Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
Ernst Lubitsch began his feature film career with this self-driven star vehicle designed to introduce his character, Sally Pinkus, to the German speaking cinematic world. It worked, and he made several more films with the character before abandoning him when Lubitsch moved to America. Whenever I see attempts at building silent film comic characters, I… Continue reading Shoe Palace Pinkus
Erich von Stroheim started his directing career with an adaptation of his own novel, The Pinnacle (a better title than Blind Husbands, I think), working with the original studio head of Universal, Carl Laemmle Sr. It was also the beginning of Stroheim's problems with producers since they cut him out of the editing bay at… Continue reading Blind Husbands
#38 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. The first Spiders movie was a relatively small and focused adventure. The second is bigger and far less focused, moving from one to location to the next in an amorphous mystery that doesn't so much escalate with increasing stakes but just kind of lurches from one thing… Continue reading The Spiders Episode 2: The Diamond Ship
#36 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. In the end, I think I may be a bit more kind to the whole of Harakiri than I should be, but the ending refocuses a lot of what came before, giving it a power that the rest of the film didn't seem all that interested in… Continue reading Harakiri (1919)
#30 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. German critics were apparently dismissive of this, Fritz Lang's third feature film (and first surviving one), deriding as sensationalism and nothing more. I don't disagree, but I also don't really see much wrong with it. The narrative and thematic ambitions are modest, focused more on purely entertaining… Continue reading The Spiders Episode 1: The Golden Sea
David Vining, Author 