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technicolorfamiliar · 8 days ago

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"If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again."

[Photos: Alick Crosley, Sara Krulwich]

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On Sunday, January 5, 2025 The McKittrick Hotel, the home of Punchdrunk's wildly successful and groundbreaking immersive theatre production Sleep No More for 14 years, closed its doors for good. As early as 2011, they would tease that the show was going to close in a few months time. It became kind of a running joke. It was generally accepted Sleep No More would run forever, barring some major catastrophe like a meteoroid flattening West 27th Street. Then in late 2023, when a closing announcement was released in major news publications, suddenly it was real -- Sleep No More was going to close in January 2024.

But then there was an extension. Then another. Then another… And the show ran for a whole year until the final, final, FINAL_SERIOUSLY_FORREALTHISTIMEISWEAR.pdf closing date arrived.

When the initial closure was announced in 2023, going back one last time wasn't an option for me. But as the extension extended, I made it my business to get to New York to say goodbye to Sleep No More and The McKittrick Hotel in person.

A note before I continue: I have a long history with Sleep No More. I saw it six times in Boston in 2009 - 2010 and many more times in New York. I was an intern, a run crew/stage management team member, a steward, and briefly a costume artisan in the period between 2011 - 2015. My complex relationship with the show is colored by all these different experiences. But I was first someone who was deeply moved and inspired and excited by Sleep No More. I could talk about it forever, and have to anyone who would listen. When all is said and done, I am a fan above all else.

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I wound up booking a standard entry ticket for mid-October, around what would have been the 15th anniversary of my first time seeing SNM in Boston. The last time I had seen the show was in early 2019. I had gone with someone who had never seen the show and ended up being not as into it as I had perhaps hoped. I thought about asking someone to come with me this time, but it really is unreasonably expensive, especially for people traveling from out of town, especially for creatives who don't always have a lot of expendable income. So I went solo. Kevin Cafferty recently said in his podcast with original Hecate Careena Melia that SNM is an introvert's paradise, and I tend to agree. When SNM ran in Boston, I always went by myself, so a solitary journey has kind of always been part of the ritual for me.

Since 2019, I noticed there had been some changes. Arrival times were more strictly enforced due to covid-era social distancing protocols. Or so I thought before I arrived at 7:15 to find a line outside the front doors almost to the end of the block. Some of the new changes were appreciated: phones were locked in little cross-body bags, something I first encountered at Punchdrunk's London show The Burnt City in 2022; I wish this was SNM NYC had done in the beginning, it would have be amazing for audiences, crew, and performers. But between my unintentionally late arrival and the bottleneck in the Manderley Bar caused by all the added booths and tables (why??), I only got into the show right as Witches 2 was starting. And despite it still being the first loop, it was way too crowded in the Rep Bar. But I stood in my old run crew spot against the pillar beside the Jello Baby where I used to watch the audience for picture-taking and other bad behavior.

I hadn't entered the building with any real plan or expectations for what I wanted to do or see, but standing in that spot in the Rep Bar brought back all my old muscle memories of the place. I found myself being pulled to the scenes and spaces I inhabited as a crew member over 10 years ago. My pre-set had included the Hotel and so I followed the Porter for most of his loop. I followed the Cunningman, whose 1:1 I once stood inside night after night. The rest of the night was like a Greatest Hits of Sleep No More: the Party, Witches 1, Duncan and Danvers' dance to "Moonlight Becomes You", the Macduffs' bookcase duet. I lingered on the mezzanine as the Vertigo theme blared out over the Ballroom. I ran a hand over parts of the set -- walls, furniture, set dressing -- I once handled every day. Everything felt surprisingly and heart-achingly familiar.

That familiarity has always meant that I'm not really able to enjoy the show purely as a fan anymore. When the muscle memory kicked in, I became overly conscious of where I was standing so I would be out of the way of performers entering and exiting a scene, where to position myself in order to follow certain characters or catch a specific view of a specific scene. I was too aware of the loop structures and tracks to really be completely present. I know some SNM fans love having that knowledge so they can plan their show experience in advance, but what I used to love most about being an audience member was the feeling of discovery and following my gut.

I came out of the show that cold and windy October night with mixed feelings. I was already mildly annoyed by arriving late and I don't know... I got the feeling I wasn't there on a particularly good night. The cast looked amazing but there was a certain chemistry and intimacy missing in a lot of what I saw. The magic for me ended up being in inhabiting the building one last time, and all the sense memories brought up by being there -- the ghosts of every pre-set and post-show, every party and late night hang out in the bar, all the literal blood, sweat, and tears that went into helping make SNM run for a mere fraction of its existence. And of realizing how many other people have walked through The McKittrick Hotel's doors and been affected by their time and experiences there, all the audience members, superfans, staff and crewmembers, performers, everyone who was touched by the show and maybe by the friendships they forged in the Manderley Bar or backstage.

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Years ago I bought this little box. It's where I keep my immersive theater knickknacks and ephemera. In there is Luba's red string and the Watchman's seed packet from The Burnt City, Tuttle's blood moon and Conrad's ink blot from The Drowned Man, a prescription from Then She Fell's Kingsland Ward, 3D glasses and an imaginary map from The Grand Paradise, six playing cards from Sleep No More Boston, Cawdor Seeds, and tickets for the Annie Darcy Band at Oberon. That box is where I put my final playing card with a Porter ring and Cunningman charm, right next to the engraved Hotel key and DeWinter locket I was given at my last show as a crewmember. But there used to be a lot more of SNM New York in that box, a lot of stuff I threw away or lost over the years, things I wish I had held on to. There was a limited edition run of monochromatic playing cards for the very first Halloween that were very cool. One of the people on the props team gave me a vial necklace at the first Mayfair. One of the cast members gave me a small animal tooth. There were photos from various parties. But all that stuff is gone. And fuck it, it wouldn't have fit in the box, but I wish I had smuggled out my black mask after my last show. I don't know why they made me leave it behind, it was cracked and held together with gaff tape. Now it's probably sitting in a landfill somewhere.

I think a lot of those things got tossed because they reminded me too much of the bad days. Sleep No More had a way of bringing out the worst in some people, myself included. I was miserable to be around. And not to point fingers, but I don’t think I was entirely the sole person at fault for this. I mean, they hired a superfan, what did they think was going to happen? I loved the show itself too much to have ever been able to make it out the other side 100% unscathed.

Don't get me wrong, the first few months I was there were the best. There were red flags during that time, sure, but over all the vibe in the building early on was very inclusive. There was a lot of mutual respect and comradery, it felt like a big family and for the most part I felt fairly welcome. Cast and crew and stewards and staff would all hang out together after shows in Manderley or at Billymark's West (R.I.P.). But all that good feeling eventually began to shift. I was like a frog in a pot of boiling water, by the time it got really bad it was too late. There was a shift in the culture inside the building for whatever reason. It became more exclusive, more image focused, more money focused. I suddenly felt expendable, like I no longer belonged there. It broke my heart to see the show itself become less important. My physical health started to deteriorate and my mental health began to spiral. But instead of leaving while things were still semi-ok for me, I had to hit rock bottom before I finally realized I needed a change. Or at least to go home and have a safe place to recover.

So I left. I moved back home to Maryland. I was in pretty bad shape after nearly two and half years of excessive stress and really fucking bleak depression. But Sleep No More, for all its faults, was my second home that whole time. Some of the people I worked with there, though I may not see or speak to them often if at all, I will always feel bonded to because of that shared experience.

So I left. I moved back home to Maryland. I was in pretty bad shape after nearly two and half years of excessive stress and really bleak depression. But Sleep No More, for all its faults, was my second home that whole time. Some of the people I worked with there, though I may not see or speak to them often if at all, I will always feel bonded to because of that shared experience.

It took me a long time to stop feeling bitter about Sleep No More, longer than I care to admit. The BuzzFeed News article rekindled a lot of my old resentment. For years, I've consistently had nightmares about my old job. Only recently have the dreams let up, or when I have them I don't wake up in bad mood. All the stuff I just said above is like a tiny fraction of all the SNM baggage I've been carrying around since I left. For years, it was always so easy to focus just on the bullshit. It completely eclipsed all the good stuff. But because of all the outpourings of love for the show after its closure, the fonder memories, much to my surprise, have begun to resurface.

My job at SNM was not glamorous, there was a lot of heavy lifting and gross stuff the run crew team had to do on top of running our tracks in the show and dealing with performer/audience safety, being on our feet almost the entire time, up and down the six floors of the building from call time to final notes. But showing up, doing the work, and connecting with people brought all these interesting and amazing opportunities both inside and outside of the building. I had barely been an intern a month and I was asked to help repaint the ballroom floor before the first Halloween parties. Much later, I was invited to come back and paint costumes for the Surrealist Mayfair. I met Pig Pen Theatre Co. because of Sleep No More and wound up being offered a few really fun illustration projects for them. I did a bunch of illustration work for performers and staff members. And through Tori Sparks I was connected to Third Rail Projects to work on the build for their first run of Then She Fell and later The Grand Paradise, one of the best experiences and teams of my professional career. I learned every stage manager and run crew track, and I helped create the original intern tracks back when there were just two of us. We would have movie nights in the empty sixth floor space that would become the restaurant. We had roof parties before they built Gallow Green. We had fun nicknames for when we were on radio. We ate a lot of cake at Cake Fridays. We celebrated people's birthdays and last shows and the 100th, 200th, 300th shows in the building. My first day as an intern I was allowed to just watch the early show as an audience member. Before I was hired, the marketing team hired me to design a postcard for a project that sadly never saw the light of day, but I got that opportunity because of the stupid and ridiculous SNM fan art I had made between the Boston show closing and the New York show opening.

All of that was a dream for me.

There were a lot of people who were really good to me, who made me feel welcome and valued, who had my back. I actually wrote down all the names of those people. It was a longer list than I expected. Through their friendship and support, a kind word or an inside joke, they gave me a reason to stay for as long as I did.

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In the days leading up to the last show on January 5, I didn’t think I would write about Sleep No More. I thought maybe I would eventually write something way down the road, long after the final closing performance, after the dust had settled. But I just ended up feeling like this meme and had to get it out of my system now.

I was hired as a SNM intern in the fall of 2011. That winter I was offered a full time run crew position. I ran the track we called Nightmare on High Street from then until I gave my notice in January 2014. I had the pleasure and honor of not only working on a show that inspires me as an artist to this day but also the privilege of working with people who were genuinely really fucking amazing. And that's what really matters in the end, that's the stuff I think about now that it's finally true: we can never go back to Manderley again, and that's all there is.

#my writing #sleep no more

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technicolorfamiliar · 18 days ago

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The Passing of the Third Floor Back Dir. Berthold Viertel 1935

I think The Stranger could fix me.

I will never understand why more people don't reference this movie when talking about Connie's career. It's in his top five must-watch's for me, for sure.

The Passing of the Third Floor Back is not by any means a great or groundbreaking film. Some moments are shot well, some of the lighting is interesting, but over all there are relatively few bells and whistles, not that the film needs any. It's based on an older silent film based on a play, and that comes across in the film's focus being primarily on the story and character relationships. Some of the breakneck pacing doesn't really suit the dialogue or the story, but that was the style of filmmaking at the time. And that's why casting Connie as The Stranger was a brilliant move; his thoughtful and considered line delivery as well as his calm, grounded physicality disrupts the 1930s Britishness that defines the rest of the film. Casting another British actor as The Stranger may have worked depending on the actor, but Connie's otherness -- not only in his voice but also his height, demeanor, and fashion -- works in the character's favor… and the story's too.

The story of The Passing of the Third Floor Back is timeless because it's so true to life. People act out all the time without even realizing. They are cruel and unkind to others and themselves. It's contagious, if one or two people in a closed environment like a boarding house, workspace, team or club are overly negative and meanspirited, soon more and more people in that environment will start behaving similarly. At least that's been true in my experience. One person with a bad attitude or a tendency to gossip or be lazy or cliquish can slowly create a general atmosphere of bad behavior (especially so if that person is in a position of leadership).

The Stranger says of the other people in the boarding house, "It's not easy for them to see themselves. The illusions are so strong." Before he arrived, none of them were really seeing one another. They were reacting to their assumptions of one another, or to the worst versions of each other brought out by stress, living in close quarters, personal and interpersonal problems, etc. It took an outside perspective and the presence of someone seemingly different for them to begin to actually, finally see one another and themselves.

