Coeur Fidèle (1923)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Coeur Fidèle (1923) – J. Epstein

It’s like watching the language of cinema being invented sometimes – except that some of the lyrical moves of these early silent films seem to have been lost to the ages in this era of CGI action films.  And “The Faithful Heart” is as far from an action movie as you can probably get, although perhaps the bare bones melodrama plot has made it into a fair few action movies (boy falls in love with girl who is taken away by different bad boy until she is rescued/released by the original boy).  Here instead, we have a gauzy romantic look at yearning, full of giant close-up heads, sometimes superimposed onto images of the vast ocean (as the film takes place at the docks).  Equally impressive is a sequence at the funfair featuring dizzying rhythmic cutting that bespeaks an impressionistic vision of the heroine’s alarm.  All told, director Jean Epstein herein demonstrates a mastery of the medium that is beautiful to look at, even as the plot feels like simply a shell to hold his ideas.  But oh what ideas!

  

Safety Last! (1923)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Safety Last! (1923) -- F. C. Newmeyer & S. Taylor

This much-heralded silent film comedy starring Harold Lloyd is actually very funny and I laughed out loud a few times (not an easy feat to achieve).  Lloyd plays a young man who moves to the big smoke to make good and thereby wed his waiting fiancee.  As a department store salesman, he has all sorts of mishaps -- especially when his fiancee shows up unexpectedly and he tries to pretend he is the boss.  Of course, the scene where he scales the tall building and ends up hanging from the clock is the most famous (later imitated by Jackie Chan, among others).