HVE: Rediscover Jacques Feyder

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HerrSchreck
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#26 Post by HerrSchreck » Mon Sep 04, 2006 6:07 am

..or Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa (no mini marshmallows).

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Matt
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#27 Post by Matt » Mon Sep 04, 2006 9:31 am

HerrSchreck wrote:What's strange is-- and I like you, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be combative-- the cover-art is seeming to override in importance your comrades here, & cinema history telling you who Feyder is/was.
I was mostly being facetious, but I was wavering on whether to buy this or to rent it. I need to stop buying so many DVDs. The hideous cover art (more precisely, the terrible typeface) is merely the speck of dust that tipped the scale over to "rent."

If the cover had been too cool to resist (a la Equinox which I bought and have yet to crack the spine of), I might have bought this without hesitation.

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HerrSchreck
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#28 Post by HerrSchreck » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:23 am

Many species in the world: I'm totally opposite-- having heard much ho-hum feedback on EQUINOX the cover never even registered as a reason to buy it, despite the fact that when CC threw it up on their site, I too thought it was a beaucoup cool cover.

I've successfully cut back on my disc-buying, which I only got under control over the past say 3 months, max. I started asking myself, "am I really going to watch this more than once?", and holding to that criteria mercilessly, after 6 weeks, I had (not lying) a brand new pair of Celestion Vintage 30 speakers (approx $300) for my amp, and a Fender American Vintage Seriies 1962 Stratocaster (1499, but $1318 w my discounts) guitar. I'll never go back to the way I was. I love my collection but so much of it sits there.

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Subbuteo
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#29 Post by Subbuteo » Mon Sep 04, 2006 7:46 pm

The bottom line for me is do I need it, can I rent it, if so (after viewing) is it worth a purchase.

My life is far too complicated to come home to a collection of a 1000+ films, do I really need a SE of 'Don't Look Now' do I need every Criterion release.

Fuck No!

I am so selective now I almost feel smug. Having said that the Feyder collection is very appealing!

unclehulot
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#30 Post by unclehulot » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:26 pm

zedz wrote:Two questions.

Is there really a huge sector of the marketplace that will only buy silent black-and-white films if the cover picture is colourized? What do they do, watch the movie with the gaudy box cover next to them to remind them what it would be like if it were in colour?

And is this box set really called "Rediscover Jacques Feyder", or it that the name of his fragrance?
Colorized?? I guess you haven't seen posters from the period? They are more often than not designed in color.

Personally, I couldn't give a damn about the cover in this case......if that overrides the fact of these films being issued is important, then I think one's priorities have played into the hands of the lowest common denominator marketing departments. Sort of an "aw, that can't be good, look at that cover" reaction?? Come on, be big, buy based on your tastes in film, not some damned stupid box! I think some of the Criterion covers are ugly, but did that stop me from buying? Hell no! What, do you display your covers on the shelf like it's Blockbuster video or something?

Ok.....have I used enough hyperbole to make a small point? :?

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zedz
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#31 Post by zedz » Mon Sep 04, 2006 11:38 pm

unclehulot wrote: Personally, I couldn't give a damn about the cover in this case......if that overrides the fact of these films being issued is important, then I think one's priorities have played into the hands of the lowest common denominator marketing departments. Sort of an "aw, that can't be good, look at that cover" reaction?? Come on, be big, buy based on your tastes in film, not some damned stupid box! I think some of the Criterion covers are ugly, but did that stop me from buying? Hell no! What, do you display your covers on the shelf like it's Blockbuster video or something?
Huh? Who said anything about not buying the Feyders just because of the terrible cover art? Technical note: Please ensure that your Sarcasmatron conforms to its factory settings before reading ANY thread about cover art and packaging on this forum.
Ok.....have I used enough hyperbole to make a small point?
Ah, I'd say so. What was the point again?