The single, 30-something Miss Kite's self-loathing presents as cruelty barely concealed by humor. But after a brief, sincere and openminded conversation with The Stranger, she dives into the wake of a huge steam boat to save Stasia (who really was asking to fall, I don't care how excited she was). When someone Miss Kite supposedly didn't care one iota about is suddenly in danger, she steps up without a second thought. She didn't do it for the recognition or attention, she put herself in harms way because it was the right thing to do, and afterward is treated like a hero. She's given a new source of self worth -- she realizes she can be brave. But it's not a one and done fix, she still reaches for her makeup when she sees her reflection after being in the water. But because she revealed her courage in the face of a crisis, people begin to see her differently, and hopefully so too she would gradually begin to see herself in a new light.

I really appreciate that The Stranger's influence isn't perfect. Everyone easily reverts back to their old ways, supposedly because of Mr. Wright acting against The Stranger, but they probably would have slipped into their old patterns regardless. The best The Stranger can hope for is to plant seeds of goodness in each of them. And just like people in real life, some people just aren't as receptive to change. After all, it's always harder to eliminate bad habits than it is to implement good ones.

I'm not sure what's going on with Mr. Wright. Does he know who or what The Stranger really is? Or is he just a dick? The movie probably would have worked without an openly antagonistic character. Wright could have just been creepy and gross in a normal creepy and gross way. I'm not sure we needed the scenes with him and The Stranger to play out the way they did. The more I think about it I feel like those scenes kind of cheapen the story. Most audiences are smart enough that you don't have to turn your script into an outright morality play for them to get the point. Those two scenes are probably the only thing I would have changed about the script. The Stranger and Wright needed to have a confrontation, but Wright insinuating that he knows The Stranger's motives and rules makes it seem like Wright is more than he appears to be and ehhh idk. The movie just doesn’t need it. In my opinion, anyway. It's like the writers were trying to say a bad guy can't just be a regular dude who does bad things. It would speak more to our reality, in 1935 as much as 2025, if Wright was just a regular person without any special knowledge or abilities who enjoys hurting and exploiting others. And it's interesting that he's a self-made man, someone who built himself up from nothing -- if this movie really wanted to say something it could have been about the nature of power and money being potentially corrosive to a person's soul. So as a formerly destitute person, Wright could have been a challenge for the audience as someone we want to empathize with deep down, because he raised himself up by his bootstraps and that makes him more relateable. But any empathy we may have had for Wright as a complicated character is destroyed when he outs himself as having some kind of special knowledge about The Stranger for some reason. I haven't read the book or the play, so I don't know if this dynamic originated in the source material or if it was an addition on the part of the screenwriters but it's unnecessary and treats the audience like they're too stupid to handle a morally complicated character.

I'm not going to do a character analysis of everyone in the film (today… maybe in the future lol), but it's worth talking about Stasia. I like that she's far from perfect, that her victimhood makes her act out even more than she probably would have otherwise. I like that she's not this naïve, innocent little kid. She's seen and been through some shit. And her armor is to be as mean-spirited and selfish as everyone else. She can give as good as she gets and, although she's clearly one of the more sensitive characters in the film, she's not a doormat. I mean, everyone calls her a useless little slut to her face all the time, no wonder she's as volatile as she is. She clearly has a conscience when most of the adults around her seem to lack any empathy at all until The Stranger arrives. Everyone in the house treats Stasia like she's an imbecile but she's likely the smartest out of all of them. She's the only one interested in nurturing something, the delicate white flower she keeps in a small pot. It's not clear how old Stasia is either. (Rene Ray was 23 - 24 when the film was made.) She's young enough that the landlady can threaten to send her back to whatever horrible orphanage or group home she was living in previously. But though she's a child, we get the impression from her interactions with Wright that she's lived a hard life, having to resort to thievery and very likely sex work to get by. But for as hard as her life has been when we meet her, she still maintains a childlike sense of wonder that finally gets to flourish when The Stranger comes into her life, and I just CAN'T TAKE IT. Stasia's the only one out of all those broken people who could have summoned The Stranger because, even if she's not perfect, even if she's damaged goods, she's the only one who is able to ask for "one decent person in the world." And we hope, we pray that the few days The Stranger spends with her will help her be that one decent person that someone else might need one day. UGH.

See, I love stories like this. For as mangled and beaten down as my own heart is, I love a story where someone good and full of love appears under mysterious circumstances to a bunch of messed up people. Usually these kinds of stories are centered around Christmas -- The Bishop's Wife: Carry Grant's Dudley helps David Niven and Loretta Young's marriage; Miracle on 34th Street: Edmund Gwenn's Santa Claus helps Natalie Wood and Maureen O'Hara believe in magic. While The Passing of the Third Floor Back isn't a Christmas movie and The Stranger isn't specifically called out as a supernatural being like Dudley the angel or Santa Claus, there are echoes of this story in those later films. There's almost as much suspension of disbelief in this film, and there may not be as much literal magic but the message and structure are basically the same. I mean, this movie is not subtle -- the boarding house is across the street from a church which we really only see when The Stranger arrives and departs. They don't really talk at all about God or Jesus like in The Bishop's Wife, but The Stranger embodies traditional virtues like hope, charity, and justice as well as values like patience, empathy, and honesty. It could very easily have been a Christmas movie if it had been made 5 - 10 years later. I guess the main difference is with those other movies, at the end you're left feeling like everything's going to be ok, everyone lives happily ever after. Here it's not such a sure thing. We hope Stasia and everyone else has healed permanently, but it seems incredibly tenuous. We hope The Stranger's work had lasting results, but there's no way to know for sure. Their new found hope in one another and themselves needs to be taken care of and nurtured regularly like Stasia's little flower UGHHHH, the s y m b o l i s m .

Obvs I have a lot I want to say about Connie's performance specifically, but here's a quote from him about the role from Feb 1, 1942 in the New York Herald Tribune:

"Evil can be strong and powerful, but it can never take the place of good. I felt this deeply at another time when playing the Christ-like character of the Stranger… My one aim was to play him as a man who wanted to give the world a lift, just as now the world so sadly needs a lift. The Stranger was the most difficult role I ever undertook. There was ever the danger of going too far. If for an instant it were made insincere, the part would fall to pieces.

"Another delicate question was that of appearance. I don't want to be blasphemous, but I played him as a well-dressed man… My one precaution in this respect was to keep the Stranger from any possibility of seeming theatrical. It struck me that those boarding-house people to whom he came might readily think of him as a traveler, even a traveling salesman, and so I had him wear a gray suit and carry a suitcase. His hair was well groomed, though white. But his face was not old. I tried to make him ageless.

"No mysterious light came or went with him. But when he was shown in his dingy room he took a flower from his coat and put it into a glass of water, then opened the blind and let in a gleam of sunlight. It was the simplicity of beauty you can make out of nothing. Of course, there was far more than that, something not quite of this world. The Stranger, like the Wandering Jew played by me earlier, was fantastic in a spiritual way."

I'm so glad we have quotes like this so we can kind of understand the way Connie thought about his work on this film, even several years later. The interview the quote is from must have been around the time he was doing Nazi Agent, which is another interesting point of comparison. The good brother in that film, Otto, is just an ordinary man but he's put in an extraordinary situation. The Stranger on the other hand is an extraordinary creature put in a very ordinary situation. Otto's goodness is human and relatable, or at least should be in the face of war and crimes against humanity. The Stranger is, like Connie said, Christ-like and therefore considered exceptional in his goodness. The love The Stranger has for humanity radiates out of him not through any special lighting effect but just by his calm openness.

(There are some interesting choices the filmmakers made with lighting. Throughout the film, The Stranger emerges from or is partly concealed shadows. I'm not sure if this was like The Spy in Black and a nod to Connie's past work in German Expressionist silent films or just a successful way to keep the character mysterious. Either way, I thought it was a good choice.)

For having top billing, Connie doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the film, at least comparatively. And what lines are spoken are done so with such exceeding gentleness and softness. Some lines are almost whispered. He does raise his voice in a plea to Wright, but that's the only time. Even when he lets the boarders have it for attacking Stasia at the end of the film, he's intense without shouting at everyone. A lesser actor could NEVER.

Most of the time The Stranger is observing everyone else. I love watching him watch everyone, especially Stasia. When he arrives at the boarding house, he has very little to say at their dinner party but is busy watching how the boarders interact with one another. He's not merely gathering data, he's reacting to them internally. The Stranger clearly has feelings, but Connie's so incredibly masterful at subtlety, that I wonder if this wasn’t one of the bigger challenges of the film for him. Regardless of however hard he's working, he makes it look effortless. I love watching him watch Stasia have fun and experience joy when they all go out on the steam boat. You can see in the way he looks at her that he's so happy for her, that she gets to actually be a kid for a few hours.

Connie was really concerned about dropping the ball with this film. He, at least in interviews at the time*, was worried that stepping back from more obvious acting choices, in order to inhabit the character in the most authentic and appropriate way possible, wouldn't translate through a camera. It seems he thought he was taking a big risk with the way he chose to play The Stranger, and I agree.

The Stranger, as a performance, is THE perfect example of being vs showing one's art. And so we get one of the most interesting, soulful, deeply compassionate, empathetic, and gentle performances from a male actor during this era, especially in British filmmaking where actors were often either total caricatures or way too buttoned up to emote at all.

I mean, Connie's fans know he could broadcast sexual vibes through time and space, but here in this film he's affectionate without any expectation of reciprocity or sexual overtones. He's broadcasting real intimacy, in his confidential tone of speaking, in his hand on another character's shoulder or arm, in a quiet secretive look. This is a person who makes whoever he's with feel exceptional, like they're the only two people in the world in that moment. He's completely present. It's. So. Fucking. Good. Connie talked about wanting to give the world a lift, but he's also lifting up his scene partners! He brings out the best in whoever he's on screen with with this performance, the same way The Stranger lifts people up! Yes, I am yelling!

And what about The Stranger himself? It's never explicitly stated that he is anything other than a wanderer, a traveler looking for lodging. We don't get any exposition scenes of him before he arrives at the boarding house. The audience knows as little about him as the characters in the film do. He is completely mysterious, and yet everyone pretty much trusts him implicitly, with the exception of Wright of course. We know exactly three things about The Stranger: one -- he is Good and hopes to inspire good in others; two -- he came to the boarding house specifically because Stasia wanted (instead of needed, interesting…) someone like him in her life; three -- he cannot directly interfere with people's lives in order to accomplish a desired outcome. And that's all we need to know! I can't help thinking if this movie was made today, most filmmakers would add some unnecessary backstory for The Stranger. Let protagonists be mysterious, people! Audiences don't need to know everything! Let us draw our own conclusions! Personally I like the possibility that The Stranger is the physical embodiment of an abstract concept/s, but that's just me. My point is that it's GOOD to have characters that spark conversation and multiple interpretations, I LOVE IT DO MORE PLEASE.

This matters even more when people walk away from a film being truly touched by a character or performance. People went to see this movie when it came out and were flattened by Connie's take on The Stranger, an existing character. Unfortunately I can't find the articles or quotes where this was originally mentioned (there really needs to be some kind of text-only repository of Connie articles/interviews), but apparently some people were so affected by this film that they wrote beautiful, heart-wrenching letters to Connie. Some people were so deeply touched and claimed this film helped save them in some small way, saying it was exactly what they needed at that moment in their lives. That, in short, Connie was unbelievably successful in what he hoped to accomplish with his performance, that he was able to reach through the camera and offer something genuinely beautiful and hopeful to those who needed it. UGH.

Maybe my takes on The Passing of the Third Floor Back are not new or even particularly nuanced. People have been saying the same things about this film ever since its 1935 release. But it remains one of my favorite Conrad Veidt films, I mean, top shelf stuff. He's doing the most interesting internal work an actor can do, certainly for the 1930s. He stands head and shoulders, literally and figuratively, above his fellow cast members and indeed most of his peers at that time. The kind of inward, reflective, subtle work he is doing in this film wouldn't become commonplace for years.

There's so much more about this movie to unpack. I haven't even talked about the gramophone man and class discrimination. Or the queer coding of Miss Kite and Larkcom. Or Wright's death -- was it really just a heart attack or did The Stranger "interfere" by opening the window for the gramophone man to get in?? Or about how Connie was making this AND King of the Damned AT THE SAME TIME. The two films could not be more different. Blows my mind.

Anyway, tl;dr Connie understood the assignment and gave us something truly beautiful and special.

