Film Nitrate

Film is unusual among other art forms, in that its origins can be firmly established. Consider music, for example: no one can say what the melody to be performed was; likewise no one will ever know what the first noteworthy play to be performed live was. However, because film has existed only in the relatively recent past, and also because at some point all projected motion pictures have left behind their original camera negative, we can fairly easily create a full appreciation of the history of cinema. Georges Méliès' A Trip To The Moon (or La Voyage dans la lune in his native French) cannot, however, claim to be the first ever film, with that particular honour going to a 1888 feature, Roundhay Garden Scen e. At just two seconds long, it's not a classic, and for the next decade film would follow this example, being viewed as something of a novelty. Early films created by entrepreneurs such as the Lumiere brothers and Mitchell & Kenyon simply document everyday goings

Ah Pinocchio ! Now this is how to make an animated film! I remember having this on VHS when I was young, and my sister and I would watch it constantly. I remember it made me think smoking wasn't cool, but I loved everything about the film and at the time could quote entire scenes from it.  As I grew up and lost that old VHS to the mists of time, I still had sentimental memories of the film, and a few years ago tried to get a copy on DVD. Unfortunately, because of Disney and their notorious 'Disney Vault' the only legal way I could watch it was to pay massively over inflated prices on eBay. So I waited for the inevitable reissue. And waited. By the time Pinocchio was eventually re-released in early 2009, my expectations were high. I pre-ordered the Blu-ray and counted down the days before I would be reaquainted with what I was sure must be a timeless classic. As I've found by watching repeats of Button Moon and Rainbow , however, memories can distort and lie

Make Way For Tomorrow is a film that deals with a subject that seldom comes up in film: becoming old and forced to depend on your children for support. Interestingly enough, Yasujiro Ozu's Toyko Story, one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time,  uses a very similar concept to Make Way For Tomorrow , and Ozu himself stated that he had been heavily influenced by this film when directing Tokyo Story .  However, many people have heard of Tokyo Story , and as I said earlier, it consistently ranks towards the top of 'Best Ever Movie' polls, but Make Way For Tomorrow seems to have become almost forgotten. So why is this? If this was a bad film in any way, or if it made some serious mistakes along the way that would be more understandable, but the fact is, Make Way For Tomorrow is a seriously good yet deeply depressing film. I think the biggest problem facing this film, and director Leo McCarey, is that it's simply very, very un-Hollywood By 1937,

F.W. Murnau's penultimate film before his untimely death in a road accident, City Girl follows a similar style to it's more renowned predecessor Sunrise , however, in my opinion it has often been overlooked and should rightly be considered one of Murnau's greatest films, on a scale equal to, if not greater than, Sunrise itself. I think a large part of its lack of appeal has been the fact that it has been a notoriously difficult film to actually get hold of, until earlier in this year when it was released on Blu-ray. The exemplary Blu-ray transfer does the film a lot of favours, as suddenly previously blurred grain fields look amazingly sharp, and people's expressions can be fully appreciated. It's certainly far better than I ever expected a silent film could ever look. But what about the story itself? Murnau makes clear in the first scene that this is no Sunrise clone, by having the male lead, a country farmer named Lem, ignore the advances of a vamp as he tra

Nosferatu is the first silent film I ever saw, and what an introduction to silent film it is. Nearly 90 years after its premiere it still rates highly in numerous 'Best Film' polls, and it's easy to see why. The most famous of all of director F.W. Murnau's Weimar films, this was one of his first, created 4 years before he left Germany to move to the United States to create films for Fox Studios. Nosferatu was based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula but due to the studio's unwillingness to licence rights for the novel all of the names of the characters were changed. So instead of Count Dracula, we get Count Orlock (which I actually prefer), and instead of Jonathan Harker we get Thomas Hutter. Amusingly, Murnau appears to have believed that by simply changing the names any potential libel would be avoided, despite the fact that the story itself heavily draws on the novel. So it must have been a surprise to him and the film's ill-fated production com