Re: Excellent Whole Movies
Masters Of Cinema
Films that you should see.
THREE OF GENIUS DREYER. Carl Theodor Dreyer (Copenhague; 3 de febrero de 1889 – ibídem, 20 de marzo de 1968)
MASTER OF THE HOUSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyBExdZhSNs
FROM Criterion Collection.-
Master of the House,an enormous box-office success in its day,is a jewel of the silent cinema.
From Cine Blog.-
The actors, Johannes Meyer, Astrid Holm, Karin Nellemose, Mathilde Nielsen, Johannes Nielsen, Petrine Sonne participate in this remarkable silent film of the Danish master Dreyer (Deus Irae), who always had a special interest in analyzing the dynamics of the relations between both Sexes. In many ways, this film is about a female rebellion and put their nest in order.
Viktor is an unfortunate man who makes his beloved family unhappy. Two children and his wife attend to him the best they can, but without success. On the contrary, Viktor tortures his family, despises his wife and punishes his son facing the wall by dirtying his shoes playing football. Nana, a grandmother gives the idea to the unfortunate Ida, separate and give a good lesson to your husband's monster. Very much in spite of her she hides in her parents' house, she takes the children and Víktor is alone at home, well not alone, with Nana the most important personage.
The unhappy mother's departure reflects the morality play in which this great film undoubtedly stands, showing us the husband's growing awareness of the mistakes made, both by the reaction to the absence of his wife and by the intervention Decisive of Nana and the eldest daughter of marriage. In this second half of the film, Dreyer continues to give dramatic and discursive, symbolic entity to objects, and it is already in 1925 that the study of the infinite possibilities of the human face is one of his main creative interests (and stylistic imprint) , Because the camera is dedicated with joy to study the two actors, the husband and Nana, called to live together and understand each other, to reveal the change of mood and predisposition of one and the other.
Dreyer enshrines a microscopic look at human and family relationships, builds a history of high-voltage intimacy and a heavy, often oppressive, psychological climate. This is from the diaphanous staging, from the naturalist bust that crosses the images from beginning to end:
I have already said that Dreyer invites us - from the foreground of the film - to enter the family home, and his camera It interferes in all orders of the domestic, drawing from the most insignificant details and objects the dense architecture of the family context, social behavior, human. The legacy of the film, immense, lies in the universality of the issues it handles (let's not forget that we are in the field of the lack of communication between spouses and the psychological torture to which one subjects the other, causes and
consequences of something As sadly current as violence in the family), and in the ease and wisdom in its treatment in images,the crystalline transcription of the values ??that Dreyer intends to instill in the viewer.
From wiwki
Viktor Frandsen, embittered by losing his business, is a tyrant at home, constantly criticizes his patient, hard-working wife Ida and their three children. He does not appreciate the effort it takes to maintain a household. While his wife is resigned and browbeaten, his old nanny, nicknamed "Mads" by all, openly defends her. When Ida's mother, Mrs. Kryger, pays a visit, he is very rude to her. Finally, he issues an ultimatum: either Mrs. Kryger and the openly hostile Mads (who regularly helps the family) are gone by the time he returns, or the marriage is over.
Mads orchestrates a plan that will force him to rethink his notions of being the head of a household. With the help of Mrs. Kryger, she persuades a very reluctant Ida to go away for a while and rest, while she sees to Viktor and the children. Then, she institutes a new regime, ordering Viktor to take over many of Ida's duties; Viktor obeys, cowed by his memories of the strict discipline she imposed on him when he was a child in her care. Meanwhile, Ida, no longer distracted by her many duties, feels the full misery of her situation and has a breakdown.
VAMPYR (1932) Carl Theodor Dreyer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz5aW_IqmMw
fROM WIKI
Vampyr or Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey is a Franco-German film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer in 1932. Initially shot as a silent film, it was later added the few dialogues it contains, both in German and In French and in English. It is a free adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel Carmilla.
Between an aura of horror story, pregnant with supernatural elements, the story of Allan Gray, a young man absorbed in the study of demonology and vampiric traditions, unfolds. His interest in the extravagant ideas of centuries past made him a dreamer and a fancier, lost on the border between the real and the supernatural. One day, wandering aimlessly late into the night, he arrives at an isolated inn near a river, in the village of Courtempierre. Little by little he discovers that strange happenings occur in the town: murders, sudden and inexplicable diseases ... in addition to the presence of strange creatures. Allan is required to help one of the daughters of Bernard, the castle owner. After a blood transfusion to save the young woman, a debilitated Allan begins to undergo hallucinations, seeing to itself being buried alive. Recovered, he discovers that everything is due to the presence in the village of an old vampire witch, who is nailed to a stake in the chest when he sleeps in his grave of the cemetery.
THE PASSION OF JOANN OF ARC"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxJSGMK9yRE
Roger Ebert
February 16,1997.
You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti. In a medium without words, where the filmmakers believed that the camera captured the essence of characters through their faces, to see Falconetti in Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928) is to look into eyes that will never leave you.
