Great analysis!
regarding society and cultural development i also definitely prefer the twenties to the thirties.there had never been more freedom in arts than during the twenties.the weimar berlin would have been the place i would have liked to live then.it was a very dynamic decade in every respect.
That period of German cinema was perhaps like no other and is no doubt extremely influential even to this day. There was a young girl from Paris who went to Germany during that period to help make
Der Blaue Engel with Marlene Dietrich (1930). The girl's name was Dominique Schlumberger, and she eventually became Dominique de Menil and founded the Menil Museum in Houston, Texas, which the late architect Philip Johnson said was the finest private art collection in the world. Its strong suit is surrealism, and has maybe the best collection of Magrittes in the world.
http://www.menil.org/
Would that have happened without her experience with German Cinema in the late 1920s? I doubt it.
the great division between the twenties and thirtues came with the black friday and the following depression.many were unemployed then and struggled in every day life.society changed totally and also the zeitgeist and culture.as for films you cannot compare the twenties with the 30s.after all the 20s were reigned by silent film ,which died out (if you leave chaplin aside) with this decade.there was a very prosperous time in films at the beginning of the 30s before the hays-code stopped that.gangster-films like scarface ,the roaring 20s etc emerged and showed real life as brutal as it was.there were also risqué comedies like red-headed woman with jean harlow.a woman who sleeps her way into the higher society without scruples or regrets...there was relatively great freedom during these years and many great films surfaced.
I definitely agree that the thirties brought more of a reality focus to film and a retreat from the fantasy focus of the twenties. At least we still have the great work of Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Lilian Gish, Mary Pickford, and many, many others whenever the need for pure cinematic fantasy strikes!
all this was ended by the hays-code around 33-34. in general i think this meant a regression from reality.but filmmakers always found new niches.the screwball comedies for exmple emerged.i love them and think they are timeless.
I do too. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert were amazing.
what i find most astonishing about silent film is the german expressionism later replaced by french surrealsim.they were regarding film as a means ,as a new artform to express their ideas.in caligari you dive deep into the distorted subconcsious of a mentally ill person.they made inner turmoil visible on screen and dissolved reality.now that was more than film-making that was real art.never since has there been anything like it.
Fritz Lang's
Metropolis is another German expressionist film that has never quite been equalled for sheer willingness to question reality as we know it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_021ixZzrk&feature=related
And of course there has never been an anti-war movie quite like Renoir's
La Grande Illusion.
i think that only silent films made such an approach to cinema possible.spoken dialogue doesn´t fit into this concept.
My all-time favorite silent film is
The Wind with Lilian Gish. Dialogue would have ruined it.
later mid-20s to 29 they ,especially american film tried to tell stories that were close to real life.the docks of new york were such a society study and also the german asphalt.or even the comedy it with clara bow.murnau of course brought his reflections on humanity on a whole new level through wonderful allegories,like in sunshine.
So true.
well,what was i trying to say.....yes,that i prefer the twenties as a whole,but that i love the films of the 30s too
!they´re just too different to make a real comparison possible and to do them justice.it´s just a pity that the possibilkities that silent film offered are forever lost now.
I still think, though, that the magic of the twenties would not have been possible without the truly unbelievable stage magic of the Victorian Era.
Who could forget the incomparable Anna Pavlova:
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Or the exquisite Sarah Bernhardt:
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Or the lovely Ellen Terry:
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B)
!!thanks so much for saving it,lucy,and sharing it