*"My Most Difficult Role", Conrad Veidt interviewed by Max Breen, June 29, 1935

#my writing #conrad veidt #the passing of the third floor back

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technicolorfamiliar · 21 days ago

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2024 in food & drink

#my photos #berlin -> new york -> delaware

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technicolorfamiliar · 2 months ago

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The Spy in Black Dir. Michael Powell 1939

I was going to combine this and Dark Journey in one post, but I ended up writing way more about The Spy in Black than I thought I would. I'm so, so glad I came back to this film. Rereading my initial thoughts after my first viewing, I realize clearly missed a lot because I was too hyperfocused on Connie being the way he is. But I did rewatch Dark Journey recently, and ended up liking that movie a whole lot less the second time around, so I'm not really in any hurry to post about it.

...

The Spy in Black feels worlds away from the grand, technicolor masterpieces of Powell and Pressburger. Despite the whole final act taking place at sea with the U-boats and battleships firing at one another, the film doesn't come close to the opulence of what are perhaps The Archers' most well-known and beloved films. The Spy in Black is minimalist by comparison, and yet it doesn’t feel out of place when considered among their other works.

Set mostly in the Orkney Islands, a damp and cold feeling permeates the film. That's something The Archers are exceptionally good at as filmmakers -- creating a multisensory experience for the viewer just through their visuals and sound design. Whether it's their wind battered Himalayan monastery in Black Narcissus, or the ever present rain and closeness of the sea to the little schoolhouse in The Spy in Black, Powell and Pressburger films are undeniably immersive. Atmosphere and a sense of place are key defining factors in their films even in this, their earliest work together.

The filmmakers also of course were aware of Conrad Veidt's prestige and wanted to make sure the look of the film paid homage to Connie's past work. There are scenes with deep, angular shadows for Hardt to disappear into and creep out of like in Caligari or Orlac. The title of the film has been bugging me, but now I think it's not so much about what Hardt wears as it is about him lurking in the shadows. (There's also a cute story about Michael Powell and Connie's first meeting where Powell was more than a little star struck; I believe he went on and on about Connie's deep blue eyes and his purring voice, which is understandable.)

The writing suits their actors so perfectly. Compared to Dark Journey where everyone is so painfully British when they aren't supposed to be, there's something in the writing and direction that differentiates the nationalities in The Spy in Black. So even Marius Goring, who is British as can be, when playing a German naval officer isn't quite AS British as Sebastian Shaw and Valerie Hobson, if that makes any sense. It's a subtle difference, but there's something about the performances in this film compared to Dark Journey that allow for a greater suspension of disbelief.

And it's funny! Maybe not as obviously funny as Contraband, but The Spy in Black has some really finely crafted comedic moments that don't feel out of step with the rest of the film. It's not a comedy by any means; it's a drama with room for humor, kind of like real life… just with better looking people. When Hardt is wrestling his motorbike up a hill and is startled by a bunch of sheep, he baas back at them! It's a little moment that feels random at the same time it feels relatable. And it humanize Hardt, who doesn't really need the help -- he's already at this point in the movie completely endeared to the audience (or should be if you have a heart and eyes to see him). Most of the humor in the movie comes from Hardt being put in Situations.

The whole butter thing is so delightfully stupid. They establish Hardt early on as a foodie and a glutton, if only because he's been deprived of good food for great lengths of time. So when he arrives at the schoolhouse rendezvous and is checking each room to make sure it's safe, when the camera catches him in closeup staring with extreme intensity at something off screen. We're to think he suddenly sees something dangerous. The camera cuts to Miss Burnett/Fräulein Thiel/Mrs Blacklock looking confused and concerned. The music builds dramatically as they cut back to Hardt who is creeping towards the table. He reaches down, grabs something, the music crescendos, he lifts the thing to his face -- it's a giant block of butter.

It's delightful, it speaks to anyone who loves food, or at least just to me. Hardt then proceeds to eat most of the butter and, like, half a ham before collapsing but not without first lighting what are clearly supposed to be post-coitalesque cigarettes for himself and Thiel. Even though they spend most of the middle of the film flirting like goddamn pros, sharing a decadent meal is the closest they get to anything explicitly sexual.

Production began towards the end of 1938 and the film was released in the spring of 1939. While England didn't officially enter the war until the following fall, one would have to imagine the threat of conflict was making the general population anxious. The Spy in Black is a WWI film, set in 1917, but unlike other cinematic narratives of the 1930s centered around past wars, this film doesn’t really go out of its way to glorify the military or present a particularly nationalistic story. All the characters are heroic, all the characters are flawed, none more so than the man at the center of the film, Captain Ernst Hardt, a German U-boat captain. The balls they had to make a film with this kind of protagonist at this time. Yet the film doesn't claim to make any kind of sweeping judgement, positive or negative, about Germans. It seems more likely that with the war looming, Hardt is less of a statement about Germans in general and more like Dark Journey's Von Marwitz: both characters seem to be informing the British audience that this outsider, Conrad Veidt, this man you mainly know as a screen villain, is a good man. He's one of us, it seems to suggest.

This film, perhaps uniquely for its time, focuses on the individuals rather than the nations they represent. It seems more focused on how each of the main characters are personally affected by their actions. While the acts of espionage are played out with slick intrigue, by the end of the movie Hardt and Mrs Blacklock are both full of regret. Everything they've done has done little more than lead to the deaths of people who had lives, families, people who loved them. No amount of honor and devotion to one's country in wartime can wash the blood from their hands. In Mrs Blacklock's case, I don't believe her heart was really in it. She breaks down on the captured ferry and says, "You’re in the hands of a man who cares nothing for his life or yours. And it's all my fault. I forgot we were at war, forgot that war means that it kills every fine, decent human feeling." And Hardt himself, for all his good intentions and humanity extended to his prisoners on the ferry, loses every one of his crew, men who may have been the only people he truly cared about in the entire world. And having lost them, having not been able to protect them from the fatal depth charge that struck their U-boat, he has nothing left to live for. The machine of war, or more accurately the psychology of war, claims Hardt as yet another victim. The real villain of The Spy in Black is not the German naval captain nor his men, but rather the war itself. The Spy in Black is at its heart, under all the sexually suggestive dialogue and clever cinematography, an anti-war movie masquerading as a standard espionage thriller.

Valerie Hobson apparently was hired to replace Vivien Leigh and, honestly, thank god. A hundred thousand Vivien Leigh fans would swarm my house with torches and pitchforks if they ever read this, but Valerie Hobson is a better actor and more charismatic, SORRY. She has more range and better comedic timing than Leigh (who went on to do Gone With The Wind anyway, so good for her I guess). Val is maybe more fun in Contraband, but I love that she and Connie got on so well, on screen and off, with each other and with Powell and Pressburger that they all got back together to make a second film. Watching The Spy in Black again, Contraband definitely feels like the more self-indulgent film, but I don't care. And here we get to see the beginning of that collaboration, see the sparks fly as Val and Connie expertly handle the dialogue and direction. I love their dynamic on screen; Hardt deferring to this woman that he thinks is his superior, the way she corrects his English (which was something Val did to Connie in real life that adorably carried over into the film), the way she barks at him to pick up his motorbike and go to bed, the way she looks at him at the end of the film with heartbreak in her eyes but can't bring herself to apologize or say anything at all. UGH. UUUUUGGHHHH. She and Connie have so many great moments together in this film, it's impossible to pick a favorite.

(Powell and Pressburger dared to put Connie and Val nose to nose and have him say to her, "It is evening and I am grown up, " knowing full well what this would do to unsuspecting audiences, only to -- just one year later -- go "hold my beer" and make give him even worse lines in Contraband. GOATed.)

Connie genuinely seems like he's having 10x more fun on this film than Dark Journey. For one thing, he's welcomed back to England after a couple flops and a stopover in France with a more interesting, more fully realized character, one where he's allowed to bring in more of his own opinions and creative choices. Captain Hardt feels more like a real guy, he's less perfect than Von Marwitz. On this rewatch, I realized I'd forgotten how gruff and grumpy Hardt is (which, like Andersen in Contraband, I chalk up to him being hangry). As captain, he's no-bullshit but endures lighthearted teasing from his shipmates. He's allowed to have a friend! Schuster and Hardt clearly have history, they aren't new to one another, they speak (comedically) in unison, after all. I mean, Hardt brings Schuster a block of butter later in the film! That's real friendship.

Hardt makes it known that he loves food, even simple things like bread and butter. This may have more to do with the military rations being beyond bad than a pre-existing character trait of Hardt's, but it gives him color and humanity. And Hardt is just as smooth as the Von Marwitz; when the fiancé of the real Miss Burnett shows up and sees the medal ribbon on his uniform, Hardt slyly and proudly states that it's the "Iron Cross, second class." And when Miss Burnett's fiancé assumes Hardt must be a prisoner of war, the Captain replies, slowly drawling his pistol, "No… you are." And all with the most perfect, calm confidence. He's a Bad MF, no lie.

So many interesting little things get revealed about Hardt pretty early on in the film. There are multiple exchanges about cigarettes being unavailable and someone offering him a pipe to which he says, "I never smoke a pipe." (As far as I see it, and I'm not complaining, but one of the only character differences between Hardt and Captain Andersen in Contraband is that Andersen does smoke a pipe lol) There are a handful of possibly queer coded things they throw in too: Schuster finds it humorous that Hardt would be reciting poetry in the dark to the lady spy he's to meet, to which Hardt says, "You think it's so funny, you know what you can do with it!" And earlier, when someone is looking for the captain, they're told, perhaps with an implied wink, that he might be found at the Turkish baths. Then there's the whole thing with Hardt literally pulling the cigar away from Schuster's mouth. I'm not saying definitively that Hardt is bi… but isn't he, though??

He is ultimately a reluctant spy; when he receives his orders to meet the German agent in Scotland, he's more annoyed than excited. He grumpily accepts his orders, but as a decorated military officer, doing spy stuff is beneath him. He insists on wearing his uniform even at the schoolhouse when he's supposed to be in hiding, because if he should die in service of his duties, he'd rather meet his end as Captain Hardt, not as an assumed identity.

Hardt is so wrapped up in his identity as a military officer that it ends up killing him. His end is tragic, nearly Shakespearean. He is not without honor, in fact he's positively full of it. He seems born and bred to follow orders, to whatever end they may have. And yet he is not a bad man. He commands authority but does not wield it with cruelty. He tells his crew to shoot any of the prisoners on the captured ferry who make noise, "with one exception" for a crying infant, and he allows the prisoners to escape on the lifeboats when the ship is sinking. Hardt cannot stop his own men from firing on the ferry, what they think is an enemy ship -- they have no way of knowing Hardt's taken over command of the ferry. Even his desperate and helpless cries and signals can't carry over the water to reach them in time. As the ship slowly sinks and everyone, including the ferry's original captain and crew, disembarks, Hardt elects to stay behind -- as his U-boat's commanding officer and with his entire crew lost and his captured ship sunk, Hardt makes the decision, in his mind the only decision, to die a captain's death at sea. The last time we see Hardt in closeup, he has tears in his eyes. We don’t see him drown, but we watch as an abandoned lifejacket floats across the frame. It's heartbreakingly tragic; we've gotten to know him, maybe even love him, over the course of the film.

I know I'm going on and on about this one, and I'm almost done, but I have a few more things to say.

People loved to get on Connie's case for his English pronunciation and his supposedly heavy German accent, but he sounds amazing in this film. He plays up some German pronunciation of certain words for comedic effect (Exhibit A: "Bütter"), but his natural accent is so inoffensive here (not that it's ever that bad, even in Rome Express or FP1 imo), and it sounds like he even tried to play it down even more than usual. And if I've said it once I've said it a hundred times, he's such a fucking master of vocal delivery. Hardt's voice sits almost in the same pocket that Von Marwitz's does but Hardt is allowed to be more expressive in his range. I feel like I have a whole separate post in me strictly about Connie's use of his voice. He's a master technician vocally, and yet for as studied as his film speaking voice in English may have been, it never sounds to my ears anything other than effortless and natural.

To wrap things up: Powell, Pressburger, Connie and Val Hobson really are the dream team. The Spy in Black is yet another movie I immediately wanted to watch again the second it was over. It's a 10.

