what's the phantom drum overhead worth?

Originally Posted: Monday, August 9, 2010 Original Link: [x]

[nitrateglow]

Movies watched in 2017 (35-45)

My 2017 movie journey continues! On this installment, I come across some foreign silent gems, mediocre superhero movies that make my sister angry, and the colorful madness of a certain Baz Luhrmann.

The Informer (dir. John Ford, 1935)

May just be my second favorite John Ford film after Young Mr. Lincoln. The Informer is a sound picture, but its storytelling and heavy, thorough use of incidental music make it very much like a silent movie. The use of music is a great example of what is now derisively referred to as “Mickey Mousing,” yet it never feels corny or silly because the music underscores the action and emotions of every scene so well.

While the plot is simple (former IRA member betrays a fellow rebel for money), it explores sophisticated moral and political territory. The ending is deeply moving, even if the religious symbolism is laid on a little thick. Then again, the film is heavy with expressionism, so perhaps that is warranted. Such a shame this movie is so underrated. (10/10)

Macbeth (dir. Justin Kurzel, 2015)

Words alone cannot convey my disappointment. Stills and clips made this film look like it was going to be the most stunning version of the Scottish play to date, but alas, it’s a mostly uninspiring affair. Sure, the extreme long shots of the fog-ridden and rocky landscapes are breathtaking. Sure, those fight scenes look cool. But no one seems to have much passion here—all the actors mumble and murmur the lines, every scene feels like it was shot with the trailer in mind and not because the content suited such a style. (5/10)

The Haunting (dir. Robert Wise, 1963)

The original Haunting is both a horror movie and the tragedy of a lonely, trapped woman. Eleanor may or may not be experiencing the supernatural, but there is no doubt she brought many of her own personal demons to that haunted house with her, mainly her craving to belong and be loved. While I found the voice over a little awkward at times, it eventually grew on me. Julie Harris is brilliant in the lead, one of the best horror movie performances ever.

The Haunting reminded me a lot of another gothic 1960s horror, The Innocents. I preferred The Innocents, but both are great movies about lonely women and their ghosts (literal and/or metaphoric).

And no, I do not ever plan on watching that 1990s remake. EVER. (9/10)

Danton (dir. Andrezj Wajda, 1983)

This was a wonderful movie, which makes me embarrassed since I have very little to say about it. It’s about the extremism of the French Revolution and the ideological conflict between the idealistic Robespierre and the less extreme Danton, who feels he is partially responsible for the Reign of Terror and wants to make things right. Their discourse on the nature of revolution and holding to one’s ideals is riveting from beginning to end. Even though Wajda’s sympathies lie with Danton, the film avoids painting Robespierre as a villain, showing him as a man of high ideals that were not born of power lust or evil. Both men become tragic figures in the midst of a troubled age.

The historical atmosphere is great too. Not since Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon have I seen a movie capture the look and feel of the eighteenth century to the point where it feels as though I have actually stepped back in time and am not merely witnessing a recreation. (9/10)

Japanese Girls at the Harbor (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933)

One of the things the best silent films excelled at was packing the simplest of narratives with beauty and emotion. Japanese Girls at the Harbor is one such film. At little over an hour, it tells the story of a young woman who commits a crime of passion and falls into geisha-dom as a result. At first, the movie’s story resembles a Mizoguchi film like Osaka Elegy or Sisters of the Gion, where women are forced into compromising situations through poverty or the failings of the men in their lives, but as the notes on the Criterion release say, Shimizu is much more optimistic about the potential to overcome society’s prejudice and find some little piece of redemption once you put your mind to it. The ending has a muted sense of optimism; Shimizu makes no guarantees that everything will turn out okay, but he does have hope.

