Please welcome Abby to the esteemed BYT editorial team, for her first assignment she tears a new one in a sacred Hollywood masterpiece. Totally awesome. -cale
To get in the Halloween spirit (gah!), I went to a special screening of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu with live musical accompaniment at the AFI in Silver Spring on Friday. Now, I'm skeptical of movies you read, but smart people say it's a classic, the original vampire movie. And it continues to wet the beds of Montessori-schooled this American life listeners to this day, so I figured I'd check it out.
According to a librarian/archivist friend, the first film with concurrent picture and sound was The Jazz Singer from the late '20s (a stunning artifact of early American racism with Al Jolsen in blackface throughout). My only experience with silent film to date was watching Birth of a Nation for a 20th century American history class in college, which I don't remember having an opinion about except that it too was hella racist and people make funny faces when you can't hear them. The point is I know nothing about pretty much everything and less about film, but I do know what I like. And I like Irish carbombs.
So despite the prospect of live accompaniment (in my mind, a yellow-eyed hunchback furiously clawing away at an organ), I wasn't invested all that deeply in the venture, but more so looking forward to the post-show jukebox and old bay tots at Quarry House. I had, however, brought my camera to document any enthusiasts who might show up dressed as vampires or ghosts or wookies. Since of course its only ironically uncool to go see a silent film if you make fun of the other mouthbreathers who go see silent films. I arrived a bit early, stood under the marquee while the sky pissed itself, and scanned the crowds as I waited for my friends.
"But there were no pics, no costumed freaks really, unless you count the pleated khaki, sweater vest, orthopedic loafer with arch support set."
The live accompaniment turned out to be Casio and xylophone with other strange timpani that gave it a vaguely Yanni vibe. The dialogue cards were pretty laughable as well, with exclamations like 'the phantoms, they come! I must away to Count Orlok's castle, posthaste!' (which made me think of this old episode of blind date where the couple goes belly dancing and the woman comes out in a French-cut bikini and starts writhing along the floor screaming 'I siiiiip from the cup of raaaaptuuure!') Then at the climactic scene, as the vampire looks up from suckling the neck of the woman pure of heart to the rising sun and his doom, the orchestra busted out with what sounded like the opening bars of 'all my life' by KC and Jojo. Afterward we went to Quarry House and ate chicken deep fried in Newcastle and my arteries finally hardened to a close.
Here on out I think ima stick with the talkies.
God loves a cheerful giver.
I know byt must be excited about having all these new contributers and everything, but why would you post a review of an eighty-something year old silent movie from someone who admits they know nothing about film, and who was from the onset viewing the movie only as something to sit through before getting down to drinking?
The soundtrack was way more eno than yanni, and this whole event was actually much cooler than this review belies.
cause it was funny.
yeah, must say i had a much different experience of nosferatu. i saw the whole nosferatu with live score two years ago in pittsburgh and it was packed with middle aged intellectuals/film dorks and all the pittsburgh scenester, art student, bike messenger types.
i went 1. cause i had wanted to see nosferatu but mainly 2. my architecture professor made it a requirement for our studio to go see it. READ: his wife wouldnt come with him but he really really wanted to go see it with people that would make comments like "totally sweet" and "did you notice the absence of time in the essence of the ambiguity of space?" afterwards over drinks so he made us all 10 of us come as his date. this is the same professor that i ran into the next year at a showing of Bjork and Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. he had again made his whole studio attend.
moral of the story? architecture professors can make for good drunk intellectual babbling
sheesh, i didn't know life was so serious. next time i'll bring my monocle.
Nosferatu is awesome because the filmmakers and studio were sued to shit by Stoker's estate for ripping off the book "Dracula" without compensation. All surviving copies of the film were ordered destroyed, but by then they'd been sent out internationally and people said "Fuck You."
Now it's in the public domain so you can get much better copies than previously.
Probably you don't need a monocle, but maybe from now on you should write about stuff you know about (or are at least remotely interested in).
I know this review was supposed to be funny, but are people capable of actually APPRECIATING anymore? Its always easy to take crap on something in a review...maybe quite hating and show us something you actually DO like.
Sorry, didn't mean to come off sounding like an asshole. I know first hand how tough it is to write a review and get it published on a website with no editorial discretion.
As a matter of fact, I'm currently working on a review of the jens lekman show. Now I'm not into pop music (or swedes), and I may have only been at the concert so I could go to the afterparty with my friends, but I know what I like.
Plus, I'm gonna make it funny, so they'll post it for sure.
a few (4? 5?) years ago the east wing of the national gallery screened the original nosferatu with a portion of the national symphony orchestra performing the music. it was stunning.
it is always fun following that up with werner herzog's version with klaus kinski playing the lead. awesome. and wow. klaus kinski was a freak. but, i suppose that is for a different blog....
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079641/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu_the_Vampyre
molly did accompaniment to a bunch of the george méliès silent films at the east gallery of the museum of art and it was awesome.
i agree, in principle, that silent films can be very off-putting if you don't know what you're getting in to. the stylized acting, the cultural context, and, in a film like m, the constant smoking, are all very distant to us now. silent does not necessarily equate to artistic merit.
that said, i thought nosferatu was a fucking astounding film the first time i saw it. not liking it, especially in the context of halloween, is kind of surprising. still, meh. i liked ratatouille. go figure.
also, do not see the cabinet of dr. caligari.
M isn't a silent film.
But, talk about a great movie.
Some theater should have played that this Halloween.
Peter Lorre is so ... horrible yet saddening.