#my writing #conrad veidt #the spy in black #hardt + bütter is my profile pic so i had to write about this movie at some point

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technicolorfamiliar · 2 months ago

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The Wandering Jew Dir. Maurice Elvey 1933

[Note: This film along with 1934's Jew Süss set Conrad Veidt apart from many of his German film actor peers. While he was not Jewish, many of his close friends and colleagues -- not to mention his wife Lily -- were, and he was committed to portraying these deeply complicated and sympathetic characters with as much care and empathy as humanly possible. You can see it in his performance. These films are what got his work banned in Germany in the '30s and painted a huge target on his back. Later he would double down and donate most of his acting paychecks to the British war effort, and arrange to help friends and family who were in danger of violence in Germany safely get out of the country. Maybe it's not necessary to mention all this, but just in case I want to make it abundantly clear where he stood.]

When I first saw this movie about a year ago, I couldn't get into it. It didn't help that I only watched the shorter version on Youtube. The poor quality of the picture and audio, plus a mostly terrible cast, made it a tough watch. But I wanted to give The Wandering Jew a second chance, if only for the Conrad Veidt of it all, and I'm glad I did. So over the course of the first weekend in November, I watched both versions: the shorter, much-censored version and the digitally restored version with over 20 minutes of additional material.

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After watching the two existing/available copies of the film, I definitely think both are necessary if you want to get the whole picture.

Unfortunately, the shorter version is in semi-rough shape and the audio is pretty garbled, but the edits are smoother which helps individual scenes and lines make more sense. There's more air in this version; the director clearly wanted to give the actors, especially Connie, room to breathe, and it not only helps the pacing but the atmosphere of the film as well. However, the shorter version is missing several important and interesting moments due to some heavy-handed censorship.

The longer version has a cleaner picture and slightly clearer audio, but some of the dialogue gets randomly chopped up and there are abrupt cuts that make the film jumpy and take away from the languid atmospheric feeling that in retrospect I think actually makes the film work. Or at least tries to make it work. And, being the longer version, there are key scenes that made it past the censors: all the scenes related to leprosy; the aggressive anti-semitic stuff at the Renaissance Faire crusaders camp; and a great line Matathias delivers in an added scene in Act IV, "All men are Christians. All men are Jews. The faith is only a mask, it does not make a man what he is." MIC DROP, AIR HORNS. There's also a wild scene where Renaissance Faire crusade era Matathias cackles at Anne Grey's crucifix for well over a minute. But for whatever reason, the longer version is missing random things too, like the forward, which isn't entirely necessary but if you're presenting your film in a kind of storybook style, a written forward makes sense.

And there is an illustrative, storybook quality to the film. The costumes and sets feel like something out of a N.C. Wyeth painting or even vaguely Pre-Raphaelite at times. It's heavily romanticized and I think this threw me the first time I saw the movie. But it makes sense, the story is a parable after all. And yet, while you're going in that direction, why not go bigger, why not compose each shot with even more care? I know they shot this movie in 1933, but all I want is some vision and intentionality in the cinematography and staging, dang it! I do like the two moments when Jesus is speaking and his dialogue is only shown as text. We don't see or hear him, but everyone else in the shot is frozen and the sound drops out. Time seems to stop for a few seconds. But nothing else in the film really manages to match those moments stylistically.

I feel like a broken record saying this, but Connie's performance once again carries the entire film. Pretty much everyone else is just so bad, the women in particular. Seriously, sound was being used in films at this point for over 5 years -- so why is everyone in this movie doing this style of acting that is maybe only acceptable for huge stage productions? Three of the four lead actresses are legitimately the worst. The only exception is Peggy Ashcroft in Act IV who isn't great, but at least she's a better scene partner. That could also have something to do with the first three women being annoyingly pious, and Act IV's Olalla is just a more interesting and better-written character. In Act I, the woman playing Judith barely engages with Connie. Sure, she's dying, but she's dying like she's on stage in some 2000+ seat West End theater. And the wife in Act III is literally giving Connie nothing to work with, nothing! There's so little believable intimacy in these women's performances that it really makes the movie suffer as a whole. Maybe that's harsh, maybe that's what the director wanted, but I think about Connie's other British films from this time and their lead actresses -- Madeleine Carroll, Jill Esmond, etc -- weren't nearly as painfully awful.

Though this is Connie's fifth English language film, it almost seems like he's still getting his sea legs as an actor in the British studio system. Maybe with the exception of I Was A Spy, his previous English films were all roles for a character actor, and so Matathias was the first opportunity he had to really show off his range. I have no idea if they shot in sequence -- unlikely -- but from Act I to Act IV he seems like he's progressively carving out a foundation for his future work in British films. After The Wandering Jew, he was off and running with a great series of meaty and fascinating roles. Josef Süss, The Stranger, even Convict 83 have some roots in the performance he gives in this movie.

Matathias is a role an actor would consider one of their crowning achievements but would probably never want to play again. He's incredibly demanding and challenging, very likely made even more so by Connie's uniquely holistic and intense method of preparing for a role. Even though there are moments when his performance comes across as a little stilted, that could be more due to him trying to match the tone of the film itself, especially early in the narrative when he's a little flat -- he has to start like that so he has somewhere to go with the character. There's zero humor or levity in the script so Connie had to humanize Matathias through his journey across time by incorporating moments of deep compassion and the pain of loss, shame and regret, and ultimately complete surrender.

No other actor would believe the story and its message enough to pull off the heart-wrenching performance Connie gives in this film.

Act I Matathias is a difficult guy in a fabulous robe (the sleeves!). He's clearly selfish, but not really cruel. After all, he and everyone else know that the woman he loves does not belong to him and were she to go home to her husband, she would most definitely not survive whatever violence awaited her there. And Matathias does not allow harm to come to her, at least not in that way. His selfishness means he'll keep her at any cost, meaning he refuses to see how ill she really is. But he's not a bad guy, he's just a regular person in a very difficult situation which makes his impulse to bitterly lash out at Christ understandable. But there is some part of him that does believe because it doesn’t take much for him to get on board with the whole curse thing. With very little convincing, he appears to be resigned to his fate. But that's fine, we have to move the story along, after all.

The cruelty comes out more in Act II. The Unknown Knight just wants to fight, feast, and get his freak on. Connie gets to be pretty aggressively sexual (good god, the way he grabs that woman) and blasphemous in this section ("Blasphamy, blaspha-you, blaspha-everybody in the room!"), especially for the early 1930s, so no wonder it's one of the shorter acts. His haircut might be hideous, but his veiny forearms are, uh, real nice (as are all the long shots of his exposed throat and sternum throughout the film). Confession time: it took me three viewings to get the whole leprosy thing. Judith has it in Act I, so does the guy who wanders into the camp in Act II, and the sick boy in Act IV as well. The son in Act III is bit by a snake, but it could be something to do with snakes = the devil or something, idk. The appearance of sickness/leprosy always signals a lesson Matathias has to learn, or signals the ending or beginning of something important. So his reaction to Renaissance Faire Babe's rejection isn't really about her at all, which is revealed in the longer edit of the film. He hears the leper's bell and mutters, "Unclean…," before letting Ren Faire Babe discover her murdered husband. Matathias may not have killed the man, but he continues to leave behind a trail of death and destruction as some kind of act of defiance against the curse of wandering the earth until such undetermined time as Jesus will appear to him again. By making his life dangerous, he flaunts how he is able to cheat death, but when he hears the leper's bell and is reminded of the events that set him on this path, he realizes he can't go on like this, that there has to be something else, something more. I like how the shot of Connie at the end of this section echoes the end of Act I, suggesting he still has a long journey ahead before he can hope to reach own end.

So when we next see him, he's a merchant and family man living in Palermo named Matteo. Instead of causing mayhem everywhere he goes, he's trying to build something, maybe even a legacy. This is my least favorite part of the movie, but the way Connie shows Matteo's heartbreak, first at the death of his son and later at losing his wife to the Church, is something else. When Gianella tells him she's leaving, he goes through each of the stages of grief in like two minutes and we can see it happen in his face and in his body language. The way his knees buckle and he slowly crumples to the floor, ugh. Also, shout out to the attention to detail in this film. If you look closely at the beginning of Act III, Connie's fingernails look ink-stained like he's been writing and handling documents all day. Not to mention the fact that he wears the same onyx ring throughout, and the same necklace in Acts I and IV. I also thought it was interesting how the music cut out when Mateo is handed his dying child, it immediately reinforces the gravity of the scene. This movie did not come to play.

Act IV, set in Seville, is by far the best part of the whole film. And I'm not just saying that because Care-giver!Connie is doing things to my brain. How sweet and gentle he is with his patients, the way he keeps looking up to check in with Olalla when he's treating her broken ankle, the way he murmurs and coos little things under his breath like "Come on, let's try a little walk…" and "Ohh, what's the matter, my boy" that sound totally improvised. That's the good stuff, right there. And when Olalla says, "There's magic in your hands." I BET. This whole fourth act is just Connie kicking in the door of 1930s British cinema. The scene in front of the Inquisition alone is the most powerful and important part of the movie. Connie manages to fill Matteo with such humanity and empathy by the end of the film that it's practically radiating out of him. In an otherwise one-dimensional film he brings real, complicated, fascinating, tragic and beautiful life to this legendary figure. It's astonishing.

Is it a good movie? Not really. Is it an important movie made at a critical time in history, as a statement against anti-semitism on behalf of the filmmakers and cast? Of course it is. Despite the mild annoyance of needing to watch two different versions of the same film, and needing some patience with the tone and supporting cast's performances -- it definitely helps to be in the right mood going in -- it really is essential viewing in the Conrad Veidt canon, especially if you're interested in his work as an actor. I mean, just watch this movie and bask in the glow of his radiant, spiritual performance. Bask in it!

In the end, I'm glad I gave 1933's The Wandering Jew a second chance.

P.S. Connie looks unbelievably stunning in this movie. His costumes, wigs and facial hair are all basically perfect. The silhouettes and lines of his robes, the details in his jewelry and accessories. He really knew how to wear the clothes so they wouldn't wear him. He must have been a costume designer's dream. Or nightmare (he can be your angle;;… or yuor devil).

#my writing #conrad veidt #the wandering jew 1933 #art and film kind of feel frivolous right now #but idk they may be the only thing keeping me from losing my mind for the foreseeable future

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technicolorfamiliar · 3 months ago

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D O U B L E F E A T U R E !

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Dir. Robert Weine 1920 // Orlacs Hände (The Hands of Orlac) Dir. Robert Wiene 1924

I recently watched both, Caligari specifically because I was invited on a friend's podcast to talk about the film (I was totally normal about it and definitely didn't make color coded note cards about the making of the movie… I did, I did make color coded note cards). So I figured I would lump these two in one post to switch things up.

--- Even though we talked about the movie for an hour and change, the conversation we recorded for the pod easily could have gone longer. There's so much to unpack about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Between its historical, cinematic, artistic, and cultural significance and legacy, but also the various players on and off camera, not to mention the film's genesis from concept to page to screen -- there's no shortage of rabbit holes to go down.

Something I wish I had brought up during the recording was the score: The score matters! These updated silent film scores really do affect the viewer experience, and they're so often hit or miss. Of course, the original score for Caligari has been lost to time, but I read that the premier of in New York had classical music (Prokofiev, Stravinsky, etc) played along to the screening; part of me thinks this would be fun to try to recreate. I have no memory of the music when I first saw the film in 2009, but when I rewatched Caligari about a year ago, early in my Conrad Veidt journey, I chose a version on Internet Archive (which is, as of late October, sadly still out of commission *cries in nerd*) and the updated score was almost entirely minimal strings, which created a suitably eerie effect. I couldn't find that exact version elsewhere, so I this time opted for the 2014 restoration that's on Kanopy. The 2014 score is… fine. It’s very busy, trying too hard to sound like a traditional movie soundtrack. There's another version with a really painfully bad guitar-heavy score that I couldn't sit through even 5 minutes of, and still another that's entirely synths. Apparently the new 4K UHD/Blu-Ray that was just released has two new options for the score -- hopefully at least one of them doesn't totally suck!

I noticed deep into my third time viewing the film that I hadn't reached for my phone once. These days, I'll occasionally pick it up and mindlessly scroll through social media while watching a movie. But I think Caligari and a few other silent films require closer attention since they're a purely visual medium. I found myself greedily devouring every frame of Caligari. No shot or scene feels wasted. Honestly, I feel like every movie should be 90 minutes long or less. Anything longer should be turned into a miniseries. But in all seriousness, Caligari is another film I want to physically walk into. It would be pretty easy to recreate these sets, life size in grayscale black and white. The more I think about this, the more I need it. So, so bad.

