20
00:00:24,868 --> 00:00:29,209
What great years for cinema
were the 1920s and early '30s.
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00:00:30,570 --> 00:00:33,925
Entertainment cinema was at
its most glittering.
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00:00:35,524 --> 00:00:40,176
Yet rebellious directors around
the world challenged its glitter.
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00:00:41,300 --> 00:00:45,440
This battle for the soul
of cinema made it splendid.
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00:00:46,480 --> 00:00:49,434
In entertainment,
romantic cinema of the '20s,
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00:00:49,434 --> 00:00:51,853
people looked like this:
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00:00:52,881 --> 00:00:54,337
soft lighting.
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00:00:54,337 --> 00:00:55,638
Shallow focus.
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00:00:55,638 --> 00:00:56,599
Make-up.
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00:00:56,599 --> 00:00:57,521
Dreamlike.
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00:00:58,256 --> 00:01:00,740
But, as we've seen, some
of the first rebels
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00:01:00,740 --> 00:01:04,789
were the great realist directors
who, in a scene like this,
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00:01:04,789 --> 00:01:08,617
scrubbed mainstream
cinema of its fantasy,
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00:01:08,643 --> 00:01:11,134
its gloss, even its make-up.
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00:01:12,649 --> 00:01:14,596
But this was only the
beginning of the revolution
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00:01:14,596 --> 00:01:16,958
against romantic cinema
in these years.
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00:01:17,700 --> 00:01:21,575
Around the world,
seven further sets of rebels
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00:01:21,575 --> 00:01:24,449
saw in film new
20th century ways
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00:01:24,475 --> 00:01:29,052
of getting beneath the surface
of what it's like to be alive.
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00:01:29,973 --> 00:01:31,852
Film was their laboratory.
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00:01:32,592 --> 00:01:35,329
The glory of '20s and
early '30s cinema
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00:01:35,329 --> 00:01:40,355
was the result of their
obsessions, ideas, and societies.
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00:01:42,823 --> 00:01:45,475
After the realists,
the second challenge
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00:01:45,475 --> 00:01:49,923
to conventional cinema in the '20s
came from this man, Ernst Lubitsch.
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00:01:53,123 --> 00:01:57,388
At first he acted in movies.
He's like an inept seducer.
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00:01:57,841 --> 00:02:00,563
Over-acting,
an adolescent almost.
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00:02:00,964 --> 00:02:04,301
In the films he directed,
he mocked the heavy-handed,
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00:02:04,301 --> 00:02:06,848
almost victorian way,
that sex and love
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00:02:06,849 --> 00:02:09,145
were shown in the
movies, and came up
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00:02:09,145 --> 00:02:11,939
with a style that
was all his own.
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00:02:16,290 --> 00:02:19,205
This scene from his early
film The Oyster Princess
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00:02:19,205 --> 00:02:22,473
shows Lubitsch's mocking,
subversive tone.
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00:02:23,138 --> 00:02:26,929
A capitalist smokes
a ridiculously fat cigar.
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00:02:26,931 --> 00:02:29,216
He has an army of stenographers.
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00:02:29,242 --> 00:02:31,836
And his assistants, of course,
are all black.
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00:02:40,333 --> 00:02:42,440
And few directors
anywhere in the world
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00:02:42,440 --> 00:02:44,669
were as visually daring
as Lubitsch.
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00:02:45,030 --> 00:02:47,366
In this film, The Mountain Cat,
[Die Bergkatze]
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00:02:47,366 --> 00:02:52,333
a girl falls in love with a lieutenant,
so he gives her his heart.
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00:03:00,402 --> 00:03:01,910
She eats it.
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00:03:17,345 --> 00:03:19,975
Snowmen come to life
and play music.
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00:03:20,308 --> 00:03:23,584
The film's a riot
of surreal production design.
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00:03:24,098 --> 00:03:27,344
Its screen masking
is even more daring.
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00:03:29,602 --> 00:03:32,649
Such virtuosity was noticed
by Hollywood, of course,
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00:03:32,649 --> 00:03:35,590
and The Mountain Cat was
Lubitsch's last film
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00:03:35,616 --> 00:03:36,893
before moving there.
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00:03:38,028 --> 00:03:41,406
American censorship meant
that Lubitsch had to be inventive
67
00:03:41,406 --> 00:03:43,819
in how he portrayed
sexuality there.
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00:03:46,551 --> 00:03:50,532
Look at this scene in his
hugely successful American film,
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00:03:50,532 --> 00:03:51,860
The Marriage Circle.
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00:03:52,461 --> 00:03:55,693
A psychiatrist and his wife
are at breakfast.
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00:03:55,930 --> 00:03:59,285
We see a close up of an egg,
then of a coffee cup.
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00:04:00,515 --> 00:04:02,244
She stirs her coffee.
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00:04:02,464 --> 00:04:05,884
Then his hand disappears,
then hers.
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00:04:09,418 --> 00:04:11,418
The breakfast is pushed aside.
75
00:04:12,046 --> 00:04:16,047
A more urgent urge than
that to eat has overtaken them.
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00:04:16,932 --> 00:04:19,954
Lubitsch films nothing of
their lovemaking of course,
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00:04:19,980 --> 00:04:22,879
but his use of objects,
is a cinematic equivalent
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00:04:22,879 --> 00:04:26,479
of a raised eyebrow,
far more daring
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00:04:26,505 --> 00:04:32,248
in his suggestion of sexuality
than Chaplin or Keaton or Lloyd.
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00:04:33,447 --> 00:04:36,461
Lubitsch went on to make more
sparkling comedies in America
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00:04:36,461 --> 00:04:39,464
in the '30s and '40s,
and ran the Paramount studio.
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00:04:39,924 --> 00:04:43,176
Billy Wilder, who made Double Indemnity
and Some like it Hot,
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00:04:43,176 --> 00:04:48,718
had this sign on his office wall,
"how would Lubitsch do it?"
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00:04:54,423 --> 00:04:56,992
Where Lubitsch was
innovative with film comedy,
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00:04:56,992 --> 00:05:00,263
the third assault
on the conventions of '20s cinema
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00:05:00,263 --> 00:05:03,142
came from this city, Paris.
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00:05:05,813 --> 00:05:08,265
The pioneering Lumière brothers
had been influenced
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00:05:08,265 --> 00:05:10,030
by impressionist painters.
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00:05:10,545 --> 00:05:15,872
And now filmmakers like Germaine Dulac,
Abel Gance, and Marcel L'Herbier
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00:05:15,872 --> 00:05:19,518
used cinema in an
impressionist way too.
91
00:05:20,253 --> 00:05:25,541
Like this: our restless eyes
darting around, scanning, not cutting.
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00:05:26,523 --> 00:05:29,175
This showed how people
actually see things
93
00:05:29,175 --> 00:05:32,103
and how mental images
repeat and flicker.
94
00:05:33,100 --> 00:05:37,144
This film, La Roue,
is a grand work of impressionism.
95
00:05:37,699 --> 00:05:40,884
It strangely begins with images
of its writer-producer-director,
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00:05:40,910 --> 00:05:42,319
Abel Gance.
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00:05:43,104 --> 00:05:46,191
Then tells the story
of a complex love triangle.
98
00:05:47,264 --> 00:05:50,214
One of the men
in the triangle falls off a cliff.
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00:05:50,751 --> 00:05:53,051
The woman he loves
runs to save him.
100
00:05:53,474 --> 00:05:55,187
We feel fear for him.
101
00:05:57,300 --> 00:05:59,052
But then his own fear
makes images
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00:05:59,052 --> 00:06:01,998
of his beloved
flash in his inner eye.
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00:06:08,676 --> 00:06:10,358
We're inside his head.
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00:06:11,068 --> 00:06:13,776
The movie screen becomes
his inner eye.
105
00:06:14,830 --> 00:06:17,666
Romantic cinema had many
cliffhangers of course,
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00:06:17,666 --> 00:06:20,507
but its images
always had to be readable.
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00:06:20,890 --> 00:06:24,810
Here, some of Gance's
shots last just one frame.
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00:06:25,047 --> 00:06:28,575
Far too fast for us to take
them in one by one.
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00:06:29,079 --> 00:06:33,936
They flash past, giving us
an impression of his final moments.
