spaces

One actor successfully holding the other back so we can get a good look at the fabulous decor. The chevrons on the wall are echoed in the diamonds on the inlaid floor. And are the walls lined with fabric? Perhaps it is a textured wallpaper treatment, but I'm guessing raw silk or grasscloth. Stunning, non?

Oh yeah, some more stuff happens too. All beautifully of course; this is Murnau.

See the cafe patrons through the windows of the streetcar? They are sitting across the street from the camera as the presumably fake trolley passes by. Faux or no, it is to great effect - Freund, thank you.

The Finances of the Grand Duke (1924)

directed by F. W. Murnau

cinematography by Karl Freund

words

The cinema must seek to become, gradually and in the end uniquely, cinematic; to employ, in other words, only photogenic elements.

Jean Epstein, "On Certain Characteristics of Photogenie" 1924.

The cinema is true; a story is false.

Jean Epstein, "The Senses I (b)" 1921

Visual impact is ephemeral, it's an impression you receive and which suggests a thousand thoughts....

The seventh art, that of the screen, is depth rendered perceptible, the depth that lies beneath that surface; it is the musical ungraspable....

The more we get rid of the plot to go in the direction of visual cinema, the more we will work for the seventh art.

Germaine Dulac, Visual and Anti-visual Films, 1928.

Now, isn't looking at an image in this context just as interesting as contemplating what John Ford was supposed to do with a Shirley Temple picture? (I enjoyed it very much, by the way)

Wee Willie Winkie (1937)
directed by John Ford
cinematography by Arthur C. Miller

oh, just kiss her already!

Geez, those existentialists really make life more difficult for themselves, don't you think?

Ore Wa Metteru Ze (1957)

aka I Am Waiting

directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara

cinematography by Kurataro Takamura