I also came away this time with a lot of questions, mostly about the main part of the narrative, the story Franzis is telling. But the framing device makes the questions pointless. If the main story is just Franzis's delusion, then the absurdity of the script is totally fine I guess? Except the script that Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer wrote didn't have Franzis as a patient at the asylum, they hated the framing story twist that was forced on their movie, so all those weird parts of the script and character choices that I'm overthinking and reading too much into are rendered meaningless. It's all in Franzis's head! The story and the characters in it don't matter! Or else are just part of his subconscious! Face palm. Eye roll.

Does the movie even work without the framing device? It would be interesting to show an edited version of the movie without the first and last scenes to someone who's never seen it. And if the twist ending was supposed to dumb down the anti-authoritarian message of the script, I don't know that it's successful. In the end, I still have empathy for Franzis. And we still have an ambiguous ending: Caligari/The Asylum Director looks at Mad Franzis and says, "I know just how to cure him," and there's a creepy iris wipe in on Werner Krauss's face that maybe leads us to think Franzis isn't as delusional as we think he is. So like… even if the whole Dr. Caligari with his sleepy twink in a box story is fake, whatever is happening at the asylum is probably just as messed up if not worse.

Speaking of the twink in a box, I love that Conrad Veidt's German Expressionism is totally different from Werner Krauss's German Expressionism. They both trained and performed with Max Reinhardt, so their foundations as theater actors in the 1910s and 1920s were likely similar. But, regardless or in spite of that shared experience, they are diametrically different human beings and that comes across in their performances in this movie. These two actors are like the textbook definition of "showing" your art vs. "being" your art. Krauss as Caligari is like "ooOOOoo look how ooky spooky and evil I am!", whereas Connie's performance as Cesare, even though it's hyper-stylized, is infused with something deeper, something primal that feels believable in the context of the film.

If Cesare has been asleep his whole life, waking only to be fed Chunky Campbell's Soup and commit murder at Caligari's bidding, then no wonder he reacts the way he does when sleeping Jane finally brings him out of his trance. When she freaks out, he freaks out too because he's had no opportunity to learn how to behave like a human or how to filter his primal emotions in a socially acceptable way. He hasn't lived his life except to be a madman's puppet. He reacts to Jane's panic on instinct and impulse, his desire and fear feel feral, like he's more creature or an animal than a human man. He may not actually want to hurt Jane, but he reacts violently because fight or flight is a basic human stress response! He runs away and eventually collapses because his body can't handle the sudden onslaught of stress and emotion he's never before experienced! And this internal, instinctual tendency to violence is subtly alluded to in the final scene when Asylum Cesare both caresses and slowly picks apart the flowers he's holding. Ahhhhh, I have so many FEELINGS.

And that said… Connie's performance here is wild, but it's real in a way that Werner Krauss's work could never be because Connie was a spiritual humanist who cared deeply for others and Krauss was an anti-semitic piece of shit who therefore could NEVER dig deep enough into his soul or into the collective unconscious the way Connie did to breathe life into his characters. So everything Krauss is doing here and in The Student of Prague is all surface, it's "showing" the audience his training and his actor toolbox rather than bringing a level of honesty and in-the-moment groundedness to these roles.

This is not to say Connie's intense commitment to his work couldn't be, uh, excessive. I really hope Lil Dagover was being serious when she said he would lurk around the studio in character when off camera. Can you imagine? You go up to the craft services table for a snack. Suddenly you feel like you're being watched. You look up and he's looming over you in the shadows, his unblinking glazed eyes boring into your soul. God, I hope this happened and I hope whoever it happened to peed themselves a little.

I also wish we had a behind the scenes photo of Connie in costume with the Cesare dummy. I can't believe someone actually had to make that prop. It'll haunt me forever. (The 1920 Cesare Dummy isn't real, the 1920 Cesare Dummy can't hurt me.)

Bottom line: It's an important film, I appreciate it for both its timelessness and timefullness. But it's not a movie I need to revisit often, regardless of how enchanting Connie's nostril acting may be.

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The first time I watched The Hands of Orlac, I was floored by the visuals, the staging, and the heavy eroticism. Up until that point, I hadn't seen very many silent films, certainly few as visually striking. I think my initial impressions of this film were somewhat muted on a second watch, but that may just because I knew what to expect.

This time, I wasn't as swept up in the magic of silent era German Expressionist cinema, although stylistically I'm still absolutely 100% obsessed. Art direction wise, this is my favorite between the surviving Wiene-Veidt films (I haven't seen Furcht and I don’t plan to). Orlac is like the darker, sexier, more grown up sister to Caligari's mall goth teen. It's Vampira vs Lydia Deetz.

Orlac is just as much if not more of a cinematic feat than Caligari. The production design and art direction alone feels more mature and in itself tells more of a story.

Very early in the film, we're thrown into a very impressive, very realistic train crash. Opening the movie this way was a really interesting choice -- we don't get to meet the characters before the accident that starts Paul and Yvonne Orlac on their doomed and bizarre trajectory. There is a brief establishing scene of Yvonne reading a really horny letter from her husband, and one of pianist Paul at his final concert before returning home. Then there's a very long sequence of the aftermath of the train crash that almost kills Paul, and this scene brings a level of realism you don't really get in other films of this genre/done in this style. The set construction looks expensive; the mangled train cars piled up in heaps may have been fabricated in the studio, but because of the lighting in the night scene, the billowing smoke from passing locomotives and fires from the crash, it looks pretty damn real for 1924. It's extremely effective and harrowing, especially as Yvonne races to the site of the crash and climbs through the wreckage to try to find her husband. The chaos of the scene, made all the more disorienting by the movement of search lights and the haze of smoke and steam, feels true to life. People are running around, pulling bodies from the ruined train cars, carrying them away on stretchers. Survivors look around dazed, clutching their belongings in shock. It's such a well directed moment in the film, but maybe not the first thing people remember about it. And I think it's inclusion is important because it offsets how weird the movie's about to get.

And boy, does it get weird. However, the doctor does say Paul suffered a skull fracture, so it's not a huge stretch to think he also has some kind of brain injury. So I wonder if that has something to do with how the filmmakers chose to show Paul's intense fear and paranoia, as well as the movie's shift in tone and style after his accident. The nightmarishness of the film, from the exaggerated performances to the set design, feels like an extension of whatever might be going on in Paul's head as a result of his injury.

Regardless, I love the choices the art director made. The set, especially the Art Deco mausoleum the Orlacs have for a home, is so perfect. The huge, cavernous rooms are completely unnecessary, but they make the characters look and feel so helpless, like dolls in a doll house. The lines of the walls and the furnishings draw the eye through the frame with just as much intention as the painted sets of Caligari. Even places outside their house become symbolic and iconographic. The news stand is just a window cut out of a massive wall of loose sheets of newspaper that takes up the entire frame. The interior of Orlac Sr.'s house is like a old, drafty castle, looking more like the home of an evil, miserly king. The tavern where Paul is confronted by Nera feels dank and subterranean, just a lamp or two removed from literal catacombs. The outer world is fully a reflection of poor Paul Orlac's inner torment and despair and I AM LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT.

The new music composed by Paul Mercer is perfect, too. It's all skronky violins and cellos, ominous percussion and piano. It's just atmospheric enough, creating moments of soundscapes, echoing footsteps, aural suggestions of the oppressive cave-like rooms where the story unfolds. There aren't really any memorable themes like in the updated score for The Student of Prague, but that works for this movie. I would buy this soundtrack and actually listen to it on its own, it's that good.

Everyone in the ensemble is basically on the same page in terms of acting style, no one feels out of place or miscast. Connie of course steals the show, but Alexandra Sorina as Yvonne gives him a run for his money. She's a good match for him, delivering an appropriately desperate and hysterical (and deeply, deeply horny) performance as the touch-starved wife. Their scenes together are maybe some of the best on screen romantic moments of Connie's silent film work because these two are wildly hungry for each other. This movie is so funny, it tells you immediately how horny it is; in the first 30 seconds of the movie, Yvonne gets a letter from Paul that says, "I will feel your body beneath my hands," like they're telling you straight up this is going to Horn Town. And the way she grabs at him, presses her open mouth to him, hovers over him in his hospital bed, she is DTF anywhere any time. And no shame, no shade, good for her. This is a sex positive film, and we love to see it. But she's not just the sexy wife, she's also totally ride or die for Paul. She truly trusts him and believes his absolutely buck wild story about being blackmailed by a dead psycho killer. What a gal.

Then there's Paul, aka Eraserhead Baby… because when he wakes up from surgery covered in bandages, he looks like the Eraserhead Baby. Connie is doing some of his finest nostril acting in this role, I have to say. As always, I am fascinated by his physicality and the choices he's making with movement and gesture. When his bandages are finally removed, he reacts as though drugged, his movements slow as though underwater or in a dream. And when he confronts his surgeon after discovering the original owner of his newly transplanted hands, he holds them out and away from his body as if they were coated in something dirty or disgusting. As Paul's life and sanity unravel, his hands and fingers are in almost constant motion, curling, twitching, clutching; his body language becomes more creature-like, moving in a way that calls up Cesare the sleepwalker -- interestingly, the two characters both seemingly at the mercy of forces outside their control.

We don’t get to know what Paul was like before the accident, how much this traumatic event changed him. There's something this movie is trying to say about trauma and how it affects people. The doctor tells Paul, "Nature and a strong will can overcome anything." But if Paul sustained any kind of serious brain damage, who’s to say his personality wasn't affected, or that he wasn't fragile and suggestible to begin with? Either way, in the wake of the accident, Paul's vulnerability and circumstance makes him a perfect target for Nera's grift.

Even without being targeted by a sick weirdo con artist, it's no wonder Paul's really going through it. He tortures and punishes himself relentlessly for something that wasn't his fault! (Been there.) He puts on a recording of one of his old concerts and crumples in grief for having lost not only his livelihood but also his outlet for creative expression -- not being able to do what you used to creatively because of trauma is REAL. He's trapped in his misery. Even his handwriting is different, now a violent scrawl he imagines is due to the murderous acts his hands supposedly committed. He secretly retrieves the planted murder weapon in order to further convince himself he's somehow become evil, wielding it as through he committed the crimes of the dead man whose hands now belong to him. And the scenes where Yvonne comes to him, wanting to both devour and comfort him, he cannot bring himself to touch her. Clearly they love each other very much and their relationship was very physical, so the agony and yearning in his face when she embraces him is UGH IT'S SO GOOD. It's heartbreaking. There's a lot to unravel here about trauma, body dysmorphia, and intimacy that I'm interested to dig into during subsequent viewings.

Final thoughts: There's an annoying part of my brain that wants the movie to make sense, for the timeline to be clearer, for loose ends to be tied up. But I know that none of that really matters because this movie is better received as a dream or a nightmare. And by that logic, it doesn't have to make sense. The Expressionist beats are being hit particularly hard, but the surreal quality allows the filmmakers and cast to get away with it. For fans of Conrad Veidt, this is a must-watch, even before Caligari -- he gets more screen time in this film, gets to play with his silent film artist's palette, and gets to do pathos like he's the king of tragic, pathetic characters. He's gangly, glassy-eyed, and trembling like a small wet dog the whole time and it's superb. Despite not really getting a chance to know the Orlacs before they're thrown into their own personal hell of body horror and credit debt, they're both pretty sympathetic. From psychological commentary to the erotic visuals and tension, it's all very ahead of its time.

#my writing #conrad veidt #the cabinet of dr. caligari #the hands of orlac

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technicolorfamiliar · 3 months ago

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Life & Trust Oct 13, 2024

It goes without saying that I went into L&T with a healthy amount of skepticism. Pretty much everything about how the show was marketed pissed me off, and all of the early teased info about the experience itself (the stupid masks with antlers, the fact that the show is basically a carbon copy of the Punchdrunk format, etc) made it sound ultra annoying. When I walked into the building last Sunday evening, my expectations were low. Which, inevitably, led me to find myself pleasantly surprised by the parts of L&T that worked, and to be massively ticked off by the things that didn't.

Spoilers below, including 1:1 info.

Preshow:

On arrival, I was escorted by a bar staff member to a small café table in the middle of Conwell Hall. Even with all the hype and photos on social media, the space is impressive, from the marble floors and columns to the antiqued brass fixtures to the massive Diego Rivera style show-specific mural hanging above the bar. It's cavernous, opulent in an Art Deco kind of way. There's a lot of cute paper ephemera on the tables, but between the menus, the business cards, the full-size old timey newspaper (full of in-world easter eggs), not to mention the drinks, the canapes, the votive candles… it's a lot of clutter. There's piped in music that's not quite period appropriate. I know there's some concern about disturbing the residents who actually live on the upper floors, but there's no reason they can't have like one person at a piano or something. They don't need a whole band, but some live entertainment would be nice.