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00:06:39,451 --> 00:06:42,012
The poet and filmmaker
Jean Cocteau later said,
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00:06:42,012 --> 00:06:45,754
'there is cinema before
and after La Roue,
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00:06:45,754 --> 00:06:49,367
just as there is painting
before and after Picasso.'
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00:06:49,686 --> 00:06:52,112
The Soviet directors Vsevolod
Pudovkin, Sergei M. Eisenstein
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00:06:52,112 --> 00:06:55,307
and Aleksandr Dovzhenko
studied it in Moscow.
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00:06:56,056 --> 00:06:58,120
But Gance hadn't yet peaked.
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00:06:58,934 --> 00:07:02,456
In the following four years,
he wrote, directed, and edited
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00:07:02,456 --> 00:07:06,474
a 4-hour impressionist film
about the early life
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00:07:06,500 --> 00:07:08,940
of Napoleon Bonaparte, the
French revolutionary,
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00:07:08,940 --> 00:07:11,147
national leader, and militarist.
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00:07:11,586 --> 00:07:14,576
Portraying its main
character as a tragic hero
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00:07:14,576 --> 00:07:19,376
and making mainstream romantic
cinema look static in comparison.
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00:07:20,540 --> 00:07:24,159
To capture the dynamism
of the man, his fistfights
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00:07:24,185 --> 00:07:27,848
and horserides and
battlecharges and storms at sea,
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00:07:27,855 --> 00:07:31,369
Gance rethought
the camera's relationship to movement.
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00:07:31,682 --> 00:07:34,615
Gance had a fur-covered sponge
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00:07:34,641 --> 00:07:37,065
mounted around the lens
so that the boys
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00:07:37,065 --> 00:07:40,334
could punch right up
to it and not get hurt.
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00:07:43,129 --> 00:07:46,249
In the first scenes of Napoleon,
as a young man in Corsica,
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00:07:46,249 --> 00:07:49,617
Gance attached a compressed
air powered camera
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00:07:49,617 --> 00:07:54,481
to the saddle of a horse
to capture Bonaparte's kinetic energy.
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00:07:58,937 --> 00:08:03,101
How would Gance top such dynamism
at the climax of the movie,
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00:08:03,101 --> 00:08:09,301
when Napoleon enters Italy,
a landgrab which the film fails to condemn?
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00:08:10,073 --> 00:08:12,496
How would he outdo
the epic imagery
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00:08:12,496 --> 00:08:15,563
and grand sets of
Pastrone's, Cabiria,
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00:08:15,563 --> 00:08:19,291
and D.W. Griffith's, Intolerance,
which had come before?
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00:08:20,829 --> 00:08:22,285
Here's the answer.
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00:08:22,806 --> 00:08:26,557
He filmed with three cameras
mounted on top of each other,
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00:08:26,583 --> 00:08:28,983
each pointing
in a slightly different direction.
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00:08:29,616 --> 00:08:33,318
Audiences had to turn their heads
to see the whole spectacle.
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00:08:41,569 --> 00:08:43,684
Napoleon had its
world premiere here,
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00:08:43,684 --> 00:08:45,110
the Paris opera.
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00:08:45,714 --> 00:08:50,520
The Los Angeles times called it,
' the measure for all other films, ever'.
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00:08:52,376 --> 00:08:56,756
But, despite such acclaim,
it was shown infrequently.
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00:08:57,479 --> 00:09:00,990
In 1979, after a mammoth restoration
of the negative
145
00:09:00,990 --> 00:09:04,612
by British historian
Kevin Brownlow,
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00:09:04,639 --> 00:09:07,742
Napoleon was triumphantly
screened here,
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00:09:07,742 --> 00:09:10,931
at the Telluride film festival
in Colorado.
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00:09:11,474 --> 00:09:15,388
Gance, then aged 89,
traveled to the screening,
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00:09:15,414 --> 00:09:20,618
and watched the film from his hotel room
across the street from the outdoor cinema.
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00:09:22,018 --> 00:09:26,676
The last time he saw his masterpiece
of impressionist filmmaking.
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00:09:34,707 --> 00:09:37,552
In Germany,
in the late 1910s and '20s,
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00:09:37,552 --> 00:09:42,611
the fourth innovative challenge
to mainstream romantic cinema emerged.
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00:09:46,999 --> 00:09:50,205
Directors wanted to show deeper
aspects of the human mind
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00:09:50,205 --> 00:09:53,278
than the French impressionism
of Abel Gance.
155
00:09:55,356 --> 00:09:58,216
Influenced by the so-called
expressionist painters
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00:09:58,216 --> 00:10:02,177
and theatre designers, whose work
was jagged like a broken mirror,
157
00:10:02,177 --> 00:10:05,304
they began making
expressionist films.
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00:10:11,469 --> 00:10:13,245
Less than 30 were made,
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00:10:13,271 --> 00:10:15,940
but they were exported
all around the world.
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00:10:16,450 --> 00:10:19,635
Germany had just been
defeated in an appalling war
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00:10:19,635 --> 00:10:24,614
but, because it closed its borders
to foreign films in 1916,
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00:10:24,614 --> 00:10:27,809
its home grown film industry
was stimulated.
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00:10:31,912 --> 00:10:34,513
The most influential of
the expressionist movies
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00:10:34,513 --> 00:10:37,672
was this one,
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
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00:10:38,257 --> 00:10:40,125
Directed by Robert Wiene,
166
00:10:40,125 --> 00:10:43,198
which was made
before Chaplin's first feature,
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00:10:43,198 --> 00:10:46,213
or the accession
of emperor Hirohito in Japan.
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00:10:47,219 --> 00:10:51,770
It was full of fear,
haunting murders, graphic rooms.
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00:10:59,335 --> 00:11:03,578
Where studio filmmakers filmed indoors,
excluding daylight,
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00:11:03,604 --> 00:11:05,937
and Scandinavians
did the opposite,
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00:11:05,963 --> 00:11:09,755
director Wiene and his chief designer,
Hermann Warm,
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00:11:09,781 --> 00:11:12,724
found an apparently revolutionary
third way.
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00:11:13,499 --> 00:11:16,073
They flooded their set
with flat light
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00:11:16,073 --> 00:11:19,911
and then painted shadows
directly onto the walls and floor.
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00:11:24,875 --> 00:11:28,412
Cesare, a sleepwalker
on show at fairgrounds,
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00:11:28,412 --> 00:11:33,104
murders the enemies of his master,
Dr. Caligari, at night.
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00:11:34,003 --> 00:11:36,601
This story had a political edge.
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00:11:36,857 --> 00:11:40,009
Caligari represented
the controlling German state.
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00:11:40,011 --> 00:11:44,659
Cesare represented ordinary people,
manipulated by it.
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00:11:47,161 --> 00:11:50,071
But director Wiene,
and his producer Erich Pommer,
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00:11:50,097 --> 00:11:54,130
removed the film's political bite
by adding this ending
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00:11:54,130 --> 00:11:58,906
that showed that the whole thing
was the dream of a mad man, Feher,
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00:11:58,908 --> 00:12:01,966
and that Dr. Caligari's
not evil after all
184
00:12:01,966 --> 00:12:05,151
and that the German state
doesn't control its people.
185
00:12:09,212 --> 00:12:13,600
Filming took place here,
at the Babelsberg studio near Berlin.
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00:12:15,322 --> 00:12:18,902
The film's bizarre imagery took the
question of point of view in cinema
187
00:12:18,902 --> 00:12:21,926
further even
than the French impressionists.
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00:12:22,338 --> 00:12:26,099
The film's spaces slice
like shards of glass.
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00:12:26,184 --> 00:12:30,753
Its jagged lighting showed
the extreme mental state of Feher.
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00:12:31,207 --> 00:12:34,147
Caligari has echoed
down the years.
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00:12:37,516 --> 00:12:40,810
This film, Charles Klein's
The Tell Tale Heart,
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00:12:40,810 --> 00:12:42,943
shows its direct influence.
193
00:12:45,397 --> 00:12:47,841
The seminal British
director, Alfred Hitchcock,
194
00:12:47,841 --> 00:12:51,429
who worked in Germany,
made his first important film
195
00:12:51,429 --> 00:12:56,385
The Lodger, with some
of the shadowing and hysteria of Caligari.
