5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1925

Tis that time again, to put on your time-machine booties and chase with me back through the seasons and land upon whatever year my telephone tells me. Our weekly "Siri Says" series has actually been weekly as of late, imagine that! But after a few weeks with Siri giving me easy years to pick my favorites from (including last week's doozy with 1999) this week's an old-timey doozy, giving me the number "25" thereby taking us back to The Movies of 1925. I have not seen much from 1925! But seeing as how I'm hoping to finish all 100 entries in this series this year and I don't think I have the option to hold out until 2025 and name those ones instead. Alas. I can offer up a few titles though, and per usual I'm sure y'all smarties will have lots of recommendations in the comments.

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1925

 

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

(dir. Fred Niblo)

-- released on December 30th 1925 --

The Gold Rush

(dir. Charlie Chaplin)

-- released on June 26th 1925 --

Battleship Potemkin

(dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein)

-- released on December 24th 1925 --

The Phantom of the Opera

(dir. Rupert Julian)

-- released on November 15th 1925 --

The Merry Widow 

(dir. Erich Von Stroheim)

-- released on August 26th 1925 --

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Runners-up: The Eagle (dir. Clarence Brown), 

The Freshman (dir. Harold Lloyd),

The Pleasure Garden (dir. Hitchcock)

Never seen: The Big Parade (dir. King Vidor), The Circle (dir. Frank Borzage), Don Q, Son of Zorro (dir. Donald Crisp), Little Annie Rooney (dir. William Beaudine), Lazybones (dir. Borzage), Lady Windermere's Fan (dir. Lubitsch), Stella Dallas (dir. Henry King)

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What are your favorite movies of 1925?

6 Off My Head: Siri Says 1924

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My attempt to reinvigorate my somewhat slumbering "Siri Says When" series continues apace with a brand new episode here only eleven days since the last! This time around Siri slapped us with a toughie, since the number between 1 and 100 that she gave me was "24" meaning today we're going to go picking our favorite films from the year 1924. It must be said I have not seen a lot of movies from the year 1924! I've seen a few -- enough to do a list, which is why we're here doing just that. But the percentage of 1924 films that have been lost either unto time or unto my not nearly Silent Film educated enough ass is high, I warn you. As far as I can scout out it seems I have seen six 1924 films in total? And these are all of them. So please don't take this list as gospel -- we work with what we've got when we glance this far into the way-back-machine... 

My 6 Favorite Movies of 1924

Greed

(dir. Erich von Stroheim)

-- released on January 26th 1924 --

Sherlock Jr.

(dir. Buster Keaton)

-- released on May 11th 1924 --

The Thief of Baghdad

(dir. Raoul Walsh)

-- released on March 18th 1924 --

The Hands of Orloc

(dir. Robert Wiene)

-- released on June 4th 1924 --

Hot Water

(dir. Fred Newmeyer)

-- released on October 26th 1924 --

Michael

(dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer)

-- released on Novermber 17th 1924 --

(P.S. Dreyer's Michael, which is one of the earliest examples of homosexuality being depicted on-screen, has just recently gotten restored and Kino Marquee will be streaming the film online in July as part of their "Pioneers in Queer Cinema" series that also features Mädchen in Uniform and the original 1933 version of Victor & Victoria. See more about the series here.)

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Never seen: The Last Laugh (dir. Murnau), He Who Gets Slapped (dir. Victor Sjöström), The Marriage Circle (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)...

... Monsieur Beaucaire (dir. Sidney Olcott) Waxworks (dir. Leo Brinsky), Beau Brummel (dir. Hary Beaumont), Happiness (dir. King Vidor), His Hour (dir. King Vidor), Three Women (dir. Lubitsch)

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What are your favorite films from 1924?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Wedding March (1928)

Nicki: Seems to me that girl limps ... on both legs! 

Legendary pain-in-the-ass and  personal favorite creep
Erich von Stroheim was born 132 years ago today.

4 Off My Head: Siri Says 1928

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After last week's easy breezy take on the movies of 1990 I was due for a tougher pick this week when Siri answered my "Pick a number between 1 and 100" query, and she set about a stumper -- she told me "28" and so we've got to choose our favorite Movies of 1928. Indeed after some scouring I could only make a proper list of 4 (it's a very good four, mind you) but there's a post-script to that and there are several movies I want to see but still haven't... all that said let's get to it...

My 4 Favorite Movies of 1928

The Passion of Joan of Arc

(dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer)

-- released on October 25th 1928 --

The Crowd 

(dir. King Vidor)

-- released on March 3rd 1928 --

Steamboat Bill Jr. 