Because I knew that people attending the 6pm "cocktail hour" get first admittance into the performance space, that's the entry time I booked. But that meant I had to stand around for the better part of an hour before doing 3ish more hours of standing, walking, and running inside the show. Other people, primarily couples and groups, got put at tables with seats during preshow. Because I was solo, I had to stand. Infuriating. There's no reason those tall café tables can't have bar stools or chairs. L&T seems to cater to couples and groups, which makes sense financially, but if they want to encourage repeat visits, they should make the preshow more accommodating to and comfortable solo guests. Just sayin'.

The Show:

The staff member I met during preshow escorted me and a handful of other guests to a small waiting room where we were held before being shown in to meet "the CEO", aka an older actor playing Old Faust J. G. Conwell. He was great, but the whole intro announcement/exposition scene is too long. Conwell's monologue is fine, but the second half of the scene with the demon? witch? goes on and on for no real reason other than to buy time for the previous group of audience members to filter into the performance space. (Maybe I'm just a broken shell of an immersive theater fan at this point, but I thought this scene and a few other moments in the show reveal too much of the bones of L&T's structure, feeling like ways to fill time rather than opportunities to pull me into the world. But again, maybe that's my fault.)

And what a space. Each subfloor is absolutely massive, yet all of the rooms (except the finale hall) feel a little claustrophobic because of the low ceilings. I know there are entire sections of the set I didn't see, but because it's at least four or five floors of disorienting, labyrinthine spaces, I don't feel like I was missing out.

The first room I walked into was what I can only describe as The Poodle Room… because it was a dark, creepy little office full, like floor to ceiling, of poodle figurines of various sizes. There are definitely some areas and rooms that you can tell a lot of care went into the design and detail -- the Conwell family suite is beautiful, something like an Egyptian tomb is bizarre and eerie, an old tavern and a series of tenements feel lived in.

There's also a Magical Devil Juice Forest with twinkling, color-changing fiberoptic lights on every branch and leaf. There's a dingy vaudeville theater, a nickelodeon running loops of early silent short films, a grimy artist's studio, a plush boudoir with a broken crystal chandelier in a heap on the floor, a coal mine. It's a lot. And yet, some of the spaces in the show have seem unfinished somehow or appear as an afterthought.

Based on what I'd read online, I was expecting the weird devil deer masks all the audience members wear to be super uncomfortable. In reality they're no worse than the Sleep No More masks. The antlers are a little annoying and totally unnecessary. But like a lot of things about Life & Trust, the masks seem to be the product of a certain aesthetic or viral moment the creators are desperately striving for. As Paul Hollywood says, most of what I saw felt like "style over substance."

The performances, all of the ones I saw anyway, were excellent. I tried to avoid characters that had excessively large groups of audience with them. Unfortunately, most of the familiar performers whose work in this new show I really wanted to see all seemed to have huge crowds with them at all times. Luckily, I didn't have to wander around for long before finding another character with few or zero people following them -- which may have been purely by chance or how the creators and performers designed the character tracks. Appreciated either way.

I saw a selection of scenes with the Miners, the Vaudeville Couple, Evelyn, Naima, the Maid, and Dorian, all of whom were played that night by extremely strong and engaging performers. I liked the tone shift with the Vaudeville Couple's scenes, how their sincerity and silliness turns performative and degrading as soon as they're offered money to entertain. I liked the working class Miners balance of hope and despair, the secret affair and role reversal between Naima and her Maid, and Dorian's shapeshifting physicality as his brittle and decadent façade begins to decay.

I followed the tarot reading Con Artist, basically from the top of the show. I should have made more of an effort to stay with them through their entire loop, but it just got to be too difficult to navigate the space as more and more people latched onto the character. The performer in this role was just subtle enough, just intimidating enough, which is no small feat because I imagine the character is extremely difficult to like, especially if you don't get the 1:1 early in their first loop where they explain some of their motivation. Interestingly, the 1:1 reveal of the Con Artist's lack of empathy gives them more humanity. They manipulate and steal from other characters in a way that feels curious, not outright evil. They made pointed eye contact with me in the scenes following the 1:1, marking me as an accomplice. When they eventually confront their own reflection in a hall of mirrors, they are at their most shattered and vulnerable. They collapsed, reaching out to me again for stability and comfort, but even this could have been a kind of manipulation. But you know what? I didn't mind, it was one of the few times in the show I forgot about the outside world all the other audience members around us and was actually… you know… immersed.

By the end of the last loop, my whole body hurt, I was sweaty and exhausted, and fully ready for the show to be over. But ohhh no, the finale had to happen first.

I'm sorry to say, unless you followed Faust Young Conwell or Mephisto -- or have a basic understanding of the primary framing narrative -- the finale makes no sense. The use of the finale space was smart, having the performers up on platforms allowed the audience to see most of the action (unlike some other recent immersive shows *COUGH*THE BURNT CITY*COUGH*), but the whole sequence was waaay too long. The lighting is cool, Conwell does a sick slow motion Matrix backbend at one point, and there's a striking final visual of the straightjacketed body in the water tank, but the whole thing could have been cut down to half the time and be just as impactful. And there was a curtain call?? I get wanting to honor the performers at the end of a show, but it took me right out of the moment. I mean, if you're going to do a show that's so similar in structure and style to Punchdrunk, why not end with character walk outs like they do? Although walk outs may have been difficult because because there's literally only one exit out of the finale space. Still. One of the things I like about immersive theater is that it doesn't feel like a play… I can stay in the world longer if there's no button on the end of the show, like a curtain call, you know?

Final Thoughts:

Reading back over this write up, it sounds like I had a bad time. And that's not the case, really I swear. There's a lot about L&T that works. It's beautiful, the original music is a nice touch (some people hate it, I really enjoyed and appreciated it), and the performances are truly pretty outstanding.

Mostly what doesn't work are the story and the structure. It doesn't have that hard-to-define Special Something that Punchdrunk shows have or even Third Rail Projects had with Then She Fell.

Life & Trust isn't going to haunt me the way other immersive shows do. It's trying too hard to be Instagramable, and thus sacrificing the soul and spirit it needs to be a lasting influence on this particular format of theater.

I'm glad I went and I absolutely did not hate the show, but it's simply too expensive to be worth multiple visits. Nor am I going to be thinking about it 10 - 15 years later.

P.S. I genuinely don't know if I'm going to do a write up on the Sleep No More show I saw on this trip. There's really not a lot to report. I might just write something when it finally closes… whenever that actually happens.

#my writing #life and trust

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technicolorfamiliar · 3 months ago

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Me walking into Life and Trust.

Me walking into The Burnt City.

#i'm so glad i get to break out this bad boy again

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technicolorfamiliar · 4 months ago

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Contraband (Blackout) Dir. Michael Powell 1940

This one has been on my rewatch list since I first saw it last year. It was one of the few films in the epic Connie watch-a-thon that felt like it had some kind of curative powers, in the surprising way some movies do. I never expected it to lift my spirits and lighten my heart the way it did.

10/10 no notes. I absolutely love everything about this movie. Except the randomly shoehorned "White Negro" scene. It's so out of place in an otherwise pretty progressive film. That cabaret act literally could have been anything, why choose that?? (I couldn't find a lot of info about the choreographer, but it sounds like he was into romanticizing and exoticizing African and Caribbean people in his work… which is not great, but pretty typical of that time I guess. Ugh.)

But otherwise delightful, a romp from start to finish. Apparently someone on IMDB slammed Contraband for being "camp expressionism", but honestly? Hell yeah. I'm 100% here for it. In fact, "camp expressionism" my new favorite genre if it means cute, quirky, risqué, well-directed, well-shot, romantic spy comedy with a tight script and excellent performances.

I've also seen people comparing it to American screwball comedies of the era, but that doesn't seem quite right or even fair. Contraband, thanks to Powell, Pressburger, the editor, and the cast, has a very light touch compared to the comedies coming out of Hollywood in the '30s and '40s. It's not as heavy-handed, it doesn't beat its message to death with over-done gags or affected performances. Michael Powell even said the movie was "all pure corn, but corn served up by professionals." And that's the Powell and Pressburger difference, baby.

The comedy in the script is executed with relative subtlety. The movie isn't telling you HERE’S THE FUNNY BIT, LAUGH NOW the way screwball, slapstick Hollywood would. You almost have to be looking for the humor here to catch it, and it pays off. It's a cheekier type of comedy, not really driven by jokes and punchlines. And as someone who never really liked American comedies of that era, I really appreciate this kind of film. It's silly, even outright stupid in some scenes, but it's not playing down to it's audience. I mean, the whole brawl in the night club is almost like the big fight at the end of Blazing Saddles where more and more people keep joining in, but the action stops for half a second while someone delivers a line. It's stupid. And I love it.

The espionage stuff in is a little convoluted and kind of treated as a throw-away. But really, if you're not paying super close attention to that part of the story, you're not missing much. The spy plot between the British and the Nazis is really just there to give the lead characters something fun to do, and you know what… that's ok with me.

The cinematography also helps elevate Contraband above just being a regular old comedy. Featuring the London blackout is actually really clever. It forces a number of scenes into almost total darkness, which was a risky move and could have been a huge mistake, but it adds yet another interesting layer to the film, visually and in terms of story. There's an unusual POV (possibly handheld?) tracking shot, when Andersen and Mrs. Sorensen are walking up to her house in town, that's just lit by their flashlight. We don't see either of them, except for her hand briefly putting the key in the lock, until after they enter and the camera pans around the hall. And there's a moment a while later when they're in the basement after being tied up where Connie's face is entirely in shadow -- we know he's looking at her, but his expression is completely hidden in darkness. On paper, it sounds like a bad shot, a mistake, but this "expressionistic" lighting and camera work adds a little extra special sauce that I for one greatly appreciate.

The supporting cast is all generally pretty good. Hay Petrie is fun in a double roll. There's the scene in the rowboat where he looks like he's going to get sea sick… despite being the first mate who practically lives on a ship. Little character touches like that throughout the movie make it delightful: The girl in short shorts doing exercises in her room when Connie bursts in on her, the line delivery of the woman who works in the kitchen with Uncle Erik, the guy outside lighting his pipe during the blackout letting those two cops HAVE it. I love a character actor driven movie, all these people in bit parts adding so much color to the story. Brilliant.

Valerie Hobson is so good in this. First of all, she's a boss bitch with an incredible wardrobe. Every look she's serving is iconic. The tweed jacket and headscarf that matches her blouse? The dress with the crazy angular shoulder pads? The big, wide-brimmed hat? Slay. She's authoritative without being shrill, she's got a confident swagger you don't see a lot of actresses getting to showcase at that time. Still, she's not really a femme fatale either. Mrs. Sorensen is independent, intelligent, stunning, and into dangerous spy shit because she enjoys it. She's someone I'd want to hang out with, but would be too scared to talk to because she's so cool. I mean, she almost missed the train at the end because she went back to get Andersen's watch! I have two words for you: Wife Goals.

Sadly, it sounds like Val didn't really get to do a lot of other fun roles outside of the two films she made with Connie. Which is a real shame. Someone on Letterboxd said they're better together than Tracy and Hepburn, and I fully agree. Val and Connie have a natural chemistry that neither feels feel too personal or too studied. Their on screen work together feels easy, without all the baggage and volatility of IRL romance.

The first time I saw Contraband, I think I was simply charmed by Connie as Andersen. Getting to see him as a fun, heroic, romantic lead is incredibly satisfying. But this time around I realized how funny he actually is. He's is so cranky, he starts the movie already at like an 8.5, he's so fucking over it. It's one thing after another -- Mrs. Sorensen won't wear her life jacket, British contraband control wants to hold up them up, someone stole the landing papers, and of course it was Mrs. Sorensen AND Mr. Pigeon. He's so grumpy from the get. (My theory is that he's hangry. He's temperamental and irritable up until he gets a decent meal at The Three Vikings. So relatable.)

It was fun to rewatch this one to catch all the comedic beats Connie is doing with his gestures and facial expressions. They're choreographed, but not affected or over done. His timing and delivery is subtle and finely tuned, which is always funnier than an actor who deliberately plays up the laughs. For example, the long pause after Mrs. Sorensen corrects his pronunciation of the name of the restaurant, he furrows his brow and looks around and finally mutters, "…VI-kings." His comedy is so understated, which keeps the rapid-fire pacing of the bits from being obnoxious.