196
00:13:03,042 --> 00:13:06,784
But the most astonishing outgrowth
of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
197
00:13:06,784 --> 00:13:09,353
came in Japan in the early '20s.
198
00:13:09,520 --> 00:13:15,178
Former actor, Teinosuke Kinugasa,
saw it and Abel Gance's La Roue,
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00:13:15,204 --> 00:13:18,590
and then made this film,
A Page of Madness.
200
00:13:18,820 --> 00:13:20,332
This is the opening scene.
201
00:13:20,595 --> 00:13:21,555
A tempest.
202
00:13:21,703 --> 00:13:22,873
An asylum.
203
00:13:23,165 --> 00:13:26,936
Visual overlays, fast cutting
as in La Roue.
204
00:13:36,974 --> 00:13:40,116
A woman dancing
in an art deco setting.
205
00:13:40,271 --> 00:13:42,323
The woman's in the asylum.
206
00:13:43,039 --> 00:13:45,365
In complex flashbacks
we find out
207
00:13:45,392 --> 00:13:48,068
that she has tried
to drown her child.
208
00:13:48,770 --> 00:13:52,590
Her husband takes
a job in the asylum to try to help her,
209
00:13:52,590 --> 00:13:55,897
but then his mental state
deteriorates too.
210
00:13:58,121 --> 00:14:00,885
A Page of Madness goes
further than Caligari
211
00:14:00,885 --> 00:14:04,230
because it's not just the central
character who's psychotic,
212
00:14:04,230 --> 00:14:09,372
the film itself, its editing and imagery,
seems psychotic too.
213
00:14:14,404 --> 00:14:15,141
A Page of Madness
214
00:14:15,141 --> 00:14:17,877
combined the fleeting techniques
of impressionism,
215
00:14:17,877 --> 00:14:20,696
with the deep unease
of expressionism,
216
00:14:20,696 --> 00:14:26,671
and is the second great Japanese film
that exists, after Souls on the Road.
217
00:14:31,586 --> 00:14:35,380
Back in Germany, Fritz Lang,
the Viennese son of an architect,
218
00:14:35,380 --> 00:14:38,599
started making films about
the deep structure of society
219
00:14:38,599 --> 00:14:41,652
rather than the surface claims
it makes for itself.
220
00:14:43,676 --> 00:14:46,989
Lang made the most iconic film
of the silent era,
221
00:14:46,989 --> 00:14:49,936
a movie that might have been
made by an architect.
222
00:14:51,340 --> 00:14:54,211
Metropolis,
set in the year 2000,
223
00:14:54,237 --> 00:14:56,915
tells the story of clashes
between workers
224
00:14:56,915 --> 00:15:00,757
and an authoritarian industrialist
in a giant city.
225
00:15:01,746 --> 00:15:03,185
Like a fantasy New York.
226
00:15:03,751 --> 00:15:05,690
Roads and railways in the sky.
227
00:15:06,191 --> 00:15:07,838
Brilliant model shots.
228
00:15:12,122 --> 00:15:15,217
A young woman, Maria,
inspires the workers
229
00:15:15,217 --> 00:15:19,137
and is almost Christ-like,
but the industrialist builds a robot
230
00:15:19,137 --> 00:15:22,991
that looks like her
to manipulate the masses.
231
00:15:24,743 --> 00:15:28,131
The robot is a deco mannequin,
lit with flashing lights,
232
00:15:28,131 --> 00:15:30,069
symmetrically framed.
233
00:15:30,783 --> 00:15:34,583
The astonishing opening eyes
of the woman, enhanced by make-up.
234
00:15:48,301 --> 00:15:51,634
But in the end Maria
and the industrialist's son
235
00:15:51,634 --> 00:15:55,655
save the city, and workers
and owners are united.
236
00:15:56,148 --> 00:15:59,750
In a scene that seems to take place
on the steps of a cathedral.
237
00:16:06,604 --> 00:16:11,528
Lang's cityscapes and robotics,
exploitation and urban paradise,
238
00:16:11,528 --> 00:16:13,706
were profoundly influential.
239
00:16:27,375 --> 00:16:32,079
The Hollywood director,King Vidor,
loved Metropolis and, as a result,
240
00:16:32,079 --> 00:16:36,621
there are expressionist echoes
of it in his city film, The Crowd.
241
00:16:44,520 --> 00:16:46,810
Adolf Hitler liked Metropolis.
242
00:16:47,730 --> 00:16:51,112
And the inmates of the
Nazi concentration camp, Mauthausen,
243
00:16:51,112 --> 00:16:56,587
compared the huge ramp that they had to build
to this one from Metropolis.
244
00:17:04,052 --> 00:17:07,304
Metropolis was shot here,
over a year and a half,
245
00:17:07,304 --> 00:17:12,987
using 2 million feet of film
and 36,000 extras.
246
00:17:16,242 --> 00:17:20,580
Cities were scary things in the '20s,
but poetic too.
247
00:17:21,128 --> 00:17:24,126
In this expressionist masterpiece,
Sunrise,
248
00:17:24,152 --> 00:17:27,100
a man and wife walk
through the world together.
249
00:17:27,404 --> 00:17:30,267
So wrapped up in each
other they don't notice
250
00:17:30,294 --> 00:17:31,434
the traffic around them.
251
00:17:31,966 --> 00:17:33,720
The city becomes nature.
252
00:17:51,786 --> 00:17:53,385
And then city again.
253
00:17:53,858 --> 00:17:56,353
But then joy becomes tragedy.
254
00:17:56,651 --> 00:18:00,739
On the way back from the city,
the wife seems to drown in a lake.
255
00:18:01,474 --> 00:18:05,929
Grief stricken, the man blames the city,
and a woman from it.
256
00:18:06,830 --> 00:18:08,644
A woman who tried to seduce him.
257
00:18:09,126 --> 00:18:12,212
She showed him visions
of bright lights, of dancing.
258
00:18:12,765 --> 00:18:15,268
She's a symbol of greed and speed.
259
00:18:28,410 --> 00:18:31,813
Sunrise was made
by the German director F.W. Murnau,
260
00:18:31,813 --> 00:18:34,237
one of the greatest directors
who ever lived.
261
00:18:35,760 --> 00:18:38,020
This is him, the tall man
on the extreme right,
262
00:18:38,020 --> 00:18:40,163
dancing in Sunrise.
263
00:18:41,626 --> 00:18:43,175
Looking a bit awkward and shy,
264
00:18:43,177 --> 00:18:45,286
as he did in real life.
265
00:18:46,936 --> 00:18:48,510
This is where he lived.
266
00:18:49,218 --> 00:18:52,371
Although, Murnau actually
made the film in Hollywood.
267
00:18:53,745 --> 00:18:56,926
Unusually, he was offered
total freedom to do so.
268
00:18:58,943 --> 00:19:02,424
He had this gigantic city set built.
269
00:19:05,977 --> 00:19:08,457
And made the most
of the subtle lighting effects
270
00:19:08,457 --> 00:19:10,096
available in Hollywood.
271
00:19:13,279 --> 00:19:17,541
In the end, the city woman,
the symbol of modernity and avarice,
272
00:19:17,541 --> 00:19:22,494
leaves and the life of the man and wife
becomes like a German romantic painting.
273
00:19:31,105 --> 00:19:35,643
Sunrise was voted the best film
of all time by French critics.
274
00:19:37,078 --> 00:19:41,827
The French poetic realists of the 1930s
considered Murnau their master.
275
00:19:43,394 --> 00:19:47,735
He seemed to see into the human
heart more than other directors
276
00:19:47,735 --> 00:19:49,771
and make haunting visual .
277
00:19:55,308 --> 00:19:59,140
Murnau died in a car crash
in California in 1931.
278
00:19:59,528 --> 00:20:01,695
This is his death mask.
279
00:20:08,226 --> 00:20:10,654
In both Germany and France in the '20s,
280
00:20:10,680 --> 00:20:12,839
movies had become
intellectually fashionable.
281
00:20:13,148 --> 00:20:15,729
They were all the rage
in art schools.
282
00:20:16,380 --> 00:20:20,268
And so it's no surprise
that experimental artists and filmmakers
283
00:20:20,268 --> 00:20:23,614
pushed movies even further
away from the Hollywood norms
284
00:20:23,614 --> 00:20:25,424
than German expressionism.
