Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
The early sound period has always fascinated me, especially in how studios suddenly needed to find ways to release films in different markets with different languages when changing out intertitles had been enough since the advent of the medium. One thing they did was simply film multiple versions of a movie. This is probably the… Continue reading Drácula
The first official cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker's seminal novel (the tales of the illegality of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu tickle me), Tod Browning's Dracula is a handsomely produced gothic romance that manages to capture enough of the novel to retain a semblance of a story while removing any kind of emotional investment. At only 74-minutes… Continue reading Dracula
#16 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. In terms of how directors go out with their final movie, this reminds me of Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock's final film. There isn't any comparison between the two in terms of tone or genre, but both The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and Family Plot are solidly… Continue reading The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
#21 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. The second half of the story that began with The Tiger of Eschnapur, The Indian Tomb is the same kind of easy adventure of good men saving women from bad men as the first half, except now there's an actual ending. The film doesn't elevate into grand… Continue reading The Indian Tomb
#22 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. Fritz Lang was done with Hollywood, and he took an offer from the German film producer Artur Brauner to make a film with German money in India based on a script Lang and his ex-wife Thea von Harbou had written for the 1920 silent version of the… Continue reading The Tiger of Eschnapur
David Vining, Author 