Andersen is an interesting guy, too. I feel like his macho vibe is just a mask he wears as captain of his ship. He's so used to being That Guy, but, based on Connie's performance, I get the impression that deep down Andersen doesn’t really subscribe to all that traditional masculinity. Later in the film it's easy-ish for him to eventually drop the façade, adjust his expectations, becoming more flexible, malleable in his ideas about sex and gender. This of course is because Conrad Veidt was in reality a proto-feminist wife guy. Andersen isn't played like your standard manly man movie heroes of the time, because that's not who Connie was, that's not an image he wanted to project or support (and I feel one reason why Hollywood couldn't figure out what to do with him in the '40s, but that rant is for another post).

Andersen and Mrs. Sorensen are pretty evenly matched. In fact she has the upper hand and more progressive, dominant role especially once they arrive in London. On his ship, he's the boss, but on shore he's met with one disadvantage after another. Mrs. Sorensen has to be the one to pay for his bus and cab fare, confidently navigating her way through the blackout like a pro. Meanwhile, Andersen is pretty much a bumbling fool, a sidekick to Sorensen's spy adventure. But he's not totally incompetent either (I MEAN IT LOOKS LIKE HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING WITH THOSE ROPES, HE IS A SAILOR AFTER ALL *eyes emoji* *sweating emoji*), he's the one who comes up with the plan to rescue Sorensen from her Nazi captors (although I get the impression she probably would have found her own way out without his help). But what's great is that he doesn't do it alone, he goes back to The Three Vikings to round up a small army of Danish essential workers to back him up. And I love how Connie plays the whole last act of the film like he's actually on an adventure; you can see Connie the actor having the most fun ever getting to be the big movie star hero, tussling with cops and Nazis, solving puzzles with glee, getting the girl -- who is just as much of a badass as he is -- in the end. It's so good. And it's so much fun to watch.

There are so, so many wonderful little touches in this movie, many of which I only caught during this second watch. I have a page of scribbled notes I wrote while I was watching that ends with, "The cutest shit I have ever seen!" From the performances to the writing to the technical details, it's hard not to fall in love with this one. Contraband is easily one of those films I could rewatch over and over again and never get sick of it.

OH I can't believe forgot about The Boys:

The goodest boys.

#my writing #conrad veidt #contraband #cured my depression cleared my skin watered my crops #despite being one of those movies almost entirely buried in obscurity

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technicolorfamiliar · 4 months ago

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Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague) Dir. Henrik Galeen 1926

So I'm going back and rewatching a handful of the titles from the initial 50+ film journey into Conrad Veidt's filmography. Some I'm revisiting because they made such an indelible impression on me the first time, others because I want to give them a second chance. The Student of Prague was among the first films on what wound up being a year-long deep dive into Connie's work and history. I loved it then, but even more so now.

I want to live inside this movie. Galeen and his crew made a hell of a picture, made all the more special by Conrad Veidt doing the literal most.

There is a bewitching quality to The Student of Prague, from Conrad Veidt's dual performances as both Balduin and his Double to the atmospheric cinematography and special effects. It's a dreamy film that really sets itself apart as a dark and lovely supernatural period piece.

Despite some very minor issues, over all it's genuinely pretty perfect. It's one of those films that, even with its faults, sweeps me effortlessly into the gothically Romantic world of the story.

Maybe the film could have benefited from tighter editing, cutting some of the longer sequences and unnecessary shots. But an argument could also be made that these longer scenes aid the spell the film is casting over its audience, the way Sciapinelli weaves his spell on the hilltop to draw Balduin and Margrit together.

The cinematography by Günther Krampf and Erich Nitzschmann is really something special. Shadow was a big motif and standard tool filmmakers used back then, especially those working in the Expressionist style, but for 'Student, maybe because of the early 19th century setting and the proximity of the natural world (both real and fabricated), the use of shadow here makes the film feel more like a fairy tale illustrated by Arthur Rackham than the Uncanny Art Deco of classic German Expressionism. The digital restoration really highlights how successfully they worked with value and contrast to create such a visually rich film.

And it fucken WIMDY. The use of wind throughout the film is really effective -- Sciapinelli's coat billowing out behind him on the hilltop, the rustling foliage behind Balduin after the duel, dead leaves blown into the Countess's bedroom, and the gales that follow Balduin through the city in the film's final act. Whether used on a studio set or in location shots, wind here feels not only atmospheric but also supernatural; it's Sciapinelli's invisible presence when he's not even in the shot.

Even the relatively minimalist score works. It's mostly piano supplemented occasionally by one or two other instruments, a flute or an accordion, and there are only a handful of repeated themes. Apparently the music that's in the most recent restoration was composed only a few years ago by Stephen Horne, so it's really anyone's guess what the original soundtrack by Willy Schmidt-Gentner was like. Regardless, the new music definitely feels appropriate not only to the period the film was made but also the overall Vibes.

On my first watch about a year ago, I was struck by the special effects used in this film. For the time it was made, the effects had to be incredibly impressive. The transitions where the Double appears and disappears in a ghostly fashion are fun, but there's an especially cool shot where he appears to walk through an iron gate, and a really great close up dolly shot towards the end of the film where the Double appears to float toward the back of the room. And I don't know if this was something they touched up in post-production or if the lighting on set was chef's kiss perfect, but Connie's eyes literally glow. There are shots where his eyes, especially as the Double, are like two beacons set in the shadows.

The other performances… they're fine. I mean, everyone who wasn't playing Balduin has to have known it wasn't their movie. Except for Werner Krauss as Sciapinelli who looks like if Alfred Molina was sent back to the 1920s and did as much cocaine as he could find. He's so creature coded that I genuinely don't know what to make of his performance. Everyone else, including Connie, is kind of doing a riff on realism to varying degrees of exaggeration but still relatively tame for the era (compare the acting in 'Student to The Hands of Orlac just two years earlier). But I guess Werner Krauss didn't get the memo, or because Sciapinelli is a supernatural character it's ok for him to be a little out there. He does some really delightfully creepy and borderline upsetting stuff especially in the scene when he makes the deal with Balduin. It's all very weirdly sexual and I hate it. Otherwise, there's unfortunately very little of note in the other performances. Elizza La Porta as the flower girl does the pathetic-cute thing well, but Agnes Esterhazy's Margrit is sadly pretty forgettable.

But the Balduin of it all. This is truly a groundbreaking role for Conrad Veidt at this time in his career. I feel like this film alone slingshot him into his meatier and more interesting roles in the late 1920s. Sure, Connie was doing some interesting and versatile stuff around this time (Ingmarsarvet and Carlos & Elisabeth come to mind), but this just hits different. Everything kind of lines up perfectly for him as this character, and the story is that unique Poe-inspired blend of the uncanny and capital R Romance that really suits him. Because of the nature of the story itself, Connie's free to play big when it works for the character, but also works in these incredibly vulnerable and subtle moments as well. I don't know if this is thanks to the director being hands-on with Connie or just letting him do his thing. Whatever the case, it works.

It's maybe worth mentioning Connie was 33 when they shot this. I don’t know how old Balduin's supposed to be, but he's probably at least ten years younger than Connie was at the time. And I buy it, I buy that Balduin is a young man, foolish and naïve in the way only someone that young could be. His youthfulness isn't just suggested in the character's decisions but also in his physicality. When we first meet Balduin, Connie's doing this sulky, pouty, petulant thing that I love for him. In the first act, he's clearly beloved by his fellow-students and by the flower girl, and he easily slips out of his misery about his money problems into a more lighthearted mood. He's moody one moment and playful the next, joining in a low-stakes fencing match for fun when just moments before he was brooding alone full Morrissey style in the garden. This initial lightness about the character sets him up for his eventual inevitable hard fall into shame and helplessness.

I'm afraid to admit it took me a whole 24 hours after watching this a second time to realize that Balduin is kind of a dick. But Connie's performance is so good and so empathetic that I didn't notice right away. He himself is stunningly, Byronically beautiful in this film. He's like a painting of a tragic, Romantic hero come to life, I can’t even handle it. And, my god, the yearning! It's palpable. In the wrong hands, I would probably hate this character. I haven't seen Wegener's or Walbrook's versions, but I can't imagine they're as charismatic as Connie is in the role.

But what I love even more than Connie as Balduin is him as the Double. I am FASCINATED by this performance and this character. I have SO MANY QUESTIONS. The way he consolidates his movements so that he practically glides through the frame, the way he keeps this performance distinct by slowing everything down and keeping a lot of the Double's anguish internal… it's so good.

I think we only see the Double four times before the last act of the film: first when he steps out of the mirror; much later outside the Countess's party; in the graveyard; and after he kills the Baron in the woods. Initially, when the reflection steps out of the mirror after Balduin signs Sciapinelli's contract, the Double seems pretty soulless. His dead-eyed, mask-like expression as he stalks out of the room makes it seem like he's just going to be a mindless puppet Sciapinelli can use to torment Balduin. And certainly in their first two encounters, Balduin's mirror image slinks out of the shadows as a reminder of his Faustian bargain but also as something of a stand in for his conscience. The first two times we see the Double out in the world are when Balduin is at his happiest, in his most romantic moments with Margrit, who is not only completely out of Balduin's league but also promised to someone else (even if that some one else is her cousin...). Nothing about the Double's presence in these scenes suggests that he's anything more than a phantom, a specter to haunt the protagonist from a distance.

But then, something changes. The Double isn't just a ghost that only Balduin can see; he's just as real as his counterpart, and his actions have consequences. Balduin promises Margrit's father, the Count, to spare her cousin-fiancée in a duel the Baron knows he cannot win -- Balduin is, after all, the best swordsman in Prague. They even say the fight is supposed to be with heavy sabers, which sound like they could really mess you up. But when dueling day arrives, Balduin is delayed by the wheels inexplicably coming off his carriage. He races through the countryside on foot in order to make his appointment, but it's too late. He stops dead in his tracks, frozen in fear, as the Double appears, approaching him slowly from the tree line. When the Double reaches him, Balduin sees the bloody sword and immediately recoils, fearing the worst. But what's most interesting about this scene is that, when the Double finally looks up, his expression is not that of a mindless zombie. When he looks up, the Double looks horrified. Realization slowly rises in his face, and he turns to Balduin with this look of abject horror and helplessness while Balduin cowers in fright. And as the Double turns to walk out of the clearing, he hangs is head in pained resignation and I AM OBSESSED. There are no intertitles in this sequence, but the anguished look he gives Balduin says, "Do you see now? This, and worse than this, is going to keep happening." Connie's performance in this scene suggests the Double may not be able to control his actions but he certainly has feelings about them. So does this mean the Double is in fact Balduin's soul? His goodness? His innocence? I NEED TO KNOW MORE.

The Double is also consistently dressed in the student costume Balduin wears at the beginning of the film. After Sciapinelli gives Balduin the money, Balduin buys a whole new wardrobe (honestly, who wouldn't?). But the mirror version of Balduin doesn't change to reflect Balduin as he is in the present; the Double wears the clothes of a student -- the cap, the velveteen jacket -- because he represents who Balduin was. He's the boy, the youth uncorrupted by excessive wealth and privilege, now made to do horrible things because Balduin so easily handed him over to Sciapinelli when they made their deal. UGH.

The final time Balduin sees his Double, his mirror self hounds him with measured steps, pushing him away from the fragile security of wealth and opulence back to his abandoned student flat. And the expression on the Double's face now is grimly accusatory, it's deeply solemn disappointment, it's a final judgment before an inevitable end. There's sorrow and resentment in the Double's eyes, but kept restrained and subtle, gradually building in wordless intensity until Balduin must finally face himself, literally, in order to end his torment, finding a pistol and shooting his mirror image and therefore killing himself.

Maybe a lot of the descriptors I use for Connie are hyperbole, but his work in this film is remarkable. Anyone interested in getting to know him as an actor, hell, anyone interested in film history period, absolutely should watch The Student of Prague at least once.

Final thoughts: For real, though, it would suck to not have a reflection. I recently had a whole conversation with my (straight, cis male) family members about this; not a one of them owns or even sees the need for a full length mirror. And maybe the big mirror in Balduin's student room came with the place when he moved in, but you get used to having something like that. I know it would drive me crazy not being able to check my whole outfit to make sure I don't look like a doofus before leaving the house.