285
00:20:26,986 --> 00:20:31,617
They were the fifth set of rebels
to challenge conventional cinema
286
00:20:31,617 --> 00:20:33,680
in the '20s and '30s.
287
00:20:35,982 --> 00:20:39,654
Walter Ruttman's Opus 1
looked like biology.
288
00:20:39,889 --> 00:20:43,069
He painted on glass,
filmed the result,
289
00:20:43,069 --> 00:20:46,878
wiped the wet paint,
added more, and filmed again.
290
00:20:47,628 --> 00:20:50,427
One of the first abstract
animations.
291
00:20:56,997 --> 00:21:00,836
Dada was an art movement
of mockery, anarchy, comedy.
292
00:21:02,179 --> 00:21:07,722
In 1924 the dadaist, Francis Picabia,
commissioned this film, Entr'act
293
00:21:08,107 --> 00:21:10,178
to play in the
interval in a ballet.
294
00:21:10,902 --> 00:21:13,621
Rene Clair, the former journalist
who made it,
295
00:21:13,621 --> 00:21:16,543
put the camera in places
that a conventional ballet
296
00:21:16,543 --> 00:21:17,725
could only dream of.
297
00:21:18,876 --> 00:21:23,021
Right underneath the dancer,
or at the barrel of a dancing Cannon.
298
00:21:24,348 --> 00:21:27,941
Said Picabia of the result,
'it respects nothing
299
00:21:27,967 --> 00:21:30,751
but the desire
to burst out laughing.'
300
00:21:35,440 --> 00:21:38,536
Also in France, the Brazilian,
Alberto Cavalcanti,
301
00:21:38,536 --> 00:21:41,372
made this haunting
experimental film.
302
00:21:42,185 --> 00:21:45,295
It was about seeing
a city, its ordinary life,
303
00:21:45,295 --> 00:21:47,888
the power of imagery
to reveal and evoke.
304
00:21:48,797 --> 00:21:52,427
Nearly 20 years later,
the surrealist Salvador Dali
305
00:21:52,453 --> 00:21:56,091
used its imagery of multiple eyes,
in a dream sequence
306
00:21:56,091 --> 00:21:59,512
he designed for Alfred Hitchcock's
film Spellbound.
307
00:21:59,755 --> 00:22:01,246
It seemed to be
a gambling house.
308
00:22:03,331 --> 00:22:05,913
But there weren't any walls,
just a lot of curtains
309
00:22:05,913 --> 00:22:07,098
with eyes painted on them.
310
00:22:10,180 --> 00:22:15,227
Back in 1926, Dali had spent three years
talking about dreams and desires
311
00:22:15,227 --> 00:22:18,957
with Luis Bunuel, a Spanish son
of landowners.
312
00:22:19,683 --> 00:22:22,632
Inspired by this conversation,
they wrote a screenplay
313
00:22:22,632 --> 00:22:26,888
for this film, Un Chien Andalou,
directed by Bunuel.
314
00:22:29,544 --> 00:22:32,718
It starts with an image
of Bunuel smoking.
315
00:22:34,077 --> 00:22:35,633
He has a cut throat razor.
316
00:22:35,955 --> 00:22:38,885
He sees a cloud going
across the moon
317
00:22:38,885 --> 00:22:43,517
and either he, or the film,
imagines it as something else.
318
00:22:43,955 --> 00:22:46,167
The razor cutting a woman's eye.
319
00:22:52,232 --> 00:22:54,552
A shocking free association.
320
00:22:55,052 --> 00:22:57,832
An attempt to show
how the unconscious works.
321
00:22:58,062 --> 00:23:01,397
Then a man, dressed as a woman,
falls off his bike.
322
00:23:04,584 --> 00:23:05,902
He's been carrying a box.
323
00:23:08,445 --> 00:23:09,726
This is the box.
324
00:23:19,254 --> 00:23:22,306
The man appears to the woman
whose eye has been sliced.
325
00:23:22,834 --> 00:23:24,789
Ants are coming out of his hand.
326
00:23:25,265 --> 00:23:29,331
Dissolve to a woman's armpit
and then a sea urchin.
327
00:23:30,044 --> 00:23:33,122
These last three shots are
again free associations:
328
00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:37,930
holes, hair, maybe excitement
and fear about sex.
329
00:23:38,988 --> 00:23:41,842
This was a wildly innovative way
of editing.
330
00:23:43,052 --> 00:23:45,416
Un Chien Andalou
was a direct influence
331
00:23:45,442 --> 00:23:49,316
on several later films including
David Lynch's Blue Velvet,
332
00:23:49,316 --> 00:23:54,609
especially this strange erotic discovery
of an ant-covered ear.
333
00:24:02,648 --> 00:24:07,604
Bunuel's next film, the feature length
L'Age d'or, is still shocking.
334
00:24:08,196 --> 00:24:11,411
A man and a woman are trying
to make love in the mud.
335
00:24:11,413 --> 00:24:14,763
A crowd of bourgeois people
and clergy stops them.
336
00:24:24,809 --> 00:24:30,109
Then the man seems to have
an image of the woman, on a toilet.
337
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:38,156
The toilet roll seems to burn.
338
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:41,893
Dissolve to lava.
339
00:24:56,550 --> 00:24:58,070
Back to the man.
340
00:25:02,684 --> 00:25:06,684
The film was premiered here on
December the 3rd, 1930.
341
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:11,302
Members of the fascist league of
patriots hurled ink at the screen,
342
00:25:11,329 --> 00:25:12,777
and attacked the audience.
343
00:25:12,954 --> 00:25:16,156
A Spanish newspaper called
it, 'the new poison
344
00:25:16,156 --> 00:25:19,954
which judaism and masonry
want to use in order
345
00:25:19,954 --> 00:25:21,748
to corrupt the people.'
346
00:25:22,489 --> 00:25:25,688
It was out of distribution
for 50 years.
347
00:25:27,752 --> 00:25:31,229
If Bunuel and L'Age d'or
completely rejected the content
348
00:25:31,255 --> 00:25:34,655
of romantic cinema,
our sixth set of dissidents
349
00:25:34,655 --> 00:25:36,983
completely rejected its form.
350
00:25:52,717 --> 00:25:55,130
They were the most manic
of them all.
351
00:26:01,149 --> 00:26:03,394
In two revolutions,
Russia dashed
352
00:26:03,420 --> 00:26:05,573
to what it thought
was modernity.
353
00:26:05,579 --> 00:26:11,241
Tried to make society more equal,
and violently removed its old ruling class.
354
00:26:11,682 --> 00:26:13,738
It set life in a spin.
355
00:26:14,683 --> 00:26:19,052
One of the children of the revolution,
an early whizz kid, Dziga Vertov,
356
00:26:19,052 --> 00:26:23,415
whose name means spinning top,
made this newsreel.
357
00:26:28,463 --> 00:26:32,965
The camera attached to the train,
worshipping the work of peasants.
358
00:26:36,818 --> 00:26:40,237
The new boss of the Soviet Union,
V.I. Lenin, said,
359
00:26:40,237 --> 00:26:44,513
'of all the arts, for us,
cinema is the most important.'
360
00:26:45,582 --> 00:26:50,705
Take a bow Sergei Eisenstein,
that art's most brilliant innovator.
361
00:26:53,006 --> 00:26:54,742
This is his first film.
362
00:26:54,744 --> 00:26:57,740
Actors perform,
mug for the camera.
363
00:27:03,861 --> 00:27:07,517
Eisenstein was one of the most
complex people in the story of film.
364
00:27:08,149 --> 00:27:10,431
He was a marxist on the outside.
365
00:27:10,408 --> 00:27:13,226
And an engineer too.
366
00:27:13,252 --> 00:27:15,814
And perhaps a Christian
inside that.
367
00:27:17,212 --> 00:27:18,533
And Jewish.
368
00:27:19,059 --> 00:27:20,440
And bisexual.
369
00:27:21,033 --> 00:27:24,066
He made this film
about a mutiny on a battleship.
370
00:27:24,630 --> 00:27:28,739
The mutineer's supporters
on land come to pay their respects.
371
00:27:30,034 --> 00:27:32,531
Then the military opens fire.
372
00:27:32,854 --> 00:27:36,763
Eisenstein asked himself how
he could show the horror of the murder.