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Tommaso
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#32 Post by Tommaso » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:13 am

Just an idea: can't we talk about the films for a moment? I know next to nothing about Feyder except having seen these three films (two of them on TV only, I only have "L'Atlantide" on dvd in that French double set with Pabst's version), so where is his historical importance situated especially in French silent cinema? Looking at these three films, different filmmakers come to my mind as possible influences: Murnau for "Crainquebille", May and early Lang for "L'Atlantide", and Jean Renoir (who started later, though) for "Visages d'enfants",which in its partly hallucinatory qualities and strange recourse to both the childrens' and to the Alpine world also made me think of having a very oblique Cocteauish quality (also a much later director, of course). Does this all add up to a Feyder style of its own? Any thoughts or suggestions?

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HerrSchreck
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#33 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:24 pm

Pabst's MISTRESS OF ATLANTIS is very trippy. On first watching I felt like chomping some psilocybes... I forget the actual term he uses, but the butler/Antinea-attendant (he uses a haughty term, and indicates that he's a dying breed) with the handlebar moustache and the high voice & Uncle Albertesque giggle is fucking b i z a r r e.... I have a musty old VHS of it... one of it's most endearing qualities, aside from the great Brigette Helm talking, is the excellent score by the ever-dreamy/melancholy Wolfgang Zeller.

Tobis Klangfilm!

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HerrSchreck
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#34 Post by HerrSchreck » Mon Nov 06, 2006 2:03 am

Rather than post comments in my Silent Film On DVD thread, I'll post comments here.

Beev sez:
The 3 films are spread over 3 single-sided - single-layered discs. They are all housed in a (one) thick transparent keep case - one separately - the two other discs overlapping. They are encoded in the NTSC standard and are not region-coded.
That is incorrect. Two of the three, LATALANTIDE & VISAGE D'ENFANTS are dual layered. CRANQUEBILLE, owing to it's shorter length, is the one disc that is single layer.

I see no "problems" with this release in terms of silent film. It is preconverted to NTSC standard, the bitrates seem quite high (was too busy watching to measure, but will report), even LATALANTIDE was subtitled with the original intertitles. Knocking the interlacing of this release is like knocking Flicker Alley's PHANTOM (which this release very much resembles).

Pure gold for silent film fans. All films look very good, with CRANQ looking the best preserved of all, though all are very good condition.

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Tommaso
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#35 Post by Tommaso » Mon Nov 06, 2006 6:54 am

This sounds fine, then. Makes me doubt Gary's carefulness, though.

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tryavna
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#36 Post by tryavna » Mon Nov 06, 2006 11:29 am

Tommaso wrote:This sounds fine, then. Makes me doubt Gary's carefulness, though.
Only now?

Actually, I mean that only in regard to his comments, not the fine work of posting all those screencaps. I think that, with certain kinds of DVD (Kino titles and, as Schreck points out, many silents), you've got to focus more on the screencaps themselves than on Gary's niggling complaints.

Thanks for the feedback, Schreck. Looks like I'll be picking this set up during the upcoming DDD sale.

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Tommaso
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#37 Post by Tommaso » Mon Nov 06, 2006 12:35 pm

tryavna wrote:Only now?

Actually, I mean that only in regard to his comments, not the fine work of posting all those screencaps. I think that, with certain kinds of DVD (Kino titles and, as Schreck points out, many silents), you've got to focus more on the screencaps themselves than on Gary's niggling complaints.
Quite right, of course, and I would say that the other way round one might be careful when it comes to the over-praise that Criterion dvds usually get, some of which to me do not look as excellent as Gary sometimes describes them.

But anyway, the sole fact of the screencapped comparisons makes this site something I really wouldn't want to be without. And as to the 'niggling complaints': well, at least he points out things that could have been done better, at least theoretically, considering the current state of technology (which of course might not be available always to the smaller labels out there). Of course that doesn't justify the thrashing in most cases, but it's good to know that there's interlacing and replaced intertitles, especially if you have an alternative dvd from some other country as a possible choice (like here with "Visages").

