A blog developing a corpus of short films, originally in conjunction with Professor Jeffrey Middents' course Literature 346/646, "Short Films," at American University during Summer 2006, Fall 2008 and Fall 2011.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter, USA, 1903, 10 minutes
Source: YouTube
“The Great Train Robbery” is probably one of the best known classical cinema shorts of the early nineteen hundreds.Directed by Edwin S. Porter this film depicts a daring train robbery by a group of bandits and the ordeal that follows. While this doesn’t sound like much of a story compared to most modern shorts, the ironic thing is that I chose this film because of its story. This film in my opinion is one of the best classical pieces of story telling out there.
“The Great Train Robbery” is able to tell a story in ten minutes that while simplistic follows my one major rule in film.This rule is that the film should to immerse the audience in a universe without them questioning it or trying to figure it out.For a film that was made in 1903, it does a spectacular job of creating a universe that is believable.Ironically the ability to immerse someone into another universe is one of my biggest complaints against many short films.While some do a great job at doing this, those who simply plop a audience someplace irritate me.Why should the audience have to think about what is going on, that’s the directors job!
Beyond that, for it’s time the movie is fairly typical when it comes to the over exaggerated acting and it’s piano soundtrack.The only really big complaint that I had is when one of the engineer’s attacks a bandit with a shovel and the bandit kills him, they jump cut from the same angle.While I know it’s so they can put the sack man in and try to disguise the switch, they really should have switched camera angles for a better effect.Finally, there were some scenes that really should have been cut out such as the engineer filling up the train with more water.It was unnecessary and removing it would speed things along a bit more.Overall, for its time “The Great Train Robbery” is a solid short film even if it was a feature film in 1903.
The Heart of the World Directed by Guy Maddin, Canada, 2000 6 minutes
I became slightly obsessed with this film after having decided that I wanted to post on it during this blog's inaugural "narrative" week, but Lindsay swooped out from under me and snatched it up (DAMN YOU!). You can see her post if you want plot details, because it seems unnecessary to repeat them.
Initially, Lindsay discussed how this film was a commentary on "the inherent brevity of short films," making a frantic, tongue-in-cheek attempt at tackling larger-than-life issues in only six minutes. I think she's right to sense that Maddin is mocking something, but while she thinks he's mocking supposed thematic limitations of the short film genre (i.e. the idea that short films are much too short to meaningfully explore themes like love, greed, and self-sacrifice), I think he's moreso mocking the idea of the homage and his own investment in this concept. His aesthetics are based on early silent cinema, so to what degree can we applaud him as a visionary filmmaker? If Heart of the World borrows from these aesthetics as well as countless other elements, what makes it worth watching?
Heart of the World comprises a dizzying number of shout-outs, many of which flash by too quickly to be perceptible. In the first 15 seconds, we are presented with the image of an eye, and a knife slicing down a woman's torso. The torso, not the eye, is being sliced, but to insert this non sequitur in the opening sequence of the film is an undeniable allusion to Louis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou, with its iconic eye/slicing image. This eye then pops up several times again throughout the movie to solidify the effect of the allusion; but the eye looks like it's peering through a camera lens, an indication that this eye is the embodiment of Maddin himself, watching us watch him. The machinery and gears at work where Anna does her work as a state scientist has the same gigantic cardboard cut-out feel as the set of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), while Anna herself is dressed (helmet-esque hat and all) like Maria. Oh, and Metropolis' tagline also just happens to be, "There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator." Sound familiar?
Lindsay touched on the nod to German cinema, but I noticed in my comment on her entry that "kino" is also Russian for "cinema." The characters' names in Heart of the World, Anna, Nikolai, Osip, and Akmatov, are Russian, and the font used looks like Cyrillic characters. Even the music is by Georgy Sviridov, a Russian composer. It seems then that this is also a nod to Soviet cinema, although unfortunately my ignorance prevents me from speaking more specifically about it.
I won't keep listing the allusions in the film, partly because I'm not enough of a cinephile to pick up on all the many references I suspect Maddin is making, and partly because I'm more interested in the idea of the homage in general, and how Maddin manipulates it to his advantage. This is an intriguing concept because it must negotiate the threshold between unoriginality and showing admiration, but Maddin doesn't tread carefully: he annihilates that threshold, piling homage upon homage as quickly and in as short a time span as he can. In this way, Heart of the World is kind of a joke. Maddin obviously admires those to whom he has alluded, but he's also aware that allusions must be used sparingly lest one's own work devolves into a mere collage of what others have done first. Nevertheless, film is a cumulative artform, and in making one film, you're necessarily hearkening back to the films that have come before you. Even though by contemporary standards, Maddin may seem like a breath of fresh air, his seeming originality is based on what he's borrowed from past films, and this film shows that he is more than cognizant of that. What makes him original is his use of modern themes (like overt sexuality, e.g. the flashing of the word "ORGY" when the masses find out they have only one day left, and the penis shaped canons), the way in which he creates a pastiche of all these elements and the self-awareness and humor with which he does so.
