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Les Vampires' nominal hero is Phillipe Guerande (Edouard Mathe who resembles Richard Barthelmess). Investigating the activities of the Vampires, a secret criminal organization that specializes in jewel thefts, he learns that the gang has penetrated to society's most powerful and privileged quarters. It's a community threat that includes high judges and members of the nobility among its partners. Actually, Les Vampires belongs to its villains. We are practically asked to root for the gang's masterminds, the Grand Vampire (Jean Ayme), Satanas (Louis Leubas), Venenos (Frederick Moriss) and their anagramatically named henchperson, Irma Vep (played ferociously by Musidora of the Follies Bergere). Assuming many roles and aliases, they spread anarchy and destruction indiscriminately. The film takes us from catastrophe to catastrophe. As David Thomson has said, it is no coincidence Les Vampires appeared during the wreckage of the First World War. 

Feuillade makes uniquely powerful use of natural settings. His innovation was to set violence in the most bland and respectable-looking of surroundings. Evil really hits home in melancholy residential areas and disarming provincial settings. Baroque twists on this theme include drawing room panels opening to reveal grotesque finds and the villains surprise appearance in the latest newsreel. 

Feuillade tells his penny dreadful story naturalistically, at breakneck pace and with complete conviction. Les Vampires never suffers a moment of irony or self-consciousness, in spite of its apocalyptic events. Even before black-clad brigands and flying vampires start making their entrances, the film has such a bizarre charm that it feels like a waking dream. 

Louis Feuillade must have expressed all his aggressions in his work. He was a jovial, politically-conservative family man who just happened to make some of the weirdest films of all time. Feuillade became the head of production at Gaumont (succeeding Alice Guy-Blanche) in 1906 and directed over 800 films between 1906 and 1925. He was a protean entertainer who worked in all genres. Today, Feuillade is only remembered for his serials. Besides Les Vampires, his greatest are said to be Fantomas (1913), Tih Minh (1918) and Barabbas (1919). In addition, his classic serials include Judex (1916) and The New Mission of Judex (1917). But in his day, the comedies (countless one reelers featuring a child star) and sentimental melodramas he produced were just as popular, frequently more so. 

His influence was greatest on serials and the thriller genre. Feuillade was a suspense stylist who worked closely to his subconscious. That makes him the grandfather (or great grandfather) of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. Arguably, Fritz Lang felt his influence, as well. Lang directed his own serial film, The Spiders (1922) in addition to his Dr. Mabuse films. Spiders sometimes feels as if it may have been influenced by Les Vampires. 

Stylistically, his films feature a static camera, composition in depth and location shooting. This may have impacted on the development of both German expressionism and film noir (although Feuillade's films were unseen in Britain until the forties and not shown in America until Les Vampires was screened at the New York Film Festival in 1965). His visual influence on Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais and Georges Franju is obvious. Franju remade Judex in the early sixties and directed the ominous Eyes Without a Face in 1960. Les Vampires was recently given a postmodern tribute, Olivier Assayas' splendidly funny Irma Vep. The film's plot involved a jinxed attempt at a remake and featured Maggie Cheung, a star from Hong Kong where they still know how to make Feuillade's kind of film. 

Les Vampires more than lives up to its reputation as the Rosetta Stone of the modern thriller. Feuillade creates a sense of everyday irrationality, routine peril and commonplace violence. Despite having one foot in the Victorian era, it plays like a subversive, surreally entertaining preview of coming attractions for the 20th century. 

We are fortunate to have its release on laser and video by Water Bearer Films. Their sumptuous original tinting, vintage orchestrations and excellent English title cards makes this film's greatness crystal clear. Do not be put off by the film's length. It moves very quickly, and if enough people buy a copy, perhaps Water Bearer will issue Tih Minh where the activities of the Vampires are continued. (Review © 1998 Christopher Clotworthy) 

Opening title:  The mysterious Barren Lands- desolate, boulder-strewn, wind-swept- illimitable spaces which top the world. 

Flaherty was an explorer, a prospector and a surveyor when he made Nanook in 1920 at the age of thirty-six. Earlier, he had undertaken several explorations to sub-Arctic regions around Hudson Bay between 1910 and 1916. Flaherty had an intimate knowledge of Eskimo society and had even made an earlier film on Eskimo life (now lost). Filmmaking, however, was long a sideline to his other research interests. 