373
00:27:37,721 --> 00:27:41,390
It's said that he was eating
a cherry, and threw away the stone.
374
00:27:42,904 --> 00:27:46,035
It's bouncing down steps
gave him an idea.
375
00:27:52,303 --> 00:27:56,371
Steps, he thought, are like
the world tilted forwards,
376
00:27:56,371 --> 00:27:57,866
to form a stage.
377
00:27:58,278 --> 00:28:02,529
Eisenstein decided to film
the murder on such a stage.
378
00:28:03,111 --> 00:28:06,828
He'd cascade the murdered people
down the steps.
379
00:28:07,711 --> 00:28:10,766
He'd studied landmine technology
and so said that he needed
380
00:28:10,766 --> 00:28:13,581
a moment to detonate the murder.
381
00:28:14,556 --> 00:28:15,980
This is what he came up with.
382
00:28:16,392 --> 00:28:17,651
A huge caption.
383
00:28:18,584 --> 00:28:21,898
Three fast shots
of a women's head ricocheting.
384
00:28:25,182 --> 00:28:26,458
An umbrella.
385
00:28:37,257 --> 00:28:39,969
A fall shot
with a hand held camera.
386
00:28:47,382 --> 00:28:49,952
The camera on a Dolly
beside the steps.
387
00:28:52,370 --> 00:28:56,066
Shots lasting, on an average,
just 3 seconds.
388
00:28:56,164 --> 00:29:00,366
In American cinema in the '20s,
shots averaged 5 seconds,
389
00:29:00,366 --> 00:29:02,933
in Germany 9 seconds.
390
00:29:03,849 --> 00:29:06,983
Eisenstein cast this boy,
asked him to fall.
391
00:29:07,281 --> 00:29:10,541
In real life the boy was
a goal keeper, so was good at falling.
392
00:29:13,123 --> 00:29:14,733
His mother realizes.
393
00:29:15,062 --> 00:29:17,118
Her delayed reaction
of the horror.
394
00:29:17,603 --> 00:29:20,692
Her face is a myth,
a mask, primal.
395
00:29:26,505 --> 00:29:28,634
And then this horrific moment.
396
00:29:42,529 --> 00:29:44,367
And then this strange shot.
397
00:29:44,625 --> 00:29:47,005
She walks in
a corridor of light.
398
00:29:53,217 --> 00:29:56,233
The camera's mostly been on the
left, near the bottom of the steps,
399
00:29:56,259 --> 00:29:57,575
but then it's here.
400
00:29:57,978 --> 00:29:58,858
Top right.
401
00:29:59,393 --> 00:30:01,249
A mother out of D.W. Griffith.
402
00:30:01,683 --> 00:30:06,271
Eisenstein adored Griffith.
403
00:30:06,273 --> 00:30:08,089
Her pram teeters.
404
00:30:08,288 --> 00:30:10,076
Her dying body pushes it.
405
00:30:10,436 --> 00:30:12,482
It becomes
like the cherry stone.
406
00:30:12,484 --> 00:30:14,771
Falls through the killing field.
407
00:30:25,239 --> 00:30:29,227
It's hard to stop your heart racing
at the Odessa steps sequence.
408
00:30:29,232 --> 00:30:30,131
It's panic.
409
00:30:30,609 --> 00:30:32,849
Which is what Eisenstein wanted.
410
00:30:37,389 --> 00:30:41,230
He called what we've just seen
the "montage of attractions."
411
00:30:45,408 --> 00:30:48,231
When we look
at the Odessa step sequence on screen,
412
00:30:48,231 --> 00:30:51,224
the army stepping
on the boy moves us.
413
00:30:51,525 --> 00:30:54,682
It leaps from the screen to us.
414
00:30:55,088 --> 00:30:57,115
Seeing the pram moves us.
415
00:30:57,413 --> 00:31:00,891
The emotions come
from the screen to us.
416
00:31:01,974 --> 00:31:05,781
In our heads the two things collide
and create the idea of innocence
417
00:31:05,781 --> 00:31:08,393
slaughtered by the state,
the tzar.
418
00:31:08,748 --> 00:31:11,111
1 1=3.
419
00:31:12,664 --> 00:31:16,290
Eisenstein says that he ploughed
the mind of the audience.
420
00:31:18,131 --> 00:31:20,950
Battleship Potemkin premiered
in this cinema.
421
00:31:20,976 --> 00:31:24,344
Built in 1909.
One of the oldest in the world.
422
00:31:25,715 --> 00:31:28,218
The film took the world
by storm.
423
00:31:28,804 --> 00:31:31,050
Charlie Chaplin loved it.
424
00:31:32,227 --> 00:31:34,069
This is Eisenstein's stuff.
425
00:31:38,178 --> 00:31:40,661
Walt Disney admired Eisenstein.
426
00:31:41,390 --> 00:31:45,942
62 years later, Brian De Palma paid
homage to the Odessa steps sequence
427
00:31:45,942 --> 00:31:49,378
in his violent American
film The Untouchables.
428
00:31:50,257 --> 00:31:52,902
The same pram,
a distraught mother.
429
00:31:53,098 --> 00:31:56,640
We don't hear her screams,
as if the film is silent.
430
00:32:01,581 --> 00:32:03,313
Splintered editing.
431
00:32:06,824 --> 00:32:09,796
Shots only a few seconds long,
like Eisenstein.
432
00:32:10,354 --> 00:32:10,957
Peril.
433
00:32:11,339 --> 00:32:13,688
Shooting down a grand staircase.
434
00:32:23,099 --> 00:32:26,483
Some say that Eisenstein's movies
justify violence.
435
00:32:26,483 --> 00:32:29,836
But the keeper of his flame,
historian Naum Kleiman,
436
00:32:29,836 --> 00:32:33,100
surrounded by Eisenstein's books,
disagrees.
437
00:32:33,589 --> 00:32:36,505
What Eisenstein did also
with Potemkin
438
00:32:36,531 --> 00:32:41,865
is not a kind of call
for revolutionaries.
439
00:32:42,190 --> 00:32:45,579
It was a very vulgar interpretation
in the '30s.
440
00:32:46,966 --> 00:32:50,041
That Eisenstein teaches
how to make revolution.
441
00:32:50,041 --> 00:32:57,044
Just opposite for him,
brotherhood is a law for existence.
442
00:32:58,054 --> 00:33:08,942
And this film is a result
of this idea of happiness
443
00:33:08,968 --> 00:33:14,166
on the earth and
also peaceful life.
444
00:33:14,787 --> 00:33:16,614
And of the "violence."
445
00:33:16,614 --> 00:33:20,352
This is actually...
The film is against violence in any form.
446
00:33:23,356 --> 00:33:27,557
And if propaganda
then for brotherhood, but not for hate.
447
00:33:30,182 --> 00:33:32,066
The humanism of Eisenstein.
448
00:33:33,112 --> 00:33:35,687
A humanism that's hard
to miss really.
449
00:33:35,993 --> 00:33:40,418
Eisenstein spotted humanism
in another great Soviet director of the '20s.
450
00:33:41,463 --> 00:33:46,945
One night he went to a premiere of a film
by this Ukrainian: Aleksandr Dovzhenko.
451
00:33:50,324 --> 00:33:55,261
As the film finished, Eisenstein said,
"mama. What goes on here?!"
452
00:33:56,284 --> 00:33:59,677
Here's what goes on in
Dovzhenko's film Arsenal.
453
00:34:00,260 --> 00:34:04,230
It's set at a complex time
in Ukrainian political history.
454
00:34:04,641 --> 00:34:05,601
There's a war.
455
00:34:05,854 --> 00:34:09,846
Women stand motionless
in the sunshine in dead villages.
456
00:34:20,994 --> 00:34:25,352
It's like the women can hear
the song of war inside their heads.
457
00:34:33,316 --> 00:34:36,311
A German goes mad
with laughing gas.
458
00:34:38,916 --> 00:34:43,708
An astonishing image of a soldier dead,
half buried but smiling.
459
00:34:59,495 --> 00:35:04,396
Here's the greatest modern Russian director,
Aleksandr Sokurov, on Dovzhenko.
460
00:36:01,729 --> 00:36:05,052
Here's the original screenplay
of Dovzhenko's film Arsenal.
461
00:36:05,386 --> 00:36:10,084
It's still housed in VGIK,
the film school where Eisenstein taught.
462
00:36:10,363 --> 00:36:12,488
In this very room.
463
00:36:16,247 --> 00:36:19,310
Lenin died of course,
and Stalin came along,
464
00:36:19,310 --> 00:36:23,449
and the spinning, winning brilliance
of Soviet editing died too.
465
00:36:26,333 --> 00:36:29,050
Eisenstein went on
to create more masterpieces.
466
00:36:29,052 --> 00:36:31,875
Then he died in 1948.
467
00:36:38,834 --> 00:36:41,324
The seventh challenge to
the Hollywood bauble,
468
00:36:41,324 --> 00:36:44,985
to romantic entertainment cinema
in the '20s and early '30s,
469
00:36:44,985 --> 00:36:47,819
comes from a completely
different world.
470
00:36:47,854 --> 00:36:49,145
The floating world.
471
00:36:49,488 --> 00:36:50,699
Japan.
472
00:37:16,303 --> 00:37:20,383
Japan fought most of the world
in the 1930s and '40s and,
473
00:37:20,383 --> 00:37:23,555
in its arrogance,
killed millions.
474
00:37:26,745 --> 00:37:29,738
As if to compensate,
as if in horror,
475
00:37:29,738 --> 00:37:34,708
its movie makers made
the most humanistic films of their times.
476
00:37:36,748 --> 00:37:39,991
The most challenging of the films
were made by the gentle rebel
477
00:37:39,991 --> 00:37:42,884
who's buried in this grave,
outside Tokyo.
478
00:37:44,804 --> 00:37:48,356
People cross the globe,
as we did, to get here.
479
00:37:49,569 --> 00:37:51,803
As you can see
they leave whiskey and wine
480
00:37:51,803 --> 00:37:54,324
because the person
who lies here was a drunk.
481
00:37:54,874 --> 00:37:58,055
There's no name on the grave,
no date of birth or death.
482
00:37:58,632 --> 00:38:03,669
Just the Japanese character 'mu',
nothingness, the void.
483
00:38:07,225 --> 00:38:09,866
The man who's buried
here, Yasujiro Ozu,
484
00:38:09,866 --> 00:38:13,591
was a kind of philosopher,
but more importantly,
485
00:38:13,591 --> 00:38:16,720
perhaps the greatest director
who ever lived.
486
00:38:18,938 --> 00:38:21,545
No interview footage
of Ozu exists.
487
00:38:21,545 --> 00:38:25,710
He didn't marry, never worked
in a factory and didn't go to university.
488
00:38:26,223 --> 00:38:30,955
Yet for 30 years he made films
about the calm lives of married people,
489
00:38:30,955 --> 00:38:33,750
factory workers and students.
490
00:38:35,353 --> 00:38:37,430
He's thought of
as a very serious director,
491
00:38:37,430 --> 00:38:40,309
yet the first movie
in which his mature style emerged,
492
00:38:40,309 --> 00:38:43,464
this one, I was Born, But...
[Otona no miru ehon - Umarete wa mita keredo]
493
00:38:43,474 --> 00:38:47,922
is an exquisite, zingy comedy
about two boys: Brothers.
494
00:38:49,096 --> 00:38:51,225
Naturalistic performances.
495
00:38:51,227 --> 00:38:54,604
Filmed on a low tripod,
at the boys' height.
496
00:38:58,720 --> 00:39:00,430
They move to a new suburb.
497
00:39:00,432 --> 00:39:03,310
The existing gang of boys
squares up against them.
498
00:39:03,571 --> 00:39:06,400
A battle of wills
in a boyhood universe.
499
00:39:27,083 --> 00:39:29,833
The brothers think
that their dad's a great man,
500
00:39:29,835 --> 00:39:32,697
but then they see him
in an amateur film.
501
00:39:32,859 --> 00:39:34,780
Goofing for his boss.
502
00:39:34,981 --> 00:39:36,251
An ordinary Joe.
503
00:39:36,435 --> 00:39:37,433
Humiliated.
504
00:39:37,991 --> 00:39:40,550
This turns their lives
upside down.
505
00:39:48,363 --> 00:39:50,062
They go on hunger strike.
506
00:39:53,897 --> 00:39:56,979
Legendary critic and filmmaker
Donald Ritchie:
507
00:39:57,492 --> 00:40:00,117
I was born, but...
is a 1932 film
508
00:40:00,117 --> 00:40:04,516
and it's a silent film
and they're very extremely rare.
509
00:40:04,516 --> 00:40:09,244
Almost all the... I would say
about 90% of all silent film has
510
00:40:09,270 --> 00:40:13,596
been destroyed in Japan
by natural causes: the earthquake,
511
00:40:13,604 --> 00:40:17,259
or by unnatural causes
like the bombing of Tokyo.
512
00:40:17,552 --> 00:40:20,687
Ozu said himself that
it was supposed to be a comedy
513
00:40:20,687 --> 00:40:23,564
but it came out
sort of dark, says Ozu.
514
00:40:24,152 --> 00:40:29,606
And so, this extraordinarily honest
film which tells a lot about society,
515
00:40:29,606 --> 00:40:38,197
a lot about kids, a lot about fathers,
is something where the balance is so right.
516
00:40:38,514 --> 00:40:40,945
That of course,
it's a masterpiece!
517
00:40:41,572 --> 00:40:44,958
That's one of the many ironies
of the film is that the boys have adjusted.
518
00:40:44,958 --> 00:40:46,826
The boys could adjust
to anything.
519
00:40:46,826 --> 00:40:51,110
They adjusted to their empty stomachs
and they ate their breakfast.
520
00:40:51,623 --> 00:40:54,250
They adjust
to their father's being an idiot.
521
00:40:54,250 --> 00:40:55,645
They adjusted to that.
522
00:40:56,089 --> 00:40:59,704
They are starting to adjust
to the ways of the adult world,
523
00:40:59,704 --> 00:41:05,182
which is, their father's told them
is a false world to live in.
524
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:07,833
They'll probably
never question it again.
525
00:41:08,415 --> 00:41:11,359
That's what we saw
is the last of their innocence.
526
00:41:12,121 --> 00:41:14,858
They are becoming equipped
for society now.
527
00:41:15,476 --> 00:41:17,103
"Which is heartbreaking?"
528
00:41:18,244 --> 00:41:22,704
Yeah, because society
isn't worth all that.
529
00:41:23,353 --> 00:41:25,050
And Ozu seems to be telling us
530
00:41:25,076 --> 00:41:29,152
that this kind of innocence
exemplified by the boys,
531
00:41:29,152 --> 00:41:33,832
is precious, and that would be one
of the reasons it doesn't last.'
532
00:41:34,675 --> 00:41:39,189
The boys discover what Japan itself
was about to discover in World War II.
533
00:41:39,540 --> 00:41:42,497
That the emperor is just
an ordinary man.
534
00:41:45,057 --> 00:41:47,474
Ozu was the great de-throner.
535
00:41:48,146 --> 00:41:51,964
Unlike Akira Kurosawa,
he didn't believe in heroes.
536
00:41:52,240 --> 00:41:54,161
Very un-Hollywood.
537
00:41:55,966 --> 00:41:58,950
The boys see that people
are merely decent.
538
00:41:59,746 --> 00:42:03,373
Resignation and disappointment
are a part of growing up.
539
00:42:04,644 --> 00:42:07,081
Ozu is brilliant at
what it feels like to grow up,
540
00:42:07,081 --> 00:42:09,841
what the Japanese
call "mono no aware,"
541
00:42:09,841 --> 00:42:12,113
the sadness of time passing.
542
00:42:13,613 --> 00:42:16,799
Here's Kyoko Kagawa,
Japan's legendary actress,
543
00:42:16,799 --> 00:42:20,796
who worked for Kurosawa,
Mizoguchi, Naruse, and Ozu,
544
00:42:20,796 --> 00:42:25,465
who famously framed her in mid shot,
almost looking at the camera.
545
00:42:28,787 --> 00:42:33,733
Kagawa played the youngest daughter
in Ozu's most acclaimed film, Tokyo story.
546
00:42:34,515 --> 00:42:39,748
Late in the film, the mother takes ill
and the daughter fans her to cool her body.
547
00:43:46,069 --> 00:43:49,036
Kagawa's story gets us
to the crux of Ozu.
548
00:43:49,353 --> 00:43:53,325
He used film like
no other director before or since.
549
00:43:58,277 --> 00:44:01,777
It was the norm in the '30s
to have the camera at this height.
550
00:44:02,377 --> 00:44:05,123
Filming from hip height
rather than shoulder height
551
00:44:05,123 --> 00:44:07,556
put the camera at the
body's center of gravity
552
00:44:07,556 --> 00:44:12,152
and, therefore, gave the image
a better feeling of balance.
553
00:44:14,688 --> 00:44:16,930
This seldom happened in cinema.
554
00:44:17,312 --> 00:44:21,409
In the '70s, Belgian Chantal Akerman's
groundbreaking film Jeanne Dielman
555
00:44:21,435 --> 00:44:25,327
was one of the few movies
which used Ozu's camera height.
556
00:44:26,020 --> 00:44:29,108
And this was only the start
of Ozu's innovations.
557
00:44:29,799 --> 00:44:34,905
As we have seen, actors' eye lines
in mainstream cinema were usually like this
558
00:44:34,905 --> 00:44:39,611
but in Ozu movies
they were often here.
559
00:44:43,177 --> 00:44:47,181
In conventional films
when actors talked to each other,
560
00:44:47,207 --> 00:44:51,258
the camera would usually be
at this angle to them, about 45 degrees.
561
00:44:51,853 --> 00:44:53,698
This, as we have seen,
was to make it look
562
00:44:53,724 --> 00:44:57,938
as if the actor's eyes
connected across the cut.
563
00:44:58,451 --> 00:45:01,539
Ozu put his camera right round
between the actors,
564
00:45:01,539 --> 00:45:04,560
into the scene at 90 degrees.
565
00:45:05,912 --> 00:45:08,792
The actors didn't seem
to quite look at each others,
566
00:45:08,792 --> 00:45:13,025
but the compostion of the images
matched each other visually.
567
00:45:15,501 --> 00:45:18,837
Ozu was very interested
in matching his shots,
568
00:45:18,837 --> 00:45:23,535
whether they were of human beings
or , say, interiors, in a house,
569
00:45:23,535 --> 00:45:25,239
looking down a corridor.
570
00:45:26,294 --> 00:45:31,389
The more you watch, the more you feel
the order of the space in his movies.
571
00:45:31,395 --> 00:45:36,450
His frames were windows
on very balanced pictorial worlds.
572
00:45:37,538 --> 00:45:41,200
It follows that Ozu hated
the human body to break the frame
573
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:46,150
and so he filmed from far enough back
to ensure that if someone stood up,
574
00:45:46,150 --> 00:45:48,923
their head didn't disappear like this.
575
00:45:50,124 --> 00:45:53,153
And he used lenses of
about 50 millimeters,
576
00:45:53,153 --> 00:45:56,816
so that faces or spaces
weren't overly bulging,
577
00:45:56,816 --> 00:46:00,783
as happens on a 20
or 30 millimeter lens.
578
00:46:07,213 --> 00:46:09,946
And he added pauses
in his films.
579
00:46:10,402 --> 00:46:13,593
This boiling kettle,
doesn't just give the story a breather.
580
00:46:13,837 --> 00:46:16,346
It gives the space
a breather too.
581
00:46:16,613 --> 00:46:19,530
It adds a moment
of compositional emptiness.
582
00:46:19,683 --> 00:46:24,415
"Mu," the void, just as it says
on his grave.
583
00:46:28,261 --> 00:46:32,183
Ozu, like the renaissance artists,
was interested in centering
584
00:46:32,183 --> 00:46:38,144
the human body, and, like the Buddhists,
in decentering the human ego.
585
00:46:40,106 --> 00:46:42,384
And as a result,
his movies are far away
586
00:46:42,384 --> 00:46:45,886
from the straining
emotional romanticism of Hollywood.
587
00:46:48,886 --> 00:46:52,506
They're the most balanced
in movie history.
588
00:46:55,492 --> 00:46:58,632
It's hard to imagine any American director
getting away with breaking the rules
589
00:46:58,658 --> 00:47:03,352
of filmmaking so completely,
so how does Ozu get away with it?
590
00:47:04,993 --> 00:47:08,068
Part of the answer lies in the fact
that the Japanese studio system
591
00:47:08,068 --> 00:47:13,750
was in the 1920s and '30s,
director-, rather than producer-led.
592
00:47:32,430 --> 00:47:36,531
These are the very rooms
in Toho studio where a future director,
593
00:47:36,531 --> 00:47:42,987
Akira Kurosawa, planned his seminal film,
The seven Samurai, in the 1950s.
594
00:47:44,530 --> 00:47:47,384
This man built some of his sets.
595
00:47:54,945 --> 00:48:00,283
Studios like these were what Orson Welles
called the biggest train set in the world.
596
00:48:10,653 --> 00:48:16,746
Ozu, not a producer, would have called
the shots in such spaces too.
597
00:48:33,712 --> 00:48:38,178
Another of Japan's great innovative directors
who worked at the same time as Ozu,
598
00:48:38,178 --> 00:48:42,820
and whose best work comes
from the '30s and onwards was Kenji Mizoguchi.
599
00:48:46,969 --> 00:48:50,202
Mizoguchi's attitude was
bang up to date modern.
600
00:48:50,644 --> 00:48:54,726
He attacked the arrogance of Japan,
especially the noble pretentions
601
00:48:54,726 --> 00:48:58,487
of the samurai and focused
instead on Japanese women
602
00:48:58,487 --> 00:49:00,512
whose lives were made a misery.
603
00:49:01,206 --> 00:49:05,778
This film, for example, is about Ayako,
a telephone operator,
604
00:49:05,804 --> 00:49:08,404
who for money reasons, is
forced into prostitution
605
00:49:08,404 --> 00:49:10,697
and is employed as a geisha.
606
00:49:11,669 --> 00:49:14,248
The topic was very personal
for Mizoguchi.
607
00:49:14,378 --> 00:49:19,250
He grew up in real poverty
and his sister was sold to a geisha house.
608
00:49:20,338 --> 00:49:24,012
What's striking here is the boldness
of the staging of the scene.
609
00:49:24,316 --> 00:49:29,843
Ayako is in the extreme foreground,
yet there's action in the far background.
610
00:49:30,133 --> 00:49:34,497
Such staging was very rare
at the time and comes 5 years before
611
00:49:34,497 --> 00:49:38,476
Orson Welles' similar
staging in Citizen Kane.
612
00:49:40,789 --> 00:49:43,544
The boy, Kane,
in the far background
613
00:49:43,544 --> 00:49:47,322
but still in focus, is having
an idyllic childhood experience
614
00:49:47,322 --> 00:49:50,234
in the snow that he'll
remember on his death bed.
615
00:49:50,758 --> 00:49:56,161
The latter's visual boldness is rightly
praised, but Mizoguchi got there first.
616
00:49:59,755 --> 00:50:03,913
Kyoko Kagawa worked
with Mizoguchi much later, in the 1950s.
617
00:50:35,231 --> 00:50:37,254
In this film, Chikamatsu Story,
[Chikamatsu monogatari]
618
00:50:37,254 --> 00:50:40,683
she plays Osan, who's married
to a pompous husband.
619
00:50:41,877 --> 00:50:45,525
In this scene he thinks
she's having an affair
620
00:50:45,551 --> 00:50:48,350
so says that she
should commit suicide.
621
00:50:48,700 --> 00:50:50,548
A devastating moment.
622
00:50:53,523 --> 00:50:57,520
In romantic cinema it would have been
shot close up and brightly lit.
623
00:50:57,687 --> 00:51:01,092
But Mizoguchi cuts away
from the expressed emotion,
624
00:51:01,092 --> 00:51:08,004
behind Kagawa,
so we can't see her distraught face.
625
00:51:08,864 --> 00:51:13,680
Instead of weeping with her,
we feel moral indignation at her plight.
626
00:52:08,985 --> 00:52:13,479
Kagawa's husband's in Chikamatsu Story
is so horrible that her character, Osan,
627
00:52:13,479 --> 00:52:16,228
flees with another man, Mohei.
628
00:52:21,603 --> 00:52:23,961
Mizoguchi was known
as a woman's director,
629
00:52:23,961 --> 00:52:28,434
and Kagawa feels that she learn
much for him, especially in this scene.
630
00:54:45,402 --> 00:54:50,011
Back in the '30s, Mizoguchi ended
the story of telephonist Ayako
631
00:54:50,037 --> 00:54:53,180
with her on a bridge,
contemplating suicide
632
00:54:53,206 --> 00:54:56,177
because she's been labeled
a delinquent woman.
633
00:54:56,478 --> 00:54:59,092
It's a key moment
in the story of film.
634
00:55:43,834 --> 00:55:48,420
Nearly a decade later,
in an American film called Mildred Pierce,
635
00:55:48,420 --> 00:55:51,845
Joan Crawford finds herself
on a similar bridge,
636
00:55:51,845 --> 00:55:54,183
contemplating a similar fate.
637
00:55:55,781 --> 00:55:59,047
Because this was Hollywood
romantic cinema,of course,
638
00:55:59,074 --> 00:56:01,896
the attempted suicide
is depicted beautifully.
639
00:56:02,139 --> 00:56:07,760
Her face sculpted in light,
shallow focus emphasizing her eyes.
640
00:56:12,286 --> 00:56:16,457
It would take well-nigh two decades
before the achievements of Mizoguchi
641
00:56:16,457 --> 00:56:20,392
and those of Ozu, would be
discovered, so to speak,
642
00:56:20,392 --> 00:56:22,770
by the romantic
cinema of the west.
643
00:56:24,168 --> 00:56:28,163
One of the greatest oversights
in movie history.
644
00:56:33,764 --> 00:56:37,282
The eighth and final alternative
to western mainstream cinema
645
00:56:37,282 --> 00:56:42,239
in the late '20s and '30s
comes from here: China.
646
00:56:45,547 --> 00:56:49,253
In 1931, Japan
brutally invaded China.
647
00:56:51,855 --> 00:56:54,350
Life was already difficult
for most Chinese,
648
00:56:54,350 --> 00:56:58,476
but the ensuing war
would see 13 million die.
649
00:56:59,353 --> 00:57:04,516
And at this very moment,
Chinese cinema enters the story of film.
650
00:57:06,288 --> 00:57:09,433
There'd been Chinese movies
since the 1910s,
651
00:57:09,407 --> 00:57:14,493
this is typical, period costumes.
An Iris, used as in Hollywood,
652
00:57:14,493 --> 00:57:17,086
to point out the suitor
coming over the roof.
653
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:22,724
But in the early 1930s, China evolved
a kind of leftist realist cinema
654
00:57:22,724 --> 00:57:26,934
that challenged Hollywood fantasy and,
in a scene like this,
655
00:57:26,934 --> 00:57:32,810
used inventive camera angles and symbolism
to show how some men really seduce women.
656
00:57:38,394 --> 00:57:41,935
This city, Shanghai,
the Paris of the east.
657
00:57:42,106 --> 00:57:45,391
One of the most Cosmopolitan
cities in the world at that time,
658
00:57:45,391 --> 00:57:47,654
created that challenge.
659
00:57:49,355 --> 00:57:53,332
Film studios sprang up, great
directors came to the fore,
660
00:57:53,332 --> 00:57:55,314
and movie stars were made.
661
00:57:55,641 --> 00:57:59,855
The greatest of them all,
was this woman,
662
00:57:59,881 --> 00:58:02,588
Ruan Lingyu, often called
the Chinese Greta Garbo.
663
00:58:04,409 --> 00:58:08,160
Here, she's a single mother
at her son's school performance.
664
00:58:08,570 --> 00:58:12,091
Money's so tight that Ruan has
been forced to sell her body
665
00:58:12,091 --> 00:58:14,279
to pay for her son's education.
666
00:58:21,629 --> 00:58:25,107
A lovely tracking shot
shows the whispers of disapproval.
667
00:58:27,316 --> 00:58:33,561
When the school hears of her prostitution,
it shuns her, and she's imprisoned.
668
00:58:37,593 --> 00:58:40,635
Women in particular
identified with Ruan.
669
00:59:13,422 --> 00:59:17,778
Ruan's movies were often set
in Shanghai back streets like this.
670
00:59:19,532 --> 00:59:24,854
Though those shots were usually recreated
on Shanghai movie sets like this.
671
00:59:38,739 --> 00:59:42,930
People say that realistic acting
began with Marlon Brando in America,
672
00:59:42,930 --> 00:59:49,824
but look at Ruan here, her weariness,
her understated gestures, her body language.
673
01:00:00,079 --> 01:00:02,995
This is decades before Brando.
674
01:00:04,406 --> 01:00:08,174
When Maggie Cheung played Ruan
in the film Centre stage,
675
01:00:08,174 --> 01:00:12,376
director Stanley Kwan
had her repeat this famous scene.
676
01:00:26,657 --> 01:00:31,784
In this film, "New Women," [Xin nü xing]
Ruan played a real life actress
677
01:00:31,810 --> 01:00:35,671
who committed suicide after
being hounded by the press.
678
01:00:41,326 --> 01:00:43,942
And here's the kick
to this story.
679
01:00:44,359 --> 01:00:47,639
The prurient Shanghai
tabloids trashed Ruan's name
680
01:00:47,666 --> 01:00:52,857
because she was modern and realistic
in a city of sparkle and cheap sex.
681
01:00:53,186 --> 01:00:58,310
In response, Ruan took an overdose,
like the character she played
682
01:00:58,310 --> 01:01:02,362
and died in 1935, aged just 25.
683
01:01:03,836 --> 01:01:07,034
Her funeral procession
was three miles long.
684
01:01:07,036 --> 01:01:09,708
Three women
committed suicide at it.
685
01:01:10,417 --> 01:01:12,791
The New York times
front page called it
686
01:01:12,791 --> 01:01:15,915
"the most spectacular
funeral of the century."
687
01:01:18,526 --> 01:01:22,878
Today, Ruan appears
in almost no film encyclopedias.
688
01:01:24,658 --> 01:01:26,842
In the coming decades, Shanghai,
689
01:01:26,868 --> 01:01:31,108
the city of sex and cinema,
would build on top of its past,
690
01:01:31,134 --> 01:01:34,828
and the alleyway settings
of its great '30s films,
691
01:01:34,869 --> 01:01:38,351
to become a Disneyland of
capitalist consumption.
692
01:01:38,637 --> 01:01:41,019
It became something
like a movie set.
693
01:01:41,205 --> 01:01:43,473
And by the '40s, a
small promontory
694
01:01:43,473 --> 01:01:46,498
off the south eastern coast
of the mainland had become
695
01:01:46,524 --> 01:01:49,622
the new center
of Chinese filmmaking in the south.
696
01:01:50,167 --> 01:01:52,910
That promontory was called
Hong Kong.
697
01:01:55,537 --> 01:01:58,726
And so we get to the end
of an era in film.
698
01:02:00,404 --> 01:02:04,776
Looking back on the years
between the late 1910s and the early '30s,
699
01:02:04,776 --> 01:02:08,576
it's clear that they were dazzling,
maybe the greatest period
700
01:02:08,576 --> 01:02:10,868
in the whole of the story of film.
701
01:02:13,817 --> 01:02:18,497
It was a time of fantasy cinema
and its brilliant alternatives.
702
01:02:18,891 --> 01:02:20,762
Movies were on a high.
703
01:02:21,108 --> 01:02:24,451
This sublime tension
should have lasted forever.
704
01:02:25,140 --> 01:02:28,753
But there's something obvious
that we haven't yet mentioned.
705
01:02:29,405 --> 01:02:32,124
We didn't hear Doug's shout.
706
01:02:32,459 --> 01:02:35,653
We didn't hear
Falconetti's voice.
707
01:02:41,307 --> 01:02:45,515
We didn't hear Cesare's
night-time victims' scream.
708
01:02:47,511 --> 01:02:51,803
The energy or tenderness of these
made a huge impression on us,
709
01:02:51,803 --> 01:02:54,457
but not as things
in the real world do.
710
01:02:55,235 --> 01:02:57,190
Because they were silent.
711
01:02:59,309 --> 01:03:02,362
What in France is called
"deaf cinema."