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tryavna
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#38 Post by tryavna » Mon Nov 06, 2006 12:45 pm

Tommaso wrote:But anyway, the sole fact of the screencapped comparisons makes this site something I really wouldn't want to be without. And as to the 'niggling complaints': well, at least he points out things that could have been done better, at least theoretically, considering the current state of technology (which of course might not be available always to the smaller labels out there). Of course that doesn't justify the thrashing in most cases, but it's good to know that there's interlacing and replaced intertitles, especially if you have an alternative dvd from some other country as a possible choice (like here with "Visages").
Oh, I agree. The world is a better place for the DVD consumer with the DVD Beaver site.

And for the record, I'm glad that Gary does issue those "niggling complaints" when they deal with interlacing or PAL->NTSC porting. However, there are times when I think he does a disservice to a particular disc. For instance, the only time he ever seems to complain about reel-changeover blips is whenever he's reviewing a Kino disc. And of course, as Schreck has convinced me, his complaints about interlaced transfers of silents seems to lack perspective.

In long run, I just hope some of his reviews haven't prevented some potential buyers from taking the plunge on perfectly acceptable DVDs.

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Tommaso
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#39 Post by Tommaso » Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:10 pm

tryavna wrote:In long run, I just hope some of his reviews haven't prevented some potential buyers from taking the plunge on perfectly acceptable DVDs.
Actually he made me buy one dvd because of his praise, although the dvd is perfectly unacceptable due to its misplaced colour scheme: Criterion's version of "Autumn Sonata", that is.

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HerrSchreck
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#40 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:26 am

Without getting into raw BeevBashing, I bought the Milestone PHANTOM OPERA (for which there are alternatives) on his reccommend... which is one of the worst releases for preconversion problems (one of the few releases as awful as the horrid interlacing stepping in Image BERLIN GROSSSTADT). With all the Kino-killing on his site, his reccommend on this disc, worse than anything on Kino, trumps it all.

Look at all the glorious silent film which goes right by on an ongoing basis: WARNING SHADOWS, ASPHALT (which I'd have loved a comp on), THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, DIF FROM OTHERS, SEX IN CHAINS, JEANNE NEY, all three STILLERS, (not to mention the vast bulk of Kino's silent catalog, which renders his Kino-bashing silly to me... like bashing Wendy's without ever eating a burger), Flicker Alley's PHANTOM, All-Day's CHUTE USHER, and on and on. One must intrepidly follow one's nose in the silent film zone...

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La Clé du Ciel
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#41 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Mon Nov 13, 2006 4:37 pm

[warning – possible spoilers]

Hmm… I'm surprised to hear people liking L'ATLANTIDE. To me, it's the dud of the set.

Based on Pierre Benoit's best-seller, L'ATLANTIDE was shot in Algeria between March 1920 and January 1921. The producers had wanted Feyder to simply shoot exteriors in Algeria and the rest in studios in Paris. However, Feyder shot the whole film, exteriors and interiors, in various locations in Algeria. Feyder had borrowed 600,000 francs from a rich relative. By the time production had finished, the film had cost 2 million francs. The film's posters said of Feyder: “One man daredâ€

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Matt
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#42 Post by Matt » Mon Nov 13, 2006 4:43 pm

Netflix is not carrying this, damn them.

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denti alligator
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#43 Post by denti alligator » Mon Nov 13, 2006 4:52 pm

Matt wrote:Netflix is not carrying this, damn them.
Let's start a campaign of email bombardment. That sometimes works.

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Tribe
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#44 Post by Tribe » Mon Nov 13, 2006 6:58 pm

Tommaso wrote:Quite right, of course, and I would say that the other way round one might be careful when it comes to the over-praise that Criterion dvds usually get, some of which to me do not look as excellent as Gary sometimes describes them.
Interesting. I've yet to see Gary over-praise Criterion and his opinions on quality have always been accurate.