After unsatisfactory results from the earlier film, Flaherty returned to the eastern Hudson Bay with backing from the Revillion Freres fur company. He brought along sophisticated cameras and his own printing, developing and projection equipment. Watching the dailies as he went along, Flaherty honed his luminous visual style until it approximated his perfectionist's standards. And, crucially, this time he concentrated on a single individual who could stand in for all of Eskimo society. 

The resulting film is not a true ethnographic record. Flaherty's subjects improvised events from their daily lives or from customs of their culture's recent past. (Because he knew Eskimo society so well, Nanook is considered to be ethnographically correct.) Flaherty deliberately chose appealing, rather idealized, people -- even to the point of creating bogus families. The Inuit leader, Nanook, his wife, Naya and their children, Allegoo and Cunayon, are all tremendously appealing. 

Nanook of the North is a documentary milestone because it reveals the filmmaker as much as it does his subjects. Flaherty captured aesthetically what he felt was the essence of Eskimo life --the unrelenting struggle to secure food and shelter. The elemental nature of this struggle was enobling and gave their lives a purity and transcendance. We see this through the prism of Flaherty's romantic sensibility that finds the same timeless beauty in the desolate, unforgiving landscape and in the worn, happy face of Nanook. 

Nanook is composed of vignettes from the lives of a band of Itivimuit people, Nanook, his family and followers. We are introduced to Nanook and family as they humorously pull each other, one by one, from of the interior of a kayak. Flaherty gives us a strong sense of identification with them and participation in their routines. We visit a trading post, get trapped in blocked ice and hunt for walrus, fox and seal. As a child, my favorite episode was the speedy and precise construction of the igloo, complete with window, within an hour; as an adult it is the prolonged struggle with a large seal that is spotted, snared and pulled out of its breathing hole onto the ice plain. 

There seems to be no barrier between Flaherty and the Eskimos. His tenderness to them was obviously returned -- and extends to an audience seventy-five years later. If anyone else has rendered simple, open humanity (in this form) as well as Flaherty, they don't come to mind. The sight of Allegoo smiling into the camera as he savors castor oil -- of all things -- is incredibly touching. He seems to stand in for all children -- the most universal moment of an already cosmic film experience. 

Nanook, himself, is a screen "natural" -- warm, worn, tough and triumphant. He and Flaherty make it possible to put yourself in his shoes. You feel how close we are to our antecedents who either scrapped for sustenance or starved (as Nanook did two years after the films' premiere). Flaherty simultaneously developed a new genre -- the popular documentary -- and created a potent archetype of the "noble savage"that still haunts us. 

Also impressive is the films's ominous lyricism, its precisely-wrought imagery and the rhythm of its storytelling. Nanook's accessibility and timelessness make it worth considering as an introduction for children to either documentary or silent film. 

Flaherty's vision is preserved by Kino on Video's video edition which was restored and produced for them by David Shepard. The tinting is quite subtle, except in a brief shot of ice melting in a pan. Timothy Brock supplied the lovely score. (Review © 1998 Christopher Clotworthy) 

Adapted from Leonid Andreyev's Play as produced by The Theatre Guild, Inc. Translated by Gregory Zillboorg. 

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation. Released through Metro-Goldwyn Distributing Corporation. Controlled by LOEW'S Incorporated. 

Adapted for the screen by Carey Wilson and Victor Seastrom.  

Directed by Victor Seastrom. 

Setting by Cedric Gibbons. Costumes by Sophie Wachner. Photography by Milton Moore. Film Editor, Hugh Wynn. 

Passed by the National Board of Review 

Opening title:  In the grim comedy of life, it has been wisely said that the last laugh is the best-- 

Chaney plays an impoverished scientist, and he and his wife are supported by a wealthy baron. His benefactor presents Chaney's work at "the Academy" as his own. When Chaney protests, the members laugh at him- "they laughed- laughed as if I were a clown." The Baron and later his wife laugh in his face and reinforce the betrayal with a slap on the face. 

Emotionally devastated, Chaney becomes a circus clown, headlining an act where he is repeatedly slapped. Chaney was a master of disguises, and nothing is more grotesque than a clown. His makeup allows full facial expression, so Chaney's acting skill is not restricted. Chaney wasn't known for slapstick comedy, so he is not a clown who does funny things. Being slapped is reactive, so he is completely passive. In the circus the rejection- a manifestation of self-degradation- is part of the act, and he is the star and center of attention. 