(dir. Charles Reisner & Buster Keaton)

-- released on May 20th 1928 --

The Fall of the House of Usher 

(dir. Jean Epstein)

-- released on October 5th 1928 --

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Runners-up: Okay so I am pretty certain that I seen all three of the silent films that Alfred Hitchcock directed in 1928 - Champagne, Easy Virtue, and The Farmer's Wife - at some point, but that point would've been back in college and I'll be damned if I recall much of anything about them. I've been meaning to go back and re-familiarize myself with his early stuff.

The same goes for Sergei Eisenstein's film October: Ten Days That Shook the World - we definitely watched that in film school but it's just a blur of Soviet imagery to me now. 

And Then there's The River starring the dreamy Charles Farrell - I've seen scenes from it (him swimming naked in the titular river is unmissable) but the majority of the film is lost.

It would've been a cheat to include any of these movies on my "Favorites" list just to get the number up to five when in truth the four films that I did choose I remember well, have seen more than once, and like very much.

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Never seen: The Man Who Laughs (dir. Paul Leni), The Wedding March (dir. Erich von Stroheim), Our Dancing Daughters (dir. Harry Beaumont), Beau Sabreur (dir. Waters), The Circus (dir. Chaplin )

What are your favorite movies of 1928?

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4 Off My Head: Siri Says 1922

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Since we're doing this a day later than we usually do I guess it's appropriate that Siri gave me such a difficult number when I asked her to pick a number between 1 and 100, so that way we can just half-ass the whole shebang. She gave me "22" and normally I would choose five favorites from that year, but looking through the movies of 1922 I, uh, cannot. Since I have not from as far as I can tell even seen 5 movies total from that year. But here are the 4 movies that I have seen from that year, and thankfully I like them all...

My 4 Favorite Movies of 1922

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler

(dir. Fritz Lang)

-- released on April 27 1922 --

Nosferatu

(dir. F.W. Murnau)

-- released on March 4th 1922 --

Häxan

(dir. Benjamin Christensen)

-- released on September 18th 1922 --

Nanook of the North

(dir. Robert J. Flaherty)

-- released on June 11th 1922 --

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Never seen: Foolish Wives (dir. Erich von Stroheim), Beyond the Rocks (dir. Sam Wood), Blood and Sand (dir. Fred Niblo), Cops (dir. Buster Keaton), Grandma's Boy (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer), Robin Hood (dir. Dwan)

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What are your favorite movies of 1922?

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Love Is a Four Letter Word

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Happy Valentines Weekend, everybody! 

I assume that many of you have been, like me, suckered into seeing Deadpool with promises of great humor and Reynolds' dick, so if you do go ahead and say what you thought in these here comments. I maybe haven't bought my tickets yet, and I have a couple of incredible repertory screenings to go to -- I am seeing Erich Von Stroheim's Greed tonight and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast on Sunday! -- but I fully intend to go at some point. Such is the lure of celebrity spandex pegging.

And don't forget: spread love, not herpes!

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Max Von Mayerling: She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn't know, you're too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!

I am primed and prepped to get a little bit obsessed with Erich Von Stroheim right now and I can't believe it's taken me this long. Have any of you watched a thirteen-part documentary called Hollywood from the early 80s? Buzzfeed had this great list a couple of weeks ago called "26 Hard-To-Find Movies That Remind Us Why VHS, DVD, And LaserDisc Still Matter" and coming in at #14 was this enormous doc. Thanks to the post's comments I found out the entire thing is uploaded onto YouTube, so I've been watching it in bits and pieces - it is seriously hefty, but I'm nearly done.

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That chapter right there focuses in on two silent directors - Cecil B Demille and Erich Von Stroheim. I knew who Von Stroheim was, of course, I went to film school for god's sake, but clearly not the best film school because I realized watching this that I'm fairly certain I've never actually seen any of the movies he directed! Clips, probably yeah, but never all the way through. Woe is me (and especially woe is my student loan debt, amounting to nothing).

A lot of his films are uploaded onto YouTube; here's the shortened version of Greed (less than two hours) that we have access to (it infamously ran eight hours long in his original cut), for example. You can also rent several of them via DVD at Netflix. Point being, I have some catching up to do.

But even beyond his actual movies it's the man himself that I want to know everything there is to know after watching that Hollywood doc's take on him, he seems like he was the exact kind of fascinating tortured crazy person that I ought to be obsessed with. I bought this biography of him called Von: The Life and Films of Erich Von Stroheim, which looks pretty thorough, so once I finish the Tab Hunter bio I'm in the middle of (I know, gay gay gay) I'm looking to dive straight into Von-Stroheim-ville.

So... any fans?

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