Remembering the Movies, Oct. 15 - 21

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

This is a week of outlaws, villains, and renegades - some good, some very bad. Quite a few gangsters, a dictator, and even Satan himherself make appearances, yet there's still room for more ambiguous or even positive rebels, ranging from a vigilante-fleeing hoodlum to a couple precocious punker girls. There are mavericks behind the camera as well: a silent clown taking on the world's leading tyrant, an Establishment-loathing Frenchman paying tribute to the American crime films that inspired him (wait, make that two Establishment-loathing Frenchmen), and another French citizen - this time a Frenchwoman - not only shooting pictures but establishing a studio on American soil. Vive la français (et les diaboliques)!

The Director's Chair: Cecil B. DeMille - The Cheat

I've been aware of The Cheat for a while, but never saw it until the other night. The massive coffee table tome "The Chronicle of Cinema" contained a brief write-up on the movie, accompanied by a lurid-looking still of a dissheveled Fannie Ward sitting on the edge of a bed where Sessue Hayakawa lay sprawled out, apparently slain by his illicit lover. I think this was my first exposure to the notion that DeMille made successful films outside of the epic genre, but in fact many of his teens and twenties movies were melodramas on the subject of "a wayward wife whose impulsive indiscretions propel her into public scandal, private shame and marital turmoil" (according to the Kino website). But his treatment of this theme is no less flamboyant and entertaining than his approach to the most lavish biblical spectacle and just as in Carmen, the potential misogyny of DeMille's penchant for cheating, manipulative woman is tempered by his complete identification with the female point of view.

The Director's Chair: Cecil B. DeMille - Carmen

This is a significant post for several reasons. It is my fifteenth entry for March, meaning that I have surpassed my output for January and February combined (in other words, The Dancing Image is humming along at full capacity again - though I see the comments have curiously dropped off, unfortunately). It is also my 200th post. And, as you can gather from the title, it is both the renewal and the kickoff of my retitled series, The Director's Chair (formerly known as "THE AUTEURS"). I left off with my conclusions on the work of D.W. Griffith, a logical choice for first auteur. And DeMille, it seems, is the logical second choice, so here we are. Five years after Griffith introduced new craftsmanship into the nascent film industry of New York, DeMille arrived in Los Angeles, future show-biz capital of the movie world, to introduce his brand of flamboyant showmanship into the lifeblood of American cinema.

I've renamed the series "The Director's Chair" because as I look forward to the filmmakers I will (hopefully) cover, I note that many - like George Cukor, or even the highly individualistic John Huston - are not always considered "auteurs." Their projects are highly varied, it is often difficult to discern their artistic "voice" over the course of their career, and they have often been consigned to middling oblivion by prickly auteurists like Andrew Sarris. But I'd like to examine their projects too, and see if I can figure out how they develop over their careers, what consistencies are present throughout, and what the changes and fluctuations tell us about them.

Where does DeMille fit in this rubric? Superficially, he would seem to be the epitome of the auteur: a very definable image (in fact, it is beginning with him that we find many stereotypes of the director which continue to this day), a stardom rare for those behind the camera, and a sensibility which seems present from film to film (maligned as that sensibility may be from time to time). Yet in terms of film style, where the true measure of the auteur is taken, how does DeMille stack up? Commentary on him seems to dry up when it comes to the formal qualities of his work - it's his subject matter and the superficial decoration of his films which receives attention. How did he use the camera, the lights, the editing shears to mould his films? Was there a consistency there? A notable personal style? Or was he simply a glorified name with a run-of-the-mill approach to filmmaking? It's the intention of this series to find out, and I look forward to the task.