#my writing #conrad veidt #the student of prague #tl;dr i have a lot of feelings about this movie and need to yell about it online #remember when i used to make and post art here lol #now it's almost exclusively a conrad veidt appreciation blog and i am so so sorry

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technicolorfamiliar · 4 months ago

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Well, it took me a year, but I watched a billion 50+ Conrad Veidt films. Some good, some great, some so bad that I hope I never have to see them again.

This post is a stand in for the entire second half of this filmic journey -- I'll link the original 5 posts that make up the first part below. But instead of reposting all of my reviews for all of these titles (the original posts for these are on Pillowfort), I'll just share some highlights below the cut.

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5

Bleaker and darker than I expected, but that makes sense if it's based on a WWI memoir. What happened to Martha was legitimately awful and hard to watch. Stilted performances aside, I would have also liked a whole separate movie about the lesbian spy aunt. But Commandant Oberaertz... [redacted]. He's so hot, despite the character being absolutely awful and creepy and intimidating. I actually said "wow" out loud about his body shape in that costume. That jacket is fitted within a millimeter of its life. How many other films did Connie use this lower register in? Not many, right? It's too much, TOO MUCH. I think this movie took ten years off my life.

I Was a Spy, 1933

Dir. Victor Saville

⭐3/5

Watched Feb 18, Snowgrouse's masterpost

Connie's performance in this is more sympathetic than it has any right to be. The movie very easily could have been sensationalist garbage, and I'm so glad it was handled with relative care and humanity. I liked his whole vibe, I am not immune to party boy Rasputin's charms; "he's got the kavorca, the lure of the animal!" He looks like he stinks, which in this case may not necessarily be a bad thing. I don't even know what to make of all the cooing and baby talk he does with Alexei, or for that matter Drunk!Rasputin dancing and climbing over furniture to get at his ladies. I wish we got to see more scenes with Rasputin and the royal family, how those relationships formed and affected matters of state. We only really get to know about any of that through dialogue among other court officials. And so the emotional turn at the ending was unexpected. The way he cried out after being shot, I've never heard a sound like that come from a human being. Needless to say I did not feel great when the movie ended, but I liked it way more than I thought I would.

Rasputin, Dämon der Frauen, 1932

Dir. Adolf Trotz

⭐3/5

Watched Mar 23, Archive.org

Almost all the performances in this are pretty excellent. The stripped back, realistic style with handheld, newsreel camerawork really suits these actors and the story. Apparently this is a remake of an English film which is based on a play, and it definitely feels like a play. I'm fascinated by this little movie, it's basically an anti-war film about British soldiers in WWI produced in Germany in the early 30s… how did this even get made?? Messages about the horrors of war aside, the homoerotic undertones (overtones?) alone make this a truly unique piece of storytelling for the time and place it was filmed. And those under/overtones are treated pretty respectfully, none of these men are the butt of a joke, how they are with one another is handled with a naturalism that isn't really seen again until maybe the 1950s. And Connie. The range. Can we talk about Stanhope? He's a gruff, messy drunk, a traumatized, hollowed out husk of a man. When Osbourne says something like "you'll be alright when this is over," NO HE WOULDN'T, HE'D BE WORSE. His relationship with Raleigh is interesting too, clearly they were more than casual friends. I didn't believe for a second that the tension between Stanhope and Raleigh was about the sister/fiancée, it's weak, weak I tell you. It's one of Connie's most underrated performances.

Die andere Seite, 1931

Dir. Heinz Paul

⭐3.75/5

Watched Apr 27, Snowgrouse's masterpost

Everyone in this movie looks like a Rankin Bass stop motion character. The ending was abrupt as fuck, Werner Krauss' Jack the Ripper got a lot less screen time and I wonder if they just tacked that onto the end after they realized they spent too much time on Emil Jannings' and Connie's characters. There's a lot of fondling going on in this movie, there's the guy with the bread in the first part, then Connie going all glassy-eyed caressing his globes. Ivan the Terrible is a certified DIVA in that diaphanous, white robe, even with the hard middle part and scraggly beard. What is he doing with his tongue the whole time, though?? Love that he crashes some random girl's wedding, lets her father get murdered by assassins, kidnaps her AND her husband, and brings them both home to his sex dungeon. Connie is doing the most -- the eyes, the gestures, all the greatest hits from his silent film acting tool box, he's whipping them out for this role.

Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks), 1924

Dir. Paul Leni, Leo Birinski

⭐2/5

Watched May 29, Archive.org

I didn't like this movie, I just wanted an excuse to post this screenshot. But it actually is a very silly little movie, with what must have been an enormous budget for costumes and sets, and it has some cute physical comedy. Sadly, Connie's in too little of the film to save it from being obnoxious. I did like the Czar's body double who just wanted to work on his needlepoint, and the Court Spanker who was clearly really into his job. And of course Metternich, that sly dog, that velvet-clad scamp. Between the all the foxy, gap-toothed grinning he does and the way he's going to town on that dialogue, he is as always a pleasure to watch. The English version is on Youtube somewhere, so I may go through that and pick out the time stamps for Connie's scenes because I don't think I could sit through this whole movie again, especially not that stupid fucking "Wien und der Wein" song, jesus christ.

Der Kongress tanzt, 1931

Dir. Erik Charell

⭐2/5

Watched Jun 23, Snowgrouse's masterpost

Apparently this movie was considered a flop, and Connie wasn't super happy with this role and others around this time. I think I must have had that info in the back of my mind somewhere going into this movie, because my expectations were pretty low. So, as usual, I actually wound up liking it more than I thought I would. It's a lot sillier than it has any right to be, but yeah it's ultimately a piece of fluff compared to some of the other heavy-hitting films on this list. I love when Connie has a comedic foil like the Marius character, but it could have been a lot better if the dialogue was snappier and the timing tighter. And Connie's character promises to be this bad bitch at the top of the movie, but all we get is one quick, poorly choreographed sword fight and a whole bunch of nothing after that. There's all this build up, I mean, the character is nicknamed The Black Death, and the movie never really lets the character live up to the name. It's a missed opportunity for sure. That said, the Puffy Shirt with the open collar "ensconced in velvet" (to risk yet more Seinfeld references), jaunty hat, knee-high boots with spurs look is really doing it for me. And THERE ARE PUPPIES. Perhaps the most delightful thing that has ever happened in cinematic history. I couldn’t believe it. Connie picked up the first puppy and said, "You big boy, you!" and I hate him, like full Madeline Kahn Mrs. White "flames… on the side of my face." I hate him so much.

Under the Red Robe, 1937

Dir. Victor Seastrom

⭐2.5/5

Watched Jul 17, Youtube

#my writing #conrad veidt #i was a spy #rasputin dämon der frauen #die andere seite #waxworks #der kongress tanzt #under the red robe

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technicolorfamiliar · 10 months ago

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Einstürzende Neubauten Supporter Weekend The Concert, part 2 March 31, 2024 Berlin

#einstürzende neubauten #my photos #blixa bargeld #alexander hacke #jochen arbeit #rudolf moser

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technicolorfamiliar · 10 months ago

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Einstürzende Neubauten Supporter Weekend The Concert, part 1 March 31, 2024 Berlin

#einstürzende neubauten #my photos #i never in a million years expected to get front row #well after so many cancelled shows i never expected to see them at all #blixa bargeld #alexander hacke #n. u. unruh

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technicolorfamiliar · 10 months ago

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Einstürzende Neubauten Supporter Weekend March 30 - April 1, 2024 Berlin

#my photos #einstürzende neubauten #they broke a box at the sunday concert and a few of us asked if we could have the pieces #i didn't bring any proper merch so i thought aha i'll ask them to sign the piece of box i saved #i think i may have been the only person who thought to do this #unruh seemed particularly amused as you can see he wrote holz lebt!#and i think i somehow managed to not make a complete fool of myself in front of the band so that's good news i guess

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technicolorfamiliar · 10 months ago

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Berlin 2024

#my photos

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technicolorfamiliar · 11 months ago

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Technicolor Familiar Watches Too Many Conrad Veidt Movies Part 5 of ?

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

Contraband (Blackout), 1940 Dir. Michael Powell ⭐4/5 Watched Dec 18, Archive.org Uncle Erik: Your Captain, he is a beautiful man! From the first moment, I loved him! Me: Hard same. So much fun. By far my favorite of the Connie Spy Thrillers I've seen so far. Valerie Hobson is so slick, and the rest of the ensemble is pretty good for a change, especially the guys at the Danish restaurant. The bondage scene (not really, but... yeah, it is) lives up to the hype. The screenwriters really went off on this one, didn't they? I mean, this movie gave us Conrad Very-Serious-Actor Veidt whispering lovely things in the dark like "good girl" and "do you trust me?" The scene with the music box in the pocket watch? Too much, can't handle it. Connie's dry humor is a delight and all the sexy, flirtatious fun he's having in this role is like a precious balm for my tortured soul.

Above Suspicion, 1943 Dir. Richard Thorpe ⭐3/5 Watched Jan 3, Vudu Oh, filmmakers. Bless you for having Fred MacMurray get strangled in greeting by Conrad Veidt. A great film it is not, but it's definitely cute. And while it's a semi-tough watch as Connie's last film, I'm so glad it was this one where he's clearly having a ball -- whether on the dance floor (does Hassert always go out in the middle of the day to tango with mature, voluptuous women?), getting stepped on by Joan Crawford, sticking his fingers in bowls of cake batter, or climbing down trellises with his knees all out in the wind. He's very obviously living his best life and I love that for him. The movie is riddled with very silly, eyeroll-worthy one-liners, but the plot is enjoyable. Joan Crawford looks like she's having a good time too, and Fred MacMurray is pretty tolerable. I haven't seen Basil Rathbone in a lot of other movies, but I wish he got to be nastier and that he and Connie got to have some scenes together. Connie's physicality is so subtly funny, I really wish he had gotten to do more intentionally comedic films/roles.

Lucrezia Borgia, 1922 Dir. Richard Oswald ⭐3/5 Watched Jan 10, Archive.org I've been trying to watch at least one silent every once in a while. And while I have to lodge my typical complaint of these older films being a bit too long, this film is clearly a feat of production for the year it was made. The huge, open sets and beautiful costume details were incredible. As always, Connie 100% steals the show. He's delightfully wicked and nasty, slimy and pathetic. I wish he had better scene partners to receive and react to his intense performance as Cesare Borgia. But it's ok, it's like a Game of Thrones episode without the dragons or misogynist nudity.

Nazi Agent, 1942 Dir. Jules Dassin ⭐4/5 Watched Jan 14, Youtube I admit I chose to watch this one because I was charmed by the idea of Double Connies. But not even five minutes in and Otto had won my heart. I didn’t know anything about the movie itself going in, but was completely prepared for it to be cringey and mediocre. So I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually decent. Maybe I'm rating this one higher than it really deserves, but really those four stars all belong to Connie's performance/s. Daggers in my heart. So many moments in this little movie affected me more than I expected: Otto's line to Richten about being only one of however many million citizens willing to rise up against fascism; his look toward the Statue of Liberty at the end; the little glittering tears in his eyes when Fritz says, "We do what we're told because we must…"; his gentleness and deeply tragic sense of loss that permeates the film. And, perhaps most of all, how cute he was with his pet canary. Cue the waterworks. I have so many more thoughts about this and about his time in Hollywood in the 40s in general, but I'll save that for another time.

Kreuzzug des Weibes, 1926 Dir. Martin Berger ⭐3.5/5 Watched Jan 20, Snowgrouse's masterpost This movie was made nearly 100 years ago and we're still having the same conversations about reproductive rights today, especially now in the US after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022. It's pretty disturbing how much of the script could be lifted from a dozen different arguments between contemporary conservative lawmakers and the people trying to better advocate for and provide safe reproductive healthcare. It's a pretty bare bones film, the story and performances clearly more important, appropriately so, than cinematic bells and whistles. Thought it was an interesting choice to have the lawyer's office so stately and huge, like the patriarchal systems he's operating in -- overbearing, empty and impersonal. The movie does feel like a public service announcement (which I guess it was), but that didn't really bother me. What bothered me was the ending, because OF COURSE the woman has to comfort the man even though she's the one who went through a major trauma. But the way Connie's character broke after the doctor told him what happened to his fiancée? I've never seen anything like that. He went fully offline. His whole nervous system got unplugged and rewired. P.S.: The extra half star in my rating is for all the monocle twirling.

#my writing #conrad veidt #contraband #above suspicion #lucrezia borgia #nazi agent 1942 #kreuzzug des weibes #held off on posting this because so many of my posts are cv centric lately...#it's been a fallow period for art over here

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