Falconetti (as she is always called) made only this single movie. "It may be the finest performance ever recorded on film,” wrote Pauline Kael. She was an actress in Paris when she was seen on the stage of a little boulevard theater by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968), the Dane who was one of the greatest early directors. It was a light comedy, he recalled, but there was something in her face that struck him: "There was a soul behind that facade.” He did screen tests without makeup, and found what he sought, a woman who embodied simplicity, character and suffering.
Dreyer had been given a large budget and a screenplay by his French producers, but he threw out the screenplay and turned instead to the transcripts of Joan's trial. They told the story that has become a legend: of how a simple country maid from Orleans, dressed as a boy, led the French troops in their defeat of the British occupation forces. How she was captured by French loyal to the British and brought before a church court, where her belief that she had been inspired by heavenly visions led to charges of heresy. There were 29 cross-examinations, combined with torture, before Joan was burned at the stake in 1431. Dreyer combined them into one inquisition, in which the judges, their faces twisted with their fear of her courage, loomed over her with shouts and accusations.
If you go to the Danish Film Museum in Copenhagen you can see Dreyer's model for the extraordinary set he built for the film. He wanted it all in one piece (with movable walls for the cameras), and he began with towers at four corners, linked with concrete walls so thick they could support the actors and equipment. Inside the enclosure were chapels, houses and the ecclesiastical court, built according to a weird geometry that put windows and doors out of plumb with one another and created discordant visual harmonies (the film was made at the height of German Expressionism and the French avant-garde movement in art).
It is helpful to see the model in Copenhagen, because you will never see the whole set in the movie. There is not one single establishing shot in all of "The Passion of Joan of Arc,” which is filmed entirely in closeups and medium shots, creating fearful intimacy between Joan and her tormentors. Nor are there easily read visual links between shots. In his brilliant shot-by-shot analysis of the film, David Bordwell of the University of Wisconsinconcludes: "Of the film's over 1,500 cuts, fewer than 30 carry a figure or object over from one shot to another; and fewer than 15 constitute genuine matches on action.”
What does this mean to the viewer? There is a language of shooting and editing that we subconsciously expect at the movies. We assume that if two people are talking, the cuts will make it seem that they are looking at one another. We assume that if a judge is questioning a defendant, the camera placement and editing will make it clear where they stand in relation to one another. If we see three people in a room, we expect to be able to say how they are arranged and which is closest to the camera. Almost all such visual cues are missing from "The Passion of Joan of Arc.”
Instead Dreyer cuts the film into a series of startling images. The prison guards and the ecclesiastics on the court are seen in high contrast, often from a low angle, and although there are often sharp architectural angles behind them, we are not sure exactly what the scale is (are the windows and walls near or far?). Bordwell's book reproduces a shot of three priests, presumably lined up from front to back, but shot in such a way that their heads seem stacked on top of one another. All of the faces of the inquisitors are shot in bright light, without makeup, so that the crevices and flaws of the skin seem to reflect a diseased inner life.
Falconetti, by contrast, is shot in softer grays, rather than blacks and whites. Also without makeup, she seems solemn and consumed by inner conviction. Consider an exchange where a judge asks her whether St. Michael actually spoke to her. Her impassive face seems suggest that whatever happened between Michael and herself was so far beyond the scope of the question that no answer is conceivable.
Why did Dreyer fragment his space, disorient the visual sense and shoot in closeup? I think he wanted to avoid the picturesque temptations of a historical drama. There is no scenery here, aside from walls and arches. Nothing was put in to look pretty. You do not leave discussing the costumes (although they are all authentic). The emphasis on the faces insists that these very people did what they did. Dreyer strips the church court of its ritual and righteousness and betrays its members as fleshy hypocrites in the pay of the British; their narrow eyes and mean mouths assault Joan's sanctity.
That he got it is generally agreed. Perhaps it helps that Falconetti never made another movie (she died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1946). We do not have her face in other roles to compare with her face here, and the movie seems to exist outside time (the French director Jean Cocteau famously said it played like "an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn't exist”).
To modern audiences, raised on films where emotion is conveyed by dialogue and action more than by faces, a film like "The Passion of Joan of Arc” is an unsettling experience--so intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire. Our sympathy is engaged so powerfully with Joan that Dreyer's visual methods--his angles, his cutting, his closeups--don't play like stylistic choices, but like the fragments of Joan's experience. Exhausted, starving, cold, in constant fear, only 19 when she died, she lives in a nightmare where the faces of her tormentors rise up like spectral demons.
Perhaps the secret of Dreyer's success is that he asked himself, "What is this story really about?” And after he answered that question he made a movie about absolutely nothing else.
An excellent essay by Matthew Dessem on "The Passion of Joan of Arc" here:
http://criterioncollection.blogspot.com/2006/11/62-passion-of-joan-of-arc.html
This is part of his undertaking to watch and write about every film in the Criterion Collection.