DW Griffith's TRUE HEART SUSIE

DG's feminist masterpiece, after BIRTH OF A NATION and INTOLERANCE, starring Lillian Gish as "a plain girl" up against the tyranny of patriarchy and war. Opening with that jaw-dropping title, and following a normal girl of the times, whose naivety constricts her to fate. Gish's earnest presence, her humanity, entraps the viewer to watch her traverse the impossibility of being able to react. She must only be acted upon, be chosen, be disposed of. A hundred years later this film remains valid: it shows us how people are tied into bondage by their culture

Taylor Swift World Tour shots

Taylor Swift is all about presence: about taking the country girl with curly blonde-hair, and destroying her with a new incarnation: brought to you by a boardroom of folks festooning her with sets, outfits, professional advice, and back-up dancers. Every move she makes is from one pose to another, from one outfit to another, with a backdrop of light, of crowds of fans, all to frame her perfectly.

DW Griffith and INTOLERANCE

THE BIRTH OF A NATION, the world's first blockbuster which also contains sickening scenes of blacks in Reconstruction-era congress jumping up and down like apes, was followed up by INTOLERANCE, D.W. Griffith's 3.5hr silent epic. Furthering contemporary confusion surrounding Griffith's politics, the film centers around acts of intolerance in four different eras of human history, at the fall of Babylon (539BC), Christ's sacrifice, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572), and the modern day (1916). Lillian Gish's Eternal Motherhood rocks the cradle of humanity, as violence breaks out due to intolerance at every stage of advancement. With thousands of extras and some of the biggest sets ever made, to watch INTOLERANCE is to view some of the most incredible achievements at tactilely representing the scale of human civilization. But Griffith's poetry: the quickening intensity of the film afforded to it by his revolutionary use of montage, affect you in the most intricate of ways.

Yevgeni Bauer's THE DYNG SWAN

Russian filmmaker Yevgeni Bauer's THE DYING SWAN is a psychological horror film: situating our heroine on the verge of destruction by vice of her stunning artistic talent--what great art inspires in Bauer is madmen who seek to subsume their muses into their own perverse art. Our heroine is given center stage in a foggy long-take tinted purple in the middle of the film:

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,

Wide, wild, and open to the air,

Which had built up everywhere

An under-roof of doleful gray.

With an inner voice the river ran,

Adown it floated a dying swan,

And loudly did lament.

It was the middle of the day.

Ever the weary wind went on,

And took the reed-tops as it went.

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,

And white against the cold-white sky,

Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the river wept,

And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;

Above in the wind was the swallow,

Chasing itself at its own wild will,

And far thro' the marish green and still

The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul

Of that waste place with joy

Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear

The warble was low, and full and clear;

And floating about the under-sky,

Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole

Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;

But anon her awful jubilant voice,

With a music strange and manifold,

Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;

As when a mighty people rejoice

With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,

And the tumult of their acclaim is roll'd

Thro' the open gates of the city afar,

To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.

And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,

And the willow-branches hoar and dank,

And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,

And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,

And the silvery marish-flowers that throng

The desolate creeks and pools among,

Were flooded over with eddying song.

Stills from A TRIP TO THE MOON

Georges Melies, the magician turned filmmaker who constructed a glass house in which to form his movie studio, churned out hundreds of films, and achieved some of the greatest innovations in early cinema. His 1902 film, A TRIP TO THE MOON, still the best-known of his films, delivers backdrops of painted sets, criss-crossed tableaus, a rocket taking the Man in the moon's eye out, and men in suits  jumping up and down as space aliens. Melies's cuts are something like jump-cuts: they take us from one action to another, they allow people to disappear and reappear in clouds of smoke.

Shots from FALLING LEAVES

A decade after Meliès's Trip to the Moon comes Alice Guy-Blaché's FALLING LEAVES, a twelve minute short about a girl who ties the fallen leaves back onto their branches in order to stave off her sister's imminent death. Guy could craft story with all the sophistication of Griffith, and indeed her film predates many structured, conventional teleplays of the 10's.

No No Sleep