UN CHIEN ANDALOU Directed by Luis Buñuel. Written by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. France, 1928, 16min. Source: Avant garde and experimental films – VHS 5278 and YouTube.com
Trying to find rational meaning in a short film that was not supposed to have any is a ludicrous idea, but, so is to dismiss it because it “doesn’t have any” or because we can’t understand it. Whether we understand it or not, like it or hate it, Un Chien Andalou is, for various reasons, one of those must- see classic shorts. It has its place in film history as one of the first movies without a coherent narrative, hence, the perceived lack of “meaning¨. It was also one of the first non-studio shorts to (unintentionally) make money, using shock value as means to make the audience not only uncomfortable but also unhappy with the film itself.
One of the “explanations” of the film goes as follows: the two unnamed characters are lovers who are discovered by her husband and her dad and then face the consequences. Sounds simple, but now, imagine the following series of dream-like events, so things don’t really make sense. They’ll be out order, you’ll leave a room just to enter the same room again, ants will come out people hands, a severed hand will lay on the side walk, an androgynous boy will get run over which in turn will cause the male lover to be aroused, he will be turned down by his lover and will then pull on two pianos with two priests, the 10 commandments and two dead donkeys; books turn into pistols and the male lover shoots his lover’s father; to then “in (the) spring” on a beach where the lover and her husband are buried up to their chest dead. But before it all began, you read a title card that said “once upon a time” and then saw the woman’s eye slid with a razor.
Dali and Buñuel wanted to shock their audience so they opened their film with the razor/eye-slid sequence. They expected the 1928 Parisian audience to be shocked, to start riots, but, to Buñuel’s disappointment, they didn’t. The surrealist movement was in its beginning and this short granted the entrance into it. Today’s audience would probably have a different opinion; one can just look at the boards in IMDB to get an idea. Perhaps, the 1920s audience was more familiar with Freud and more willing to accept dreams for what they were.
But, the lessons of the film go beyond the unexpected reaction of the audience; its 8-month run enabled the duo to pay Buñuel’s mom back. We can be melodramatic and say that dreams can take you as far a you want, aka two young men literally sharing a dream and two weeks of filming turned into a classic. But, there is more. Aesthetically, Un Chien editing work is great not just visually but also musically. In the scene were the androgynous boy gets run over, we anticipate it happening but the music and the intercutting to the lovers watching from the window keeps the tension. The famous thin cloud covering the full moon for a few second then cut to the woman’s eye being slid makes the audiences gasp every time and no matter how many times you watch it there will always be a chill going down your spine.
At the end, that chill is left unresolved. After the bizarre sequences, our minds could try to extract some structured narrative from the title cards “once upon a time”, “eight years later”, “about three in the morning” and “sixteen years before”. But, as in dreams, the timeline does not make sense, and perhaps some things are better taken as what they are, dreams.
There really isn’t anywhere to begin but the beginning, so when examining any sort of film, short or otherwise, it’s probably a good idea to step back to one reelers, player pianos, and other silent shorts of the sort. D.W. Griffith is always a name to look to, and his The Girl and Her Trust is quite unrelenting and narrative and temporal editing, creating a dazzling first-generation thriller.
Trust’s narrative is quite simple: $2000 is being transported on the No. 7 Train, and tramps are out to get it by any means, including assaulting Grace, the young telegraphist girl on duty at the local train station. Clocking in right near 15 minutes, Trust even manages to garner the audience and love subplot, involving Grace and her beau.
As film is markedly concerned with time, being a medium where life is animated though reality suspended, it is impervious that shorts manage time with an absolute certainty, as an entire narrative must fit into the arc of only a few minutes. Griffith manages to make Trust really spectacular in this case, giving us multiple plot points (Grace’s draw on the men around her, the infatuation her coworker has for her, the danger of railway work, the tramp business, etc) to mull around. Griffith’s use of editing, particularly in the fireworks parade that is the train chase finale, lend to the suspense. The cuts are fast and move in and around the action, bringing the viewer from spectator to actor. Close ups of Grace hammering bullets through the key-hole in the door and the terrified look in her bewildered eyes allow the audience to particpate in the action more directly, suspending the time and reality of the film.
I think it would be safe to say that a good film is one that disregards reality yet initiates audiences in buying it. Steven Spielberg is rumored to have said on the set of Jaws, during an argument with author Peter Benchley about the explosive ending of the film, “If I’ve held their attention for two hours, they’ll believe anything I tell them now.” (which, of course, is true. Sharks don’t explode, but wow, what an ending!) This is even more important when dealing with short films; viewers shouldn’t realize they are watching only a fifteen minute sprint, but the whole marathon from beginning to end should bleed reality.
Griffith’s The Girl and Her Trust does this, for me at least. I am drawn in from the first frame until the last. Griffith’s use of a simple story (a ploy great directors like Hitchcock would use years later: Man thinks he sees murder. Man investigates. Man becomes entangled in a web of intrigue. The catch? He’s got a broken leg. Or, men murder friend. Men hold dinner party with the victims friends and family - and the body is in attendance as well!), along with his flair for editing action, immerse viewers into the stark black and white reality of the cinema, length remitted. Griffith achieves the goal of narrative cinema, to tell a story wisely and well, and achieves a key goal in short cinema, to never let the audience realize they aren't watching a "movie".
