by Carlo Cielo
The ‘10s and ‘20s saw the rise of several epochs in world filmmaking; each representing a facet of invention that was sweeping the medium. Cinema was moving away from being a novelty, or a new configuration of a pre-existing tech. It wasn’t enough that it’s a camera that could capture action, or shoot trains as they appear. It wasn’t merely that of moving pictures; but that which is moving them. This was also immediately following the First World War, the most devastating event in history at that point. Countries were exhausted of their resources as much as their power, putting thousands upon thousands of people into the fray. Past securities have been put to the test, as the preexisting order have been found to be wanting,. Someone will surely have to go there in the field, and shoot the ensuing chaos.
No one of course was spared from the unraveling. Russia was virtually drained of all its forces and capabilities to such a point that both soldiers and civilians rebelled. The once formidable Tsarist regime was overthrown, and a new thinking and platform was elevated and put, front and center. Germany, meanwhile, was driven down to such astounding lengths, as the weight of guilt and culpability was brought upon it. Reparations were demanded, devaluing its economy into near starvation, while it struggles with its status as a diminishing empire. Thus, no other film scenes were as profoundly affected as the ones in these countries, as evident in the best of their material.
Russia’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’ was, in fact, a postscript to a victory; in the same way that ‘Les Miserables’ was an ode to an eventual upheaval. Albeit beleaguered, the stories still carry a euphoric vibe about them, served by the author's position of being able to write about these things after the fact. The imposing former order was surmounted. The need then was to integrate this development into one’s being from here on, and to keep on propelling its dynamic everyday.To pack in the comprehensiveness of this fervor, and to configure it such that it could stoke a continuity of action across generations. Much as there is an imperative to account for the several agents and moments that has contributed to such geopolitical result. Certainly, there wasn't a single protagonist in the thing. Hence, the portrayal of the travails of the disaffected, the detailing of their conditions, the key factors that stoked their reply, only precluding the possibility of such insurrections, as much as their inevitability. So, the tragedies served more as object lessons to past mistakes.
For example, the navy men of ‘Battleship Potemkin’ were deprived and humiliated day by day, with rotten meat and rancid environs, their inhuman exploitation to the level of indenture. And for what ? An empire that is brutal and simply doesn’t care, and doesn’t hesitate to pit brother against brother, and shoots its own people. An empire which exists only for itself, and away from culpability, wielding power that should be in the hands of the many, who ought to be ruling their own lives. To articulate all this properly would demand the rethinking of editing a reel, and the selections and arrangements of scenes, to show not just a single moment or narrative in a linear sort of way, but a whole spectrum of events, of actions and reactions, leading up to this point, with their respective protagonists and actors, most of which are from the ordinary tier, the masses who truly forge a reality.
This is what necessitates the sequencing of the Odessa Steps scene, with the Tsarist soldiers marching on and conducting its massacre. A thing like this doesn’t inconvenience a single person, or a lead, but devastates an entire population, a plethora of peoples, from a baby rolling down a stairs, and a nurse who loses her eye, each of which are equally as significant in the larger scheme of things, and the ensuing response which would take these on a whole another level. These ‘cutaway’ moments should thus be integrated into the flow of the scene reel. Which aren’t the stops and starts that they would often seem, but are only a given in the kinesics of upheaval. Something the Soviet montage makes people acknowledge as a possibility.
The German Expressionism in Dr. Caligari, meanwhile, evokes a kind of inevitability in stasis; even a primal thirst for it. But it is not a happy stasis. The film shows this in both in its aesthetic and narrative. The story is told through the flashbacks of our lead Frank, who in turn tells of a show runner who is possibly involved in psychopathic acts. An old man goes in fairs displaying a somnambulist who foretells other people’s fates, yet one he in fact commands to put decisive ends on them. It was only a matter of time ‘til this ends up in a string of murders. The investigation leads into an asylum, revealing not only its director as suspect, but also his obsession with a similar myth in the 18th century about the same bunch of characters, the same modus operandi. The somnambulist is found, and the director is soon arrested and confined to a room in his own asylum, and everything in the world seems to have finally been made right. Then, the flashback ends. We have then borne witness to a lie of an insane man, who only has trepidations about the director of his asylum.
There is a palpable need for an order in this movie, for it to stay right and true this once, to keep things together. To not fall into the same instability and uncertainty of the barely constituted, of those who have not in any way kept right, and have hopelessly strayed into the far edge. Yet this soon proves to be very futile, as there will always be factors that will unsettle it, and bend and twist its modularity, which may seem to be beyond one’s control and have not been evident earlier. Such has been epitomized by the distorted geographies of the film’s scenes, the jagged edges of its structural improbabilities, and the mangled trait of its nature. One should put in mind the fact that the same things remain past the flashback’s sequence, into the so-called real world part of the proceedings, and even with the dissidents holed up together in a room, and put into ‘study’ like they apparently should be.
*****
These film movements are interesting for what they say about humanity, yet more about how fading empires respond and react to a consuming cataclysm, and the world being twisted from underneath them. Which calls upon, of course, a set of new questions. Namely, should one stay, or should one go ? Should one strive to keep the status quo, in all the stresses this inflicts to oneself, or should they junk a status quo instead, expunging all its madness, instead of succumbing to it ?
The point in these questions is not to simply explore the modes of a reality. The point, as always, is to change it.