Of course, like everything else on this Fourm, after beating up on Criterion for everything from not releasing someone's favorite film to missing a sub-title, maybe it's time to find fault with Gary's good work.

Tribe

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HerrSchreck
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#45 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:44 am

La Clé du Ciel
I always greatly appreciate the depth & knowledge within your posts, and the above is no exception. But I must say respectfully I find some of your point just on the wrong side of niggling.

LATALANTIDE: Suspension of disbelief is obviously the name of the game when dealing with fantasies, and working out by extension every moderate absurdity that appear in them can go on and on, particularly in silent era spectacles where modes of strangeness/exotic designs which have been long since trumped appear. What are those super-long harp strings strung everywhere in Aelita? How do those domino-stack buildings in METROPOLIS hold themselves up? For god's sakes why would a woman stay with a man who beats her? Why is Betsy attracted to an obvious developmental retard like Travis Bickle?

I think LATALANTIDE ran as a smash hit as long as it did was the sense of weird place-- people had very few films back then which blatantly tried to bug them the hell out with a reality-- Expressionism was more unreality-- concretely presented which felt so precisely and sustainedly strange. Chubbiness in silent film women is pretty much universal-- ever see DIE SPINNEN? Musidora was no rack rib either-- ever see her in the bathing suit in JUDEX? Dusy Told's hips in MABUSE are as wide as the parthenon, yet we're supposed to regard these woman as beautiful.

Life doesn't operate according to compositional unity-- we live in concrete terms, yet we imagine and dream in ethereal terms-- so why should these variances not be represented in a naturalist experiment like CRANQUEBILLE, which is awful close to an attempt at what would later be called neorealism, interestingly.

Just my thoughts, respectfully, to an otherwise fascinating post.

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Tommaso
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#46 Post by Tommaso » Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:03 am

Tribe wrote: Interesting. I've yet to see Gary over-praise Criterion and his opinions on quality have always been accurate.
As I said above, I had no intention to find fault with Gary's work, it is just that although he notices some minor problems with some CCs and points them out accurately, there is sometimes the summary "Go for Criterion", which gives to me the impression that these minor problems are REALLY very minor. And in some cases I simply think they are not. I gave the wrong colours on "Autumn Sonata" as an example (and this is perhaps the only Criterion dvd I know that I really found to be a letdown), but there are others. Gary mentions the contrast boosting on "Seventh seal", but I find it much more distracting than he obviously did.

Same goes for the 'finely rendered film grain' he mentions from time to time. I have nothing against film grain, but it's apparently particularly difficult to render it on dvd convincingly. I always find film grain on dvd much more intrusive than seeing it in the cinema, for reasons I do not really understand. And as it seems to be Criterion's policy to do nothing about it, it sometimes tends to worry me. "Kagemusha" is an example, "Spirit of the Beehive" another. It's all a question of belief and whether you're willing to manipulate the image in order to reduce grain (which can apparently be done very easily). That's nothing against Gary or Criterion, but it's one of the reasons why I don't find Criterion discs as outstanding or so much better than all the other dvd companies out there. They are better, but they are not lightyears ahead. And as to 'filmic'-looking, I think MoC tend to get it just a little tiny bit better...

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Tommaso
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#47 Post by Tommaso » Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:21 am