There are some striking cinematic flourishes, such as the progressive close-up which precedes and antecedes a violent act. It made me think of the scene where we see the monster for the first time in James Whale’s Frankenstein. (9/10)

Moulin Rouge! (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

Part of me finds Moulin Rouge! brilliant; part of me finds it stupid and totally understands the hate it gets—regardless, I really liked it and am itching to watch it again. I first heard about it when Doug Walker claimed it was one of the movies he found most annoying and overrated, and from his description of the fast edits and some of the annoying tropes used in the picture, I expected to dislike it too. Nope. I admire its audacity, its willingness to be nothing less than bat-shit insane and unashamedly naïve in its fairy tale love story. It’s pretty much a live-action cartoon, complete with freaky close-ups, wild gesticulations accompanied by Looney Tunes sound effects, and general campiness all around. The aesthetic is like George Melies meets the 1950s MGM musical meets the 1990s music video.

That said, it isn’t perfect and I did get annoyed once the stakes started rising. I think the part of the movie which does not work for me is the second half. It’s not that the tragic stuff couldn’t work alongside all the goofy scenes (just look at Bollywood movies, which were apparently an inspiration for this movie), but sometimes the characters act way too stupid in order to move the plot along. I understand this isn’t meant to be a psychological study of jealousy or romantic love, but some of the things they do in the latter part of the movie strain credibility, even for a film in which the leads fall in love after one song.

I also feel the film’s themes aren’t explored in a compelling manner—which would not be a problem if the film was content with being mere romantic escapism, but I don’t feel that was the case. The film seems like it wants to be more than an exercise in style or an escapist melodrama with its protestations of the importance of love and artistic fulfillment. Roger Ebert claimed the movie was about the way we deceive ourselves as to our true nature (ex. Satine acts like she’s a heartless gold-digger, but she’s truly a romantic who favors the heart over her wallet; the Duke tricks himself into believing Satine truly loves him; Christian views himself as the quintessential suffering artist), but I felt that was never really developed all the way through the movie. Also the themes of love and jealousy are given the shallowest treatment. You can tell that despite its insane style and embracing of old-fashioned romanticism, it does want to discuss these things on a higher level, one it just does not reach. When your bad guy is like a parody of an entitled aristocrat who says lines like “OOH, DARLING LOOK A FROG!!”, you cannot take this movie seriously as drama.

Nevertheless, I did think the movie was a stylistic delight; we’re still feeling its influence now. Out of the Luhrmann movies I’ve seen, this one is certainly his most memorable, even if not everything works. (8/10)

A Woman’s Face (dir. George Cukor, 1941)

How this is one of Joan Crawford’s least remembered roles, I’ll never know. While on the technical side this movie is not terribly interesting, it is an entertaining noir drama and a commentary on how a woman’s worth is often linked closely to her physical beauty. And then there’s Conrad Veidt—oh swoon, oh man, I love his sensual, selfish villain! His line, “the world belongs to the devil” just personifies the amoral philosophy of so many noir villains throughout the classic cycle. (7/10)

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (dir. Sam Liu, 2017)

I watched this movie with my sister @zany-the-nerd, who is a big Deathstroke fan. If you too are a big Deathstroke fan, I can only tell you that the likelihood of your hating this movie is high, judging by my sister’s reaction to his new characterization. As someone with only secondhand knowledge of the comic this is adapted from, I would say this movie is okay on its own. The animation is good, the fight scenes are entertaining, Nightwing and Starfire are adorable. On the whole, I think it needed a runtime longer than 80 minutes. Tara’s relationships with both the other Titans and Deathstroke could have used more development to make the emotional conclusion more effective. (7/10)

David Copperfield (dir. George Cukor, 1935)

David Copperfield is one of Charles Dickens’ best-loved novels; in 1935, MGM adapted it into this wildly successful film version and populated it with tons of great character actors. One of the delights of this version is how much it resembles the original Victorian illustrations of the novel (even the opening titles are designed to evoke the original cover design of the novel’s first printing).