While I haven't read the original play, I expect there is a coarsening of the narrative. There is no subtlety in the film that is not made obvious. Certainly, in the adaptation any psychological underpinnings are now on the surface. Chaney does a good job with what psychological element remains with his self-humiliation and continually reliving his moment of betrayal (the slap). 

Director Victor Seastrom was recruited to MGM based on his success in Sweden. He Who Gets Slapped is not a compromise between commerce and art- it is 100% commerce, by a filmmaker with an artist's sensibilities. Seastrom's influence can be seen in the staging and artful lighting, resulting in a look that is more European than most studio pictures. There are several brilliant visuals that are clever and serve the plot. In one transition sequence, a clown spins a globe, then miniature clowns climb down to a rim (as if a globe were on a stand). The rim then becomes a circus ring. 

Seastrom deftly builds suspense and irony in a sequence that uses crosscutting and precise in-camera dissolves. John Gilbert is a daredevil bareback rider, and he soon falls for a new performer, Norma Shearer, from an impoverished aristocratic family. Young lovers John Gilbert and Norma Shearer are on an idyllic picnic, while Shearer's sleazy father, played by Tully Marshall, negotiates the price of her marriage to the baron (!). 

Like many backstage stories, the circus setting allows the characters to be repressed backstage and demonstrate their real feelings when acting in front of an audience. Early in the film Chaney has Shearer sew a cloth heart on his costume while he stares at her in admiration. Later in the circus ring, we see that each performance has Lon Chaney's heart ripped out (of his costume). 

He Who Gets Slapped is released on laserdisc by Image Entertainment as part of "The Lon Chaney Collection." It opens with the seal for the Kansas Censorship Board- "Kansas Grows the Best Wheat in the World"- and the quality is fine, but not outstanding, and is not tinted. The score of stock music was prepared in the early 1970s for television syndication. Unlike a custom score, the music isn't timed to match specific scenes, so it frequently cuts off at a scene change. The addition of sound effects of laughter and applause is not objectionable. (Review © 1998 David Pierce) 

Cast: Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford, Nick De Ruiz, John George, Frank Lanning.  

 Chaney is 'Alonzo the Armless' in a small European circus. He is fixated on the owner's daughter, Joan Crawford. She finds men repulsive because they want to put their hands all over her. She rejects strong man Norman Kerry, and finds solace with Chaney, because he is sympathetic, and has no arms to hold her with. 

The story reveals early on that Chaney's character really has arms, so for the first time we see how one of his effects was achieved. Chaney's armless rig is very convincing, and he plays guitar, drinks coffee, lights and smokes a cigarette, and drinks wine with his feet, though he was doubled in some of the shots. The loss of arms provides his livelihood through his circus act, and disguises his side activities as a thief. In this film Chaney is less sympathetic and more manipulative than in most of his other films, but also more interesting. Although Chaney used his hands expressively, this film shows how eloquent the actor could be using only his face. 

The plot goes in some very interesting directions which I won't spoil for those are unfamiliar with the story, other than to say that the story goes beyond the expected conclusion as Chaney attempts to exact revenge on Kerry. 

The Unknown ran a mere 55 minutes on its original release, as Browning cut the story to the bone, stripping the plot to its essentials. There is no time for subtlety; the titles hit the irony home again and again. The surviving version is from a French print and according to Browning scholar Elias Savada, the restoration translates the titles from French, rather than use the original text. While the laserdisc release has a running time of 50 minutes, no footage is obviously missing. 

While Browning's staging is effective, the sets and costumes have to provide the atmosphere, since the photography is overlit for such a dark story. Some of the scenes with Kerry and Crawford shot through thin cloth (muslin, perhaps) for a pleasing painting-like effect. Crawford is dressed in a provacative manner, but she is still more sexy than sensual. 

The laserdisc release from Image Entertainment is part of "The Lon Chaney Collection." The music score by the Alloy Orchestra is very effective, and the Alloy produces a lot of sound for three performers. While they emphasize percussion, other music is effective throughout as traditional silent film music, and at times sound effects. (Review © 1998 David Pierce)