HerrSchreck wrote:
LATALANTIDE: Suspension of disbelief is obviously the name of the game when dealing with fantasies, and working out by extension every moderate absurdity that appear in them can go on and on, particularly in silent era spectacles where modes of strangeness/exotic designs which have been long since trumped appear.
I agree with every word here, Schreck. And also that Clé du Ciel's is a great post. It's funny, though, how I never found the pacing in " L'Atlantide" monotonous, although Clé's description of it is correct. But the film is so evocative of many things that were in the air in the fin de siecle (the femme fatale, complete with "flashing her eyes and wobbling about"; the European colonialists searching for their self in exotic settings etc.) that I think it's wrong to judge the film according to whether it's believable or has logic flaws or not. There's a whole tradition of these lost world stories/films (starting with Rider Haggard's "She", to which Benoit's book and Feyder's film have some very close resemblances) that require to look for that meeting point of modern life and a 'lost', mythical way of living and thinking. And thus it's not so surprising that Antinea collects Western modern life artefacts in her kingdom (an idea later taken up by Hilton's "Lost Horizon" and Capra's film of the same name). I think that this intersection of 'lifestyles' is perfectly captured in Feyder's film, and that in this respect it is more evocative and intriguing than the Pabst version. So we're not meant to 'interpret her character' individually; she is just a stock- creature from a long-drawn canon of western thinking about the orient.
Schreck mentions Lang's "Die Spinnen", and that's perhaps the closest comparison to "L'Atlantide", not just because of the figure of the girl. Both films are at the beginning of a tradition that extends even to the "Indiana Jones" films of today. And I can't help it, I'm invariably drawn in by those settings and the glorious photography.

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La Clé du Ciel
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#48 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:08 am

Herr Schreck, Tommaso – thank you for your comments, I didn't mean to sound as harsh as all that. I appreciate that I was criticizing the elements of the film one must rather take for granted. I think it was a case of my not liking one major aspect (pacing) and then the other minor elements clinging on to its coattails and hitchhiking their way into my general opinion. As with many such films which are on the borderlines of my enjoyment, a decent music score on the disc would probably have tipped my opinion in the other direction! The film is certainly important and a great deal could be said of its background influences, its colonial setting and outlook, and the way in which it influenced subsequent films. (Richard Abel briefly discusses the film in the chapter “Arabian Nights and Colonial Dreamsâ€

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HerrSchreck
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#49 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:28 pm

Thanks for a well-reasoned & selfless reply. I think one of the things which makes Feyder a bit unusual, especially in his use of subjective POV in interludes, is that the employ of these devices are so brief yet so virtuoso: these moments in VISAGES & BILL are so astonishingly rendered, both in terms of technique and effect-- one would think he'd been pushing out Epstein-Gance-Kirsanoff-Gremillion style avant garde masterpieces bursting with the Impressionist ethic all his life, and utilized in his features from a-to-z. It's very unusual to see such a mastery of subjective visual poetry merely dabbled with for a moment or two in a couple films, as casually as if he were cutting his nails while thinking about something else... as though he'd been doing it all his life, ramped his way up to such tour de forces with earlier, searing pure visual experiments, and eventually learning the Murnauesque discipline to hold back with complete confidence to eventually arrive at a means of melodrama embellished in zones with incredible moments of hightened punctuation with this kind of cinematic beauty.

But no-- Feyder was never purely experimental or 'avant'... his interest remained in the zone of conventionally structured & (generally) paced melodrama, and chose to apply these mind-bending moments of overt subjectivity like a chef throwing down the minutest sprig of kickass mouthwatering garnish. They taste so fucking good when he chucks him in there it has the effect for the devoted Expressionist and Impressionist-leaning cineaste to seem to tilt the composition all out of whack due to the lack of these moments being spangled evenly throughout the films. They appear suddenly and vanish for the rest of the narrative, creating a yearning for their reaapearance, which alas is never satisfied.

It's an unusual restraint, and, owing to their complete and total developmental mastery (especially in VISAGES) despite their limited employ , unbelievably impressive. It causes me to dream what a MALDONE/CHUTE USHER/ROUE/BRUMES DE AUTOMNE piece of pure visual melancholic poetry would look like coming from him.

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Re: HVE: Rediscover Jacques Feyder

#50 Post by Wombatz » Tue Sep 22, 2009 6:59 pm

Have just watched Faces of Children. Utterly genius, the film never goes for the obvious or blatant, except, well, the ending. Guy says "Mama" and it's another Hollywood well of course it needs a natural catastrophe and an attempted suicide minimum for one family to grow together but with that we're fine, thank you.

Still a very powerful movie, can't wait to watch the other two.

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