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Retour de Flamme; French DVD series
Topic Started: Aug 2 2008, 03:12 PM (106 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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In France, film rescuer and producer Serge Bromberg annually presents a series of cinematic treasures, obscurities, and rarities, in a show called Retour de Flamme (Saved from the Flames), devoted to film preservation. To date, six DVD compilations of these shows are available on DVD in Europe, and a boxed set of many but not all of the films is available from Flicker Alley in the U.S. under the “Saved from the Flames” title. Here in the Balcony, we’ve got all of the various discs and we’re proud to present our comments on them, beginning with Vol. 1. Note that all of the European discs offer extensive liner notes in French or English.

The first of the volumes contains 16 short subjects, all of excellent quality, spanning the years 1896-1948, but most of the films are from the silent period. Here’s the list. (Films marked with an * are included in the U.S. set from Flicker Alley.) Note that a few of these are talkies.

(1) * Three short films (France, 1896-97) are brief glimpses into everyday life; the first shows workmen leaving the factory at the end of the day (almost all of them are on bicycles), the second passengers leaving a train, and the third a friendly game of cards. Apparently, films like this were made, quickly developed and edited, and then shown in various cities and towns, advertised as “come out and see yourselves on the screen!” Like looking through a time machine.

(2) Louis Lumiere talks (France, 1948) is an interview with the “inventor of the cinema” (well, that’s how he’s billed) shortly before his death. Short enough to be interesting.

(3) The Stolen Jools (U.S., 1931) Chesterfield Cigarettes presents a fundraiser to fight tuberculosis, with dozens of Hollywood stars. You’ll recognize Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Edward G. Robinson, Our Gang, Joan Crawford, and many others, but will you spot Mitzi Green and Eddie Kane? A delightful film that brought down the house when I saw it in college or when I show it to guests. Light up a Chesterfield and fight lung disease.

(4) The Rajah’s Box (France, 1906) is a short fantasy with a lot of special effects, brilliantly hand stenciled for color (and hand stenciled for censorship; some of the dancing girls’ skin is blotted out). Includes a snippet from a second version, colored differently, to show how each print of a stenciled film had to be individually treated at great time and effort. Color, magic, dancing girls, an evil wizard: what more do you want in a movie?

(5) Titanic (U.S., 1912) purports to be the only film of the ship before its demise; the little existing film of the ship and its captain is here, but one of Titanic’s sister ships doubles for it through most of the running time. From what we can see, though, that was sure one big-ass boat.

(6) * Kids Auto Races in Venice (U.S., 1914) shows the typical comedy mentality of the day: there’s an event in town, so send a comic and a cameraman down there and film SOMETHING that hopefully is funny. Whom they sent, though, is Charlie Chaplin, who donned his Little Tramp outfit for the first time. Not particularly amusing, but… hey, it’s Charlie.

(7) * Meet Me Down at Coney Isle (U.S., 1932) is one I absolutely love; it’s a Fox Magic Carpet Movietone short that shows how Depression-era New Yorkers relaxed on a summer’s weekend. Marvelous, and a beautiful print. In fact, all of the prints here are terrific.

(8) Chess Fever (Russia, 1925) is a rare slapstick comedy from the Soviets; a young man is so obsessed with chess that his fiancé dumps him, only to discover that the entire city has gone chess-mad. Having seen countless silent comedies filmed in California and Florida, watching one set on a snow-covered Moscow street is unexpectedly delightful, and the