Welcome, everyone, to WFHR's Director's Cut for this Sunday, a session number 55, your
host and program director here, James J. I'm joined by my partner in art, our
head of production, Seth Habhacker, Seth the Mike Zeron, let's roll. Let us do so.
Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us this evening. We're going to be doing
another movie show. We've got a couple of films that we recently viewed and we're
going to go way back everyone. We're looking at silent movies and I did want to
address one thing real quick, James, before we got started with your film, Gold Rush,
Classic by Charlie Chaplin, and I'm going to be doing the Cabinet of Dr.
Kellagari, regarded by most people as the very first horror film, two very
fascinating things, two film, fascinating films, and I think people will be
enjoying this. But I do want to caution people who've not seen many silent films
from back in that era. We're talking 1920s. I think they're both from that era,
if I remember correctly. It's a very different form of film, a different form of
acting, a different way of filming it, where the cameras were set up and
everything like that. So it may take you a little bit when you're going to
watch your first silent movie to get into it, because it's like, wow, this is
really different from what I'm used to from movies. But that's okay. You'll get
used to it. Just got to get into it, get on the movie's wavelength, like we
like to say here. And we do want people to watch these movies. So they're very
important to what comes after, of course. But they're also works of art in
their own right. Well said. And a lot of fun too. If you can let yourself get
into it, you can just enjoy so much of the different storytelling that it takes
place. And I want to touch on that a little bit with the gold rush. And I'm
sure that you may have some notes as well with your film. One of the things
that I want to get to first with this movie is talking about the
dissection of the movie, with the way that this film was made in particular. In
1925's The Gold Rush, Charlie Champlin transformed his most famous character,
The Little Tramp, into a lone prospector, wandering through the Clon
Dijk and search of gold. Most people know what the gold rush was and what
it took place. So you kind of automatically go into it with a little bit of
understanding of that in the back of your head. But I think that even with the
opening scene, and you've got the opening scene, seeing people traveling,
literally traveling through the mountains and everything, you've got about
300 some extras, a part of this scene, to Chaplin hired. Most of them
prospectors themselves. So the close-ups, the looks that you're getting,
you're actually seeing prospectors, you're actually seeing people doing this.
You could do a movie right now about the gold rush and maybe have the best
graphics in the world. One of the greatest writing teams behind it, greatest
directors, all these different things. But it would be in 2024. This was done
in film, literally during, you know, and still when there was a tail end of a
gold rush going on. The Clon Dijk gold rush was in the late 1890's, like 1898,
and of course, beyond it lasted longer than that. So we're talking about like
just 20 years at the most remove from what had, when it had happened, which
is really remarkable. And there's really two versions of this film, the film
which Chaplin re-released with sound in 1942, features some of the most
famous and off-perioded images in film history. Certainly the aiding the shoe,
the bread roll dance, things like this. After its 1925 premiere, though, was
when Chaplin said that this was the movie for him. And we've got some random
facts about this movie and everything that I'll get into where I'll talk more
about that. But the movie itself, I want to focus on first. I don't know why I
did this to myself, but the two films we've done so far, the first one, Arsneckin
Old Lace, was my non-anise movie. I watched that movie at least 11,000 times
with her. At least. And then there was this one, the gold rush, which I have
watched with my papa, probably about 15,000 times. Him and I huge Chaplin
lovers. So the movie starts up and I found it on HBO Max. A big shout out to
them for having these movies on there. Yeah, exactly. I thought I was going to
have to go through a bunch of different things to be out. I found it right away.
Awesome. That's great. And I've never seen it more beautiful. I've never seen it
look so good. I suppose it's been remastered since the last time you've seen it.
Yeah. And I, it, the opening credits popped up and I immediately started to tear
up. I had to pause the movie. I had to compose myself. It took me a good 10
minutes to do so. I did not expect it to hit me that much. And that is, that is
one of the things that film can do. And I think it is noteworthy, just as a side note.
The beauty of a good film and what memory, what the memories they can create.
Absolutely. And I shouted to my papa because I wouldn't have ever known
about Charlie Chaplin or these movies without him and everything. So I really do
appreciate that. Reading into watching, reading into watching. This is what
silent films were working to do. How do we get people to care about the
visual along with after getting them into radio and having that? How do we
bring vaudeville to radio? How do we combine these worlds? We've got this new
thing, this new picture thing that we can do. And so silent film was the bridge
of this between these where you had, for those who don't know, you would have a
scene often pop up with a black background and words on it to tell you a couple
of quick sentences either what the character said or just set up the scene.
And this went into the visual of it. Yes. Now editors had a very difficult time here.
And storytellers had almost even a more difficult time. One of the things
helps is when you do it all. And that is what Charlie Chaplin did. Exactly.
Charlie did it all. You will see him as the writer, director of these films,
not only that, but oftentimes the editor of the film, the cinematographer,
oftentimes being behind the camera and making sure everything's set up helps
a little bit when you got the same mind behind it all. That's right. Also could be
a little crazy about that. But telling a story with your eyes, your emotions,
this is what was asked of a Vactors back then. Right. And while we talk a lot about the
difference of film acting and theater acting, the difference of vaudeville acting,
and well, we've never done this before. Right.
Brand new territory. So the work you're seeing in the gold rush and so many of these movies,
it's trailblazing. There's nothing short of trailblazing. There are techniques and things that
they did in these movies that we're still doing today. Yeah. And we're teaching young actors
today. So one of the things when you're watching these movies, especially this one in particular,
I really encourage you to focus on the facial expressions. You've still got a lot of old theater acting
going on with this. You do. While also trying to adapt to modern times, no pun intended.
Yep. So I'm talking just great. Yeah. It's kind of cool to see and doing it without sound.
Which again, I mean, even with theater actors, they at least got to use sound. They had to use
their voices. You can't do that with silent films. And that's a whole another ballgame as well.
I think one of the other things that stands out with this is the makeup, the makeup teams.
It wasn't just actors that had to learn to adapt to screen. One of the bigger industries that
really had to adapt was makeup. Oftentimes in theater use a lot more makeup. In movies, you don't
need as much. So that's kind of modernized a little bit where both fields kind of do the same thing
now. But it's still something that was really noteworthy back then. I encourage people to check out
the makeup. The way people told stories with their eyes, there's so much acting with people's eyes
in these movies. This one in particular, there are some techniques and some things that they do in
this movie in particular. There's a fade edit that goes on where the tramp is turned into a chicken
kind of. And it's a kind of chicken costume. And with that fade, you would think they did it
today. It's the same techniques we're using that there were just starting to modernize and create.
It's a really cool job. So some of the editing and some of the things that go on in this movie were
fascinating to me that they started to trend almost of these things. It's another thing that you
see and they're like, oh, well, I've seen that before. But you didn't see it the first time it was
done. That's what happens in a lot of these silent films. Exactly. I'll have a couple notes on that
with your films. The makeup is amazing. Charlie Chaplin may have been the master of camera angles
and deception. I look back and I see things he was doing. And like, where have I seen that before?
Oh, Hitchcock. Oh, Hitchcock did that. Oh, Spielberg did this. And I sure enough, I paused the movie
so I could go back and look and see enough. I know, yeah, Hitchcock talking about being influenced
by Chaplin. Spielberg talking about being influenced by Chaplin. It's really cool to see in
something I never thought about with Charlie Chaplin, but he would put the camera in these angles and
these spots that people would never think of. And it gave you a different perspective and a
different empathy as a viewer to these characters. It was so important for him that you cared about
these individuals that you felt like you knew them. And may have never done it better than in this
movie. It also, the movie also speaks to what we'll do to survive and who we are willing to do a
width. It creates a lot of that. It gives you a bit of an understanding of what it was like in
that time. Oh, yeah. In those moments, the insanity of trying to do that in today's day and age,
if I took, if Seth and I wanted to go and do this and go prospecting, it would still be crazy.
But we have a lot of benefits, a lot of things nowadays that would really benefit us.
Make it easier. Yeah, absolutely. That the lives, the amount of people we lost, the amount of
things that happened and everything during that time. It's, it is the true Wild West and the
trueest extent. Even if you don't go back and see this movie, I cannot encourage you enough to go
back and look at two in particular scenes, the boot scene. And if you just throw that in your
search bar, you'll find it. I have a couple of fun random facts about that in a moment, but that
scene in particular is so well done acting with their eyes. It's all done with their eyes. And
you know everything that they're thinking and saying with their eyes. Yep. And the balancing
cabin scene, the, you talk about things that were ahead of their time, maybe nothing else more than
that part, that particular scene in this movie. They're using a lot of technology that they would
end up using in a lot of B horror movies later on, where that kind of almost imposing, like this
seems bigger than it actually is. Right. Right. And force perspective stuff. Yeah. And in that scene,
you will also see Charlie Chaplin flying around all over the place. You're doing two different
particular scenes. If you look really closely, you could actually see on one of his legs a cord
that he was using to pull some of the house because they didn't have enough people and they didn't
have enough that all this stuff to be able to do it. Amazing. There's a, there's also something
here. I always thought that I was a foolish romantic because of my family. I come from a family
romance. And that might be a little bit of it. But it's also this dang movie because in this movie,
Charlie's character gets, has a, he doesn't have a belt. He's a tramp. He doesn't have a belt. So
he's, he's dancing with this woman he falls in love with. And he needs a belt. So he grabs this
belt that happens to be attached to a dog. And so the dog is dragging him around all over the place.
He's getting hit by snowballs. And I mean, pelted. There's no stunt actor that walks in or
something. And it looks like Chaplin told him, hey, just chuck it. And all these different things
that he has happened in front of this woman, he gets on, he gets set on fire at one point at
everything. And he still ends up with the girl. He still ends up with her. I mean, I'm a foolish
romantic, but I don't know. That's part of the course for Chaplin, of course. The ridiculousness
of the situations that he ends up in, yeah. In all seriousness, it does speak to karma a lot
this movie. And a lot of, you know, putting good into the world and what good can come from it.
It's a short movie, especially by today's standards. And a fun watch, I think, I think especially
and worth the watch. Noted from this movie, just some random facts. Long before Chaplin directed
the great dictator, he was considered enemy number one of the Nazis who believed him to be Jewish,
even though he wasn't his half-brother Sidney was, but he was not. And the Chaplin, his life and
art biographer David Robinson explained some of this that the Gold Watch was banned for early years
from the Third Reich, like all Chaplin movies. So Chaplin did something that I put up there with Jesse
Owens and one of the greatest ever, just like stiff arms to the Third Reich and everything.
I would have had, I don't, I've read so much, read so many biographies on him. I don't pretend
to know him, but I feel very confident saying that was one of the biggest feathers in the cap for
Chaplin. Chaplin couldn't stand what they were doing with the Nazis for doing. Had a huge distaste
for Hitler. And the idea that he was disliked by them that much, I guarantee you he had a lot of
pride in that. Right, right. And you know, it's funny, you know, just a little sideways thing here.
By the way, when we get to the cabinet of Dr. Calgary, we will be talking about Nazis again.
Sorry, we got to do it at that time, that era of that kind of thing. Yeah.
But I do want to say that the fact that he had such a physical resemblance to Adolf Hitler,
I mean, that worked beautifully in the dictator the way he did. I mean, the fact that he understood
that and went with the way he did it. I mean, that he was a genius. The majority of the majority
of actors just would have shaved their mustache. The majority of actors would have done every
thing you think they could. He pulled on. I mean, he leaned in. He made it. Yes, you're so right
about that. The famous boot scene, I mentioned there, that boot that they are eating,
take no worries. It's not real leather. It's made a licorice. Yes. And they actually had, I
misquoted this earlier to you, Seth. They had about 20 pairs to they made. That's still a lot.
Big boots of liquor. I mean, that's a lot. Charlie was a constant perfectionist and
a big Jim McKay, the actor that plays him also had to eat a boot. And so they actually had
a couple that they went through. But the scene took three full days and 63 takes to capture in total.
What? Yeah. Oh my God. That's absolutely insane.
Chaplain hired 600 extras for that opening shot that you see. And again, most of them prospectors
themselves and everything. Of those extras though, the highest paid of them was a dog.
There was a dog and extra on the set. Now, the extras were paid a base rate of $7.50 a day.
Actually, not bad for the 1920s. I got to say, that's not bad. Yeah. Now, you would never see
that. I don't know as a modern price for something like paying employees, but I digress.
A whopping $35 a day, though, went to the dog. Oh my God. And it's handler, of course. Of course.
What do he did with all that money? Right. And when it comes to the premiere in Germany,
at the German premiere audience is called for an encore, for a movie, for a movie, for a movie.
That's incredible. Wow. Blow my mind. Blow my mind. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how you top that.
No, like what? And of course, Chaplain re-released this in 1952. Now, oftentimes with the re-release,
he would actors, not just him, but other actors for movies, would actually show up to the
premieres, which is where that all stems from. And either act things out or talk to the audience,
like Duke Q and A's. And stuff like that was nothing. That was common back then. Chaplain was a
big believer in this, to the point where he would almost show up to like almost every city's premier.
And try to beat all of these. Which is really cool. And Charlie Chaplain later performed the
famous bread roll dance for Pablo Picasso. Of all people. I don't visit the France in the 50s,
Chaplain visited Picasso in his art studio. The two didn't share a common language. So instead,
chatting, Picasso gave Chaplain a tour of his latest works and progress. While Chaplain in return
performed his famous scene form. How cool is that? Just fastly. Just a couple more real quick.
I want to get out of here. The originally, a stage hand wore the chicken suit in gym
solutionation. But the stage hand could not get down Chaplain's mannerisms. So Chaplain ended up
getting in the suit and doing that scene, too. Yes, he had to. Yes. The perfectionist that he was.
The perfectionist. Yep. The dancing role sequence was so popular with audiences that in some
cases, such as a film's Berlin premiere and some other ones, a projectionist stopped the film
and replayed the scene. Can you imagine that? In today's, we call it a movie. We're used to it,
you know, on TV, but in a movie theater, they literally stopped the movie rewind. And so people
can watch it again. I love it. That is so cool. Between that and the standing ovations. I've
never heard anything like that before. I literally never heard that before. And actual American
black bearer was used for the scenes with the lone prospector where there was a bear. I did not.
No, that's that's kind of frightening. I'm sure it was a train bear, but still. I did not,
I thought just since I was a little kid, I thought there was a fake bear. They've a real bear
on there with them. I mean, they had, they didn't have the special effects like we do. You had,
you're special effect. Wow, here's a real, real bear. Yeah. The head something horrible happened.
We couldn't even blame Charlie because it was his fault. He didn't, he felt that every costume
was too fake looking. The audiences wouldn't believe it. So it, he were, I don't think it gets
said enough about Charlie Chaplin. There's a lot of things that you can say about him off the field
that I don't like. I don't feel good about everything. He's like, man, human. He was very human. Yes.
The man, the actor, a wall of perfectionist wall could be hard to work with and work for
sometimes. Never did anything. He didn't expect from himself. And I don't know if there are many
people that respected their audience more than Charlie Chaplin. He wanted you to be entertained.
He wanted you to love these movies and he wanted to do them for you. And it's part of the reason
why I think they're so timeless. Yeah. I was wondering if the gold rush would hold up or not.
Boy, did it. It man did it. I'm so thankful we're doing this episode that I went back. I wouldn't
go back and watch it otherwise probably. Right. I've been meaning to since for about a year I
have since my papa passed. I've been meaning to and I haven't. I wrap up on this. Sir Charlie
Chaplin stated that this was the film by which he most wanted to be remembered. And he said that back
in 1920 when it was first released. Oh wow. He repeated it again back in 44 when it was really
briefly released. And I think I think he got his wish. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of, there's
so many so many brilliant films that Charlie Chaplin did in his lifetime. I was selling James
earlier. My favorite personal favorite is modern times, which was later. It was 1936, which
he made a silent movie when the talkies were there to stay. I mean, they were they were the movie
at that time where the talkies and he stuck to his guns. It's still a brilliant movie. You know,
he sings at the end. You get to hear him finally use his voice. By the way, beautiful singing voice
and speaking voice with that English accent. I mean, I'm telling you, he could do it all. He could
do it all. One thing that I wanted to point out and I just thought about it when you were talking
James, you know, people might ask, well, why was he so interested in doing, you know, the,
the realism? Why did he need the realism in those films? They're comedies, you know, why do it?
That's why you have the realism there. That makes the outrageousness of the comedy bits that much
better. You like you say, you know, he's eating a boot, you know, what he needs doing it like it's
like any old thing. Yeah, you know, like, just like, oh, this is my meal. I'm eating the shoe
leather kind of thing. The rocking cabin, you know, I'll just outrageously a ridiculous scene,
but it plays so well because everything else is normal. That's why it works. That's why it's
funny. It's set a standard for comedy, too. It's set a standard for filmmaking. And a lot of ways
with the, with the that. And while we went away from it at times and everything, here we are again,
where old is new and new is old and we're coming back to that. It's the kind of comedy people want.
Yeah, that's the kind of entertainment, like you said, it does not age. It's it's timeless.
You can always enjoy Charlie Chaplin being the little tramp. Yeah. Yeah. It's a classic film
encourage you to check it out, everybody. Gold rush, starring the great Sir Charlie Chaplin.
All right. Well, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to get to my
movie, the cabinet of Dr. Caligari, when we get back to director's cut. Welcome back, everybody,
to WFHR's director's cut. Got your host James here along with my co-host Seth Habhager.
Yes, I'm here. And I'm ready to go. And we're ready to talk about your film, Seth. And thank you
for picking one of the quintessential films to have this conversation. We'd be talking about this film
anyway, no matter what movie you're chosen. But why not start right here at the, what most will
consider the beginning of it all when it comes to horror. A lot of ways. And more than just horror
too, surprisingly enough, it's from 1920. It's called the cabinet, Dr. Caligari. It was a German film,
of course. Back then, silent films were international films, because you could just change the title
cards to whatever language you wanted. And that meant that this was shown all over the world.
It was directed by a man named Robert Wein, written by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz,
sorry, like try that again, Hans Janowitz. And it was starred Werner Kraus, Conrad Veit,
more on him later. He had a very interesting life. In fact, they both did. So we'll get into
both of those when we get into the show. So first, I want to kind of set the scene to where I
saw the movie. I was just recently a couple weekends ago. I went down to Madison to the overture
center. They have, of course, the capital theater there. And there's a thing that they do. It's
called duck soup cinema. Like about three times a year, they show a silent film. Have a live organ
there. They do kind of a little act beforehand, just like you would back in the day. When you went
to the movies, you didn't just go to see a movie. You got to see a vaudeville act, maybe a magician.
They'd have all kinds of stuff going on before you actually saw the movie. So they kind of,
they try to recreate that a little bit. One of the really cool things about it, if you ever
get a chance to do it, I would recommend it. Go see a silent movie with a live organ playing
the music. That is how it was done back in the day. And I got to give all the credit to the
world for these organists. They are amazing playing live with the film, creating this, you know,
help with the atmosphere and everything. I was truly a fabulous experience. And I would
recommend people, if you get a chance to do it, do it because live organ on a silent movie,
it is absolutely great. Quickly go over the plot. It is a little bit convoluted to say the least.
There's a framing story. A young man is telling sitting at a park bench and he's telling this
other man of the horrible things that have gone on. And then we do a flashback. And we find out
that it takes place in a German town as carnival going on. And Dr. Caligari, who is a very
sinister looking character, comes into town. He wants to set up an act for the festival that's
going on. He says he has a some namblest. So which is basically just us person who sleepwalks.
That's what that means. So he's got this. And because he's been sleeping, he claims this man
has been sleeping for 24 years. And he knows all the secrets. And he can tell your future because
of this. So he puts up his thing. The young man and his friend go to see it. Cesar, that's the name
of the some namblest wakes up. And he said, is there any person in the crowd who has a question?
So the young man's friend goes up. He's like, when will I die? And he says, you have not long to
live. You will die before dawn. And of course, the guy freaks out everything. And you see later,
he does get killed. He gets murdered by someone with a knife. The friend devastated his friend
has been killed. He wants to investigate and find out what it is. As it goes along, we find out
that Dr. Caligari is using Cesar as his weapon to murder people. We see through yes,
he has hypnotized him kind of thing. And he wakes him up and he orders him to do things.
This culminates in Cesar being sent to kill the woman, the main characters of fiance. And
it's, he fails. He acts up, ends up abducting her, gets chased by a crowd, leaves her by,
and then ends Cesar ends up dying in a field. So that's kind of the first part of the movie.
It takes a twist. We find out that Dr. Caligari, we see him sneak into an assailant and it's like,
oh, wow, he's crazy. He's a crazy man. So the young man goes, he sees him go in there and he
goes in. He says, I got to find this one. He looks like this. They go up and he said, well,
talk to the director. They go up to talk to the director. And that's Dr. Caligari is the director
of the insane asylum. And I could have said, spoiler, this movie is 100 years old. I mean, come on.
We're not going to just spoil us with that. So I'm not worried about spoilers on this one.
So we find out that Caligari has been studying, and that's not his real name. He studies the
hypnotism by the actual Dr. Caligari. He feels, he is insane, becomes, feels like he has to become
Caligari. And it ends up, he gets put in a straight jacket, the director does, because he is
obviously insane after they, they, they, they find out that he's behind all of the killings.
We go back to the frame story and another twist once again, spoilers, I guess. The other
twist is we find out the young man is in an insane asylum. And the director is Dr. Caligari.
He is, but he is saying at this point, and they find out that this all was in his head. This
was all crazy and everything like that. So basically that is the plot. The writers, the two writers
of the, of the, the screenplay were both pacifists. Now, if you remember, this was 1920,
very shortly after World War One had ended. Germany at the time was in a lot of turmoil in 1919
and 1920. Basically throughout the war, the government had had fed everyone day after day,
propaganda, everything's going good. The war were winning the war. We're doing this on the home
front. All of a sudden, the armistice happens and they realize, we lost. And this was like,
it's hard to explain what this did to the German people because they thought this whole time
that they were on the winning side. They were the ones going. And so it caused a lot of reflection.
The two writers here, they were both pacifists. One served in the army. The other one feigned
madness to get out of the army. He ended up in an insane asylum, which is where he got a lot of
the ideas for this movie. You really have to understand German cinema in the 20s has a lot to do
with trying to reconcile what happened in World War One. And nobody, while not talking about the
lives that were lost, certainly World War One, as far as a country goes, Germany kind of like
took the, like I thrown under the bus. In a lot of ways, it's true. They were the only ones that
did anything wrong. They had to take the war guilt. Not only that, but the sanctions and
the different things that were put on Germany in that place. And it may sound weird to have
here at you talking to defending Germany, but it was it was an overkill. And it really set them
back. And you can make an argument that World War Two made Germany may not have been susceptible
to a madman had they not been as punished as they were in after World War One. And it led to so
much of not just this movie, but so much of the art being in this kind of like confused and
macabre state that they were almost forced into that they were already in. But they, as you said,
they were in it, but they had hope. They had feeling they were trusted to go. They didn't have
the internet to pull up or they didn't have a bunch of journalists out there doing a reporting.
It's actually going really bad for you guys, right? They all they had was to be able to take the
word of mouth, which is part of where a lot of critics and a lot of people think of the doctor
as basically being Germany being the metaphor authority figure that's not let's lying to you,
that's not telling you the truth. And then that led to a lot of anti authoritarianism too,
which ironically led to like you said, there's the connection between that and the Nazis and all
that sort of thing. Getting to the cast and crew really quick, the Robert Wein, the director,
he had a lot to do with, especially with this film because it was such a big hit about how films
looked in, especially in Germany, but all worldwide as well. We'll get into the sets and stuff in
just a minute about why this movie was so interesting to look at. But it was with that film and
with this film and the film he did after that, which was an adaptation of Dostoevsky's crime
and punishment to very influential films. He didn't do a lot after that. He was Jewish,
which meant he had to flee Germany when the Nazis took power. He did end up overseas for that.
Now the two stars of the film, Werner Krauss and Conrad Veit had two very different careers,
very after this, especially. I'll start with Werner Krauss. He's the one that plays Dr. Kalagari
and the director of the Insane Asylum. Again, you have to get used to his performance. It's very
over the top. But of course, he's playing an insane guy for most of it. And that was the acting,
like we spoken of earlier. So he was a well-respected actor in German films through the 1920s,
through the silent era. Unfortunately, when the Nazis took over, he was very much with them. He
was an open anti-Semite. And he became very integral to the film, a society of Germany, the national film
society or whatever they called it. But it was run by the state, basically. So he made interestingly
enough, he ended up playing Jews in a lot of the propaganda films that the Nazis made. These really,
I mean, horrifically stereotypical, just really nasty stuff that they did for propaganda purposes.
After the war, he did come back to Biden. You were talking about karma again. After the war,
he couldn't get work because of his collaboration with the Nazis and that sort of thing. He ended
up moving to Austria, where he was quietly lived out rest of his life and obscurity, basically,
kind of thing. Conrad Vite, on the other hand, he had a very interesting career after this. He was
in some very, very important silent films in Germany throughout the 1920s. Probably his best
other performance that he gives it was a film called The Man Who Laughs, which is also kind of a horror
movie as well. So he's amazing in this film. Actually, his role is pretty small. He doesn't have
a big part, but there's a couple of scenes and I'll get to that too later that is just remarkable.
He was not Jewish, but he married a Jewish woman. In 1933, when the Nazis took over to save her,
they immigrated to England. He became a part of the English film Society. Ironically enough,
ended up playing a lot of Nazis because he was German and he played up really well. Most people
today will know him as Major Strosser in Casablanca, which, by the way, was the last film that came out
before he died. He died in 1943 from a heart attack. Yes. There was a movie or two that came out
after he passed, but that was the last one that came out while he was still alive. So he did get to
see his remarkable performance as, again, a nasty Nazi that he played in that movie, but he did it.
He did it really well. He's one of the better villains in movie history. Absolutely. It was from
what everyone said about him. He was the kindest, gentlest man you would ever meet in your life.
He had an amazing story. During the blitz of Britain in 1940, when kids, you know, when families were
in the subways as bomb shelters, when London is getting bombed by the German Luftwaffe,
he sent, during Christmas, he sent a whole bunch of packages of presents and a whole bunch of
envelopes with money for the kids that were in these bomb shelters because he's like, this is a
terrible Christmas. Let's do something to lighten it up a little bit like 5,000 presents, 5,000
envelopes with just small amount of money in them. And he got from the War Commission cinema.
Thank you note later and saying, you're the only one in your profession that has done something
like this, which is really remarkable for an emigre from Germany to do this for from in
when his country, his home country is bombing that where his new home is, which is a really
remarkable story. So yeah, he was, he was a remarkable person, he was, along with this iconic role.
Moving on to the film set and the design, it looks like a nightmare basically. It's based on
German expressionism, the painting style, and the sets are weird. I mean, they're jagged,
edged, and they're off-kilter, everything's a little bit weird on this film. And that's very
deliberate. Wine, Robert Wine, the director wanted to do this. He wanted to show this kind of
scape, which also kind of ties in with the fact that it's kind of a madman's remembering of
something that never really happened, but exactly. It wasn't in color, but it was tinted. So at night,
there's this dark blue during the day. It's more yellow. So to help do the mood of the film,
they did some tinting on the film. This was before color film, of course. They were able to do that,
because of the, not only the sets, like I said, it had a huge influence on German film. So
after 1920, you see all these silent German films with these kind of weird expressionist sets,
some very dreamlike quality, something we've really never seen since. It's a really distinct
period in film. Now, it would have an influence on film in general, because of that, like most people
consider it the first horror film, considering not only the sets, but of course the plot and everything
of madness and all this stuff. So it has a lot of influence on horror movies moving forward,
but it also influenced film noir with its lighting. If you watch how they lit things with the tall
shadows and the lighting in just in jagged areas of the film, you will see where a lot of the
lighting came from for film noir back in the United States in the 30s and the 40s. So it had a
huge influence on that as well. There's a quote in front of Seth necessity is the mother of adventure.
Right. It's up there because of what we do here. We're creatives and we do creative work. And I
think that some of the greatest creativity comes from necessity. A lot of that was from necessity.
There was a electricity, electricity was rationed to post-war war, too. So a lot of the things
where he had a paint, like lights on the wall and his paint on the walls and the backdrops,
they couldn't use a lot of electricity. So he had to creatively figure out how to make this work
and to kind of lean into it a little bit, which like you said, like had the bite. People just took
that and ran with it. And while you'll hear a number of people when you google this movie or look at
it and everything that is kind of the godfather of horror and the creator of horror and stuff that
genre, that's all very true. But it's also the creator of the twist ending. Yes. From everything I
could tell, it is the first time in cinema that there is a twist ending. And I think that if you
ask most modern people, most people, anybody out there, what was the first twist ending?
Oh, something in the 70s, maybe. Some in the 80s, maybe or something like that.
Right, yeah. Well, I think Scott movie or something like that. Yeah, something like that.
Man, right at the gate, right out the gate, we came out of the twist.
Yes. How cool of a creativeness that that is and what a challenge to the rest of us,
to, you know, picking up the ball afterwards and everything. It's a really cool note on the movie.
I'm glad you said that because there's actually there's two twists in the movie.
Yeah. The one the one I said at the beginning or the middle right smack in the middle of the film.
You see that this bad man you've seen manipulate people and send his guy to kill people and
everything like that. And oh, wait, he's the director of an insane asylum. Oh, no, this is not good,
right? I hate when that happens. Yeah. And then the twist at the end when you realize and then
it's become a cliche, you know, it was all a dream, right? When you find out, no, this is actually
just a mad man. And so you see all the characters throughout the movie in the asylum. He has created
this world that that this is how he's dealing with his madness kind of thing. So yeah, I mean,
it's our our views on mental illness have changed in a hundred years. So you have to take that with
a grain of salt. So there's, it doesn't handle it the best way, but that's kind of how they dealt
with people who were had mental problems back in the, they just throw them kind of into an asylum.
And that's where where we ended up gives us a little perspective on that. Yeah. Well, which is
always nice. A couple of other things I would do want to touch on before wrapping up. Couple of
specific scenes. Now Conrad Vite was like I said, you know, he's a, he was a tremendous professional
actor. There's one scene in particular that just really got me when we, when my son and I were
watching it. It's the scene with the first scene with him. They opens the coffin and there says
our sleep and Calgary is like, you know, he's giving him the speech, you know, the barking, the,
you know, the, come on, come on, kind of thing. And he says, now I'm going to wake him up. And this
is where you can ask him any question. He knows all. And he says, wake up. And they do a close-up. I
mean an extreme close-up of Vite's face. And as you see him struggle to wake up, he makes muscles
in his face, twitch. And I don't know how he did that. It's an amazing scene where you totally
believe this man has been asleep for 24 years or whatever it was that he said it was. And twitching
his eyes, his face, and then his eyes open. It's a marvelous scene. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very,
very cool. One of the other ones that I took note of is when Cesar, the sleep walker,
attacked Jane, who is the, the, the main woman of the main love interest in the film.
When he first pulls out the knife, like he's going to stab her, looks at her, stops.
And get goes down to a doctor. The, the struggle of him grabbing her was actually somewhat shocking.
I have to say, mostly because the move, the movie at this, to this point, is like we've seen,
we talked about, you know, it's more the exaggerated movements. You know, you feel that, you know,
as you get into the movie, you know, you get used to these kind of like really the eyes,
like you said, you know, like the very furtive looks like this close-ups. And then, and then
these broad gestures and stuff. This is a scene that looks real. Like it was actually happening,
not that, you know, he was actually hurting her. But the struggle with that is very jarring
from the other parts of the movie because it looks very real. And it's like, whoa,
whoa, I wasn't expecting that kind of thing. It's a very big thing. We already touched on the
twists already of one of the things that made it very distinctive was these twists that they
throughout the film. And I have to say, it is, it does, when you're getting into it, it is,
moves a little slow at the beginning. But once it gets going, man, it pulls you right in,
just like any movie today would do. It really gets you going. So it is a classic. And not only
because of all the influence that it had on future movies and if you're up to today, but because
it is just a good movie. It's a good, well-made film back from 1920. It isn't just Seth or others that
highlighted this movie and loved this movie. This movie actually played at one time in Paris
in a Paris theater for seven years straight. Oh my gosh. Seven years straight. They played this movie.
Like I love that movie in Paris. I tell it. It's, it's that surprise anyone. No, not really. Don't
Paris. And you know, sometimes we tend to think that, oh, movies nowadays, it's darker. It's this
or that or anything. They've been doing dark movies and macabre movies since they were able to
film each other doing movies. Like it's a dark story. Like the gold rush. That was a darker story.
There's definitely dark elements in that. Yeah. It starts with it saying a dramatic comedy.
You know, I mean, it's a genre starter. It's both of these movies are genre starters.
The the the the beginnings of these kind of things that we just know so well now. I'm so glad
that you wrote up the cast with this movie. It's an integral cast and actors that we don't get
to talk about very much. Yeah. If you don't mind to just go back real quick for a second because I
wanted to mention a big Jim McKay is played by Mark McSwain. He does a great job. A lot of facial
expressions I was talking about and everything. And as much as I love Charlie in this movie,
one of my favorite old school actresses, Georgia Hale, is in this. Georgia would end up
being in a couple of other bigger roles in her career. This was the one that really got her started
on it. And when I'm talking about acting with your eyes, Chaplin, so many of these actors are
great in it. Georgia Hale, just her eyes alone acting may have been some of the greatest acting
you'll ever see. Let alone the rest of her. Fantastic actress that is lost in the shuffle when we
talk about legendary actors. She gets she doesn't get brought up. And I'm not saying that she necessarily
should be. But I feel like her name should be mentioned when we talk about these old school
actors. We giving them credit where it's to you know, it's it seems in a lot of ways going back
to the whole silent movie thing that it's it seems so long ago. It seems so far away from what
we're used to today with films and and and all this stuff. But you can going back and I think
we've done a good job. I hope of highlighting the stuff that's there. Remember this is all new
when they made it. You know, like James was saying the twist ending. It's it's derigger now. It's
stuff that we oh yeah, where's the twist? You know, we know it's coming. What where it is? This
was it. This is where it started everyone. The the the the finding out comedy silent comedy is
some of the most brilliant comedy out there because you cannot rely on the joke. You cannot rely
on the funny sound effect that we don't have any of that. That's why it's there's an edge to it.
And I mean by the edge and I mean there's a seriousness to it that you don't see Chaplin did it
brilliantly. Buster Keaton was the master at the stone face comedy. You've got you've got Harold
Lloyd, no kind of the the third guy of the big comedian silent comedians, but putting himself literally
in danger, hanging off buildings to do to make people laugh. This is something you do not see
anymore. You know, this is this is genuine comedy that and I yeah, I guess I'm biased on this,
but because I'm not a big fan of modern comedies that much, but this is the stuff of that that
that that all of this is built on and it's some of the best you will ever see.
Entertaining wise, these movies are not only hold up their timeless. Absolutely. They are classics.
And thank you so much for bringing up this idea, man. This really have enjoyed doing these
episodes. I am I love the fact that we can talk about this stuff and maybe someone who's not
even considered seeing an old silent movie. Maybe, maybe they'll they'll get the get the urge
to see something. Be sure to get us your suggestions to have movies. We'd like us to go over
dissect and have some fun with and everything. We appreciate your feedback as always, everyone.
Yes, indeed. And we'll be back soon with more directors cut. Of course, we got new shows
that we're working on. More guests that we want to bring to you guys and just keep listening
here to directors caught on W F H R.