carbonel

The Night My Number Came Up
Director: Leslie Norman
1955

This is a British supernatural drama. A man dreams of a plane crash, but laughs it off because the events of the dream don't match reality. But then more and more items in reality change to match the dream, until finally, it all comes true.

I spent more time picking holes in the logic of the story than in being thrilled, and in watching the blatant (and played for such) classism as well as the taken-for-granted sexism.

Well-acted, but I don't think the supernatural elements don't work for modern audiences.

Napoléon
Director: Abel Gance
Year: 1927

Generally I try not to read too much about a movie before I watch it; I want to do my studying afterward, so others' interpretations don't have a major influence on mine. In this case, that meant that when I started watching five hours of biographical epic about Napoleon, I had expected it to cover most of his life, probably from birth to Waterloo. But no.

This was just his early life. It turns out Gance had originally planned to make five more movies (presumably each around the same length) to cover his early life through to his death on St. Helena. After he finished the first movie, he realized just what an undertaking that would be, despite having kept the battle scenes in this movie to a minimum.

In fact, this isn't even really a biography of Napoleon's early years. Rather, it's a compilation of selected incidents (some almost certainly apocryphal) from Napoleon's life juxtaposed with critical scenes from the French Revolution in which Napoleon played no part (such as the assassination of Marat).

As with many of the early four-star movies I watched, I can see why this one was groundbreaking while still not enjoying it particularly. Wikipedia says :

The film is recognized as a masterwork of fluid camera motion, produced in a time when most camera shots were static. Many innovative techniques were used to make the film, including fast cutting, extensive close-ups, a wide variety of hand-held camera shots, location shooting, point of view shots, multiple-camera setups, multiple exposure, superimposition, underwater camera, kaleidoscopic images, film tinting, split screen and mosaic shots, multi-screen projection, and other visual effects.

It did all that. It also heavy-handedly hammered in things that today a director would trust the audience to infer from much less information. There were also places where the director chose to break the fourth wall, such as the scene in Corsica where (in a cue card) he assures the audience that all the scenes were shot on location, signing the card with his name. I don't know if the scene where it is noted that he played a bit part was his choice or the restorers', but that was another one.

In the version I watched, all the cue cards were in English. Which brings me to the issue of versions. On Wikipedia, there are three full screens' worth of versions. I believe the one I watched was one of the Kevin Brownlow restorations. From the credits, it appears to have been intended for display on UK television. There is also a shorter (3.5 hour) restoration by Francis Ford Coppola, but I figured if I was only going to watch it once, I might as well go for as entire a version as I could.

For people interested in the history of silent film, I enthusiastically recommend this movie to them. As a historical epic, not so much.

National Velvet
Director: Clarence Brown
Year: 1944

I had been looking forward to watching this, because I'm very fond of the book, and because I knew it was Elizabeth Taylor's first major role. It was a pleasant change from the usual run of four-star movie.

It's a beautiful Technicolor production, though the DVD I watched it on was clearly done on the cheap: the registration is a little off, and there are no extras, not even a preview. In some ways this is the ideal family movie: an engaging character goes after a worthwhile goal, with no angst to speak of.

As is inevitable with such things, there were some major plot changes made between the book and the movie. The biggest one was changing the character of Mi Taylor from an older mentor who lives in town into a former jockey who lost his nerve after being involved in a fatal pile-up, played by Mickey Rooney.