Visual Poems in Gance's J'accuse

Watching films like this one truly feels as if sound really did take something away from the cinema. Out of the endless technical and visual feats accomplished in the film, Gance's visual poems still seem like quite a bold, brilliant and purely cinematic choice. When the main protagonist and poet Jean Diaz (Romuald Joubé) is about to tell one of his poems to his mother, a cut that is expected to lead to an intertitle of the actual poem actually leads to a series of beautifully composed shots that evoke a poem. A visual equivalent to written poetry. By doing this Gance is equating the cinema (an art that, especially in 1919, no one took seriously, it wasn't even really considered an art back then) with poetry (perhaps the most esteemed of the arts).

Jean begins to recite Ode to the Sun to this mother:

followed by:

There's a few of these throughout the film. Completely stunning. Watched this in anticipation of Napoleon on April 1.

Passing Fancy (Yasujirô Ozu, 1933)

Ozu, Narrative Structure, Passing Fancy: Donald Richie claims that with each succeeding film Ozu would use a simpler story and Ozu uses the story as a mere background to explore the way his characters react to them. This becomes evident in Passing Fancy because it is simply a story about a single father and his relationship to his son and everything else that happens is simply in the film to explore this relationship. This becomes clear with the love triangle that is going on in the film. If this was a Hollywood film this would probably the whole basis of the film ending in some tragic consequence with the men killing each other or everything turning out fine for all three characters. Ozu uses this story element simply as a background to the father-son relationship. Not only does he not focus on the love triangle but around two-thirds into the film he disposes of it completely and it is almost like he starts over with a new story about a sickly son. This “second” story that Ozu introduces, even more so than the love triangle, really reiterates his focus on the relationship between the two. This loose narrative structure is another aspect of Ozu’s cinema that would be very hard to get away in a studio in Hollywood at the time where reliance on story was (and still is) enormously significant, it also recalls the type of rambling tales the naniwa-bushi performers, as shown at the beginning of the film, usually told.

Also, the famous match cut in the film:

establishing shot

Clearly breaking continuity, Ozu's frames both characters in the same exact spot and position:

shot

reaction shot

Erotikon (Mauritz Stiller, 1920)

Mauritz Stiller pokes fun at a stereotype, still quite apparent in Hollywood today, in the incredibly ahead of its time film Erotikon. After the incredible play within the film, which is the most stunning section of the film, Professor Leo Charpentier (Anders de Wahl) responds to the unhappy ending: