On a Match, On a Flame
Destiny (1921)
directed by Fritz Lang
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Mississippi is cold enough to underscore the bare branches and gray skies of a mid-south January. I've planted basil and lemongrass by my kitchen window, but neither is growing at a rate to suggest its own willfulness to life. For the first time, I'm watching silent movies with regularity, and I think Fritz Lang is as good a clue as the aesthetic outside comforts of a quiet season through my long, narrow living room window.
Lang excelled in phantasmagoria, and his success in horror is implicit in the frailty of his visions. They share a dust-worn physicality with the age of the film stock that seems to have just barely reached us in time. Think of how Mabuse haunts the last maniacal drive that concludes The Testament of Dr. Mabuse - how his specter hangs in the air above the car, a tattered ghost in rank defiance of the laws of aerodynamics that tear mercilessly through his frayed but oily hair. The merest breath should evict Mabuse completely, but he persists.
Silent-era magic tricks are the thin sieve for catching such nightmares. Each of Lang's supernatural images - a long scroll that twines like a snake to the twitch of a sorcerer's wand, a retinue of Lilliputian stature, candles in a hall of dead souls - is the most elemental of effects, but so wondrously effective. It's surprising to see how little Douglas Fairbanks' Thief of Bagdad actually takes from Destiny (Fairbanks reportedly bought the rights and buried it in the process of bringing Bagdad to the screen), beyond a few mythical flourishes (the magic carpet, a flying horse) and the storyteller's debt to threes in classical epics.
Destiny is an altogether more heartbreaking film, epitomized by the gentlest spell in its wizard's grimoire: the heroine commits herself to death, and as she raises the poison potion to her lips, the background behind her and the cupped vessel recede into a pale expanse of silence, as her now-empty hand continues softly over her face, a penitent's gesture at the doorway to some holy, far-off tomb.
directed by Fritz Lang
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Mississippi is cold enough to underscore the bare branches and gray skies of a mid-south January. I've planted basil and lemongrass by my kitchen window, but neither is growing at a rate to suggest its own willfulness to life. For the first time, I'm watching silent movies with regularity, and I think Fritz Lang is as good a clue as the aesthetic outside comforts of a quiet season through my long, narrow living room window.
Lang excelled in phantasmagoria, and his success in horror is implicit in the frailty of his visions. They share a dust-worn physicality with the age of the film stock that seems to have just barely reached us in time. Think of how Mabuse haunts the last maniacal drive that concludes The Testament of Dr. Mabuse - how his specter hangs in the air above the car, a tattered ghost in rank defiance of the laws of aerodynamics that tear mercilessly through his frayed but oily hair. The merest breath should evict Mabuse completely, but he persists.
Silent-era magic tricks are the thin sieve for catching such nightmares. Each of Lang's supernatural images - a long scroll that twines like a snake to the twitch of a sorcerer's wand, a retinue of Lilliputian stature, candles in a hall of dead souls - is the most elemental of effects, but so wondrously effective. It's surprising to see how little Douglas Fairbanks' Thief of Bagdad actually takes from Destiny (Fairbanks reportedly bought the rights and buried it in the process of bringing Bagdad to the screen), beyond a few mythical flourishes (the magic carpet, a flying horse) and the storyteller's debt to threes in classical epics.
Destiny is an altogether more heartbreaking film, epitomized by the gentlest spell in its wizard's grimoire: the heroine commits herself to death, and as she raises the poison potion to her lips, the background behind her and the cupped vessel recede into a pale expanse of silence, as her now-empty hand continues softly over her face, a penitent's gesture at the doorway to some holy, far-off tomb.
posted by NPK at 7:14 PM
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