There are some expressionistic flourishes in the childhood segment, illustrating the innocent David’s clashes with the much harsher adult world and how lost he feels as a disadvantaged orphan within it, and these bits look forward to post-WWII Dickens adaptation such as David Lean’s Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, and the wonderful Brian Desmond Hurst version of A Christmas Carol, all of which had shadowy cinematography that bordered on noir aesthetics. Of course, the film is not wanting in humor, which often appears in the form of several great stars and character actors: WC Fields as an offbeat yet charming Mr. Micawber, Roland Young as a very icky Uriah Heap, Basil Rathbone as the sadistic Mr. Murdstone, Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Peggotty, good God the 1930s had such great performers for this kind of material! My favorite of the bunch has to be Edna May Oliver as Aunt Betsy—I cannot imagine anyone more perfect to play that eccentric, strong-willed woman.

One of the big shocks for me was Freddie Bartholomew as the child David. Child actors in classic-era talkies usually make me cringe, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Bartholomew’s performance. He comes off as sensitive and charming without being cloying, and when he was replaced by the blander Frank Lawton in the latter part of the film, I found myself missing him. About the only scenes where Lawton musters any charisma are the ones with David’s love interest Dora Spenlow (a character I found annoying in the book, but rather liked as played by Maureen O’Sullivan here—maybe I need to revisit the book and re-assess the character). There you’re able to see some of that sensitivity return, but otherwise, he just comes across as callow and passive.

To be honest, the book is much too long and complicated to cram into two hours and ten minutes—a three hour runtime would have served the filmmakers better (that or cutting more out, which they seemed unwilling to do). Apparently producer David O. Selznick wanted to make this book into two movies, which would have been an even better idea, allowing both halves of the story to breathe and develop. While David’s childhood in the first half of the movie is paced well, the second half with his adult counterpart feels more like a greatest hits reel, a quick summary. Agnes and Steerforth in particular are barely developed. As a result, the movie feels kind of rushed toward the end, leaving you less than satisfied. But no matter, this is still a charming, well-made movie, and a treat if you are a fan of Dickens in general. (8/10)

Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (dir. Yevgeni Bauer, 1913)

I was first turned onto 1910s filmmaker Yevgeni Bauer when I saw his 1917 picture Dying Swan last year (FYI, that movie is awesome and you should all watch it). Twilight of a Woman’s Soul is an earlier and slightly less sophisticated work, but by the end of its 48 minute running time, I was impressed nevertheless. It tells the story of a rich young woman named Vera whose life is altered after a vagabond rapes her. She murders him in self-defense afterward and runs off shaken and ill (an event which seems to have next to no effect on what happens next, but still satisfying). Time passes and though she is still affected by what happened, Vera does find romance. Engaged to an upright and tender nobleman, she wonders if she should tell him about her past trauma, only to learn that her allegedly loving spouse sees her as only damaged goods after that.

What ensues is not at all what one would expect from a 1910s melodrama and just in case you watch this film, I dare not spoil it for you too much, as I was incredibly surprised by how progressive it was in terms of gender politics and in terms of how it portrayed rape from the victim’s perspective. Needless to say, the woman is able to find healing and peace without the aid of a love interest to avenge her honor. Heck, she avenges her own honor and doesn’t have to pay for it morally or legally!

Like many films made before WWI, much of the story is depicted in a series of tableaux; a medium shot is the closest the camera ever comes to any human subject. Nevertheless, this is hardly a filmed stage play. For one thing, the static scenes are saved from dullness by lovely composition, each set decorated  and lit with a sensitive eye for detail. The editing is also adventurous for 1913. In an early scene, the filmmakers employ a slow-moving forward dolly shot to create a sense of depth in the space of the heroine’s boudoir. The film suddenly, almost violently, cuts away from the rape and the murder that follows it the split second before each event occurs. The acting is also very subdued, not at all the wild gesticulations 21st century audiences expect from a silent film of this vintage.

And that seems to be the running theme of this journal entry: this movie is not what people would expect from a 1913 picture. Progressive artistically and socially, it has me wanting to watch even more of Mr. Bauer. (8/10)