January Screenings

Well since we have been back we have watched Battleship Potemkin, Nosferatu and Sunrise.

Battleship Potemkin was the first Russian film I have ever watched, so was quite interested to see if it was much different to american films. But i thought they were quite similar and proberly would of never of said it was a russian film. I thought the story in the film as a whole quite boring - and felt i was switching off because of it. I felt that out of all the silent films we have watched this one needed narrative as it was quite hard to follow as there was a lot of characters and not a basic story. I noticed straight away though the scene Andy was speaking about at the start - with the baby rolling down the stairs in its pram. I never realised this had come from this film - and is used quite a lot in films and tv shows today. I even saw it being used in Alvin and the Chipmunks with the grandmother in the wheelchair falling down the stairs - which is a completely different genre.
The editing in the film was just amazing for the time period of the film - and had not actually noticed we had not been seeing that kind of editing in the Charlie Chaplin films etc. So when i did see it being edited like we edit now a days, you could see all the work that has gone in to creating the film.
Overall, the film really never ticked the boxes for me, but did enjoy seeing the editing of the film and also appreciate why it is such a good film because of that.

The next film we watched i did prefer much more. Nosferatu was a german film - and this was much more noticable then Battleship Potemkins nationality. I felt this was much more interesting to watch, and perfered the narrative in this. With this film I didn't feel the narrative was missing - and also felt it was more visually impressive. The use of shading in this film was amazing, and really showed the type of genre it was as it was quite dark and gloomy. This also gave a scary affect to the film with all the shadows being used to create the unknowing that was there but you couldn't see.

The last film we watched was Sunrise. I really did love this film, and this was my faviourite out of the three. The story defiently kept me gripped all the way through and could see the points where the 3 act structure came in to place. I felt you got to know the characters very well as there was only 2 main characters with only another few on the side. The drive of the story was excellent, and there was no trouble figuring out what was happening without dialogue. I also felt there was hardly any dialogue at all, but this did not matter as you knew exactly what was happening all the way through the film. The acting i felt was quite dramatic - but you have to be in a silent film - so i feel if there was dialouge it would take away from the film and there would definetly be some cheesy lines in there!! But because there wasn't it made the film so lovely and i can see how it won an award.
I also really felt connected to the characters and what they felt all the way through it. It is a very emotional driven film with the passion at the start with the girl from the city, then the sence of anger and hate to want to kill someone. Then the fear of the wife but turning back to love when she realises she does still love her husband. It is a very very strong piece of cinema and you wanted to watch it all the way through to find out what happens in the end.
Overall, i really liked this film - and worked very well silently but don't think it would have worked being a talking film.