18th February 2010

This was originally going to be a rant about the awful sub-Neanderthal pondlife that clutter up cinemas with their mobiles and ugly children and revolting piles of food that they can't go without for two hours, but a glance at the forum has revealed that this has come up quite recently elsewhere, covering much the same ground, but doing it better. Great minds think alike (or, given that one of the minds is the genius behind Repo The Genetic Opera, not-so-great minds think alike as well). So that's been despatched to the Recycle Bin (why? It's not going to be recycled) and instead I want to bang on about old movies again.

Specifically: how far back into cinematic history can you go before it starts becoming difficult to acclimatise to the styles and the technical limitations? I ask because this week they sent me The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, dating back to 1919 and described as the first true horror film. Maybe it is - I'm not an expert - but it's very tough to get through. It's basically a thriller about a mad scientist who has a sleepwalker commit crimes for him, shot in what they tell me is the style of German Expressionism and accompanied by a melodramatic, more modern score (the DVD appeared to be of an American reissue from the 1950s).

Admittedly the version of Caligari that they sent me only ran about 50 minutes and it's supposed to run anywhere from 72 to 90 minutes, so it might well be that the complete version plays a lot better. In addition, many frantic-looking scenes of dialogue went by without many caption cards, which doesn't help at all. But maybe I'm just so used to stereo sound, dialogue, colour, moving cameras and high definition picture quality that I found it so hard to wade through: if I watched a lot of silent movies I'd probably find it easier to adjust. I'm fully willing to accept part of the problem might be with me. On the other hand, going back to the James Whale Frankenstein and the Tod Browning Dracula (both 1931) presented little difficulty, though the acting is very stagey. I guess it's not specifically the age of the film but the style: I had rather the same feelings when seeing some of Guy Maddin's films such as Tales From The Gimli Hospital or Archangel: the much grainier look, the absense of sound, the completely different techniques.

Maybe it then simply depends upon whether you like that style, whether done at the time or recreated now. I like 70s exploitation horror movies which is probably why I liked Ti West's pinpoint-perfect tribute The House Of The Devil, whereas I'm not sufficiently familiar with either silent cinema or German Expressionism to easily absorb it, either the real thing or a modern homage like Maddin's.

In order to get up to speed with the new The Wolfman, I caught up with the original 1941 The Wolf Man the other day, and that was fine. Oddly, the best aspects of the new one are the production design which suggest the whole thing was made as a loving tribute to the original rather than a brand new experience, until the blokes in the expensive suits decided it didn't have enough ooomph for the modern multiplex crowd. Joe Johnston's retro approach worked perfectly well in Rocketeer so why tamper with it this time round? Dry ice, gypsy curses and the full moon over the moorlands are such hokey horror devices they can't really be played straight in our oh-so-sophisticated, thoroughly modern 21st century. Much like the period-set Hammer films now look slightly quaint these days (difficult not to when people like Dennis Waterman turn up as youthful romantic leads).

Untill the next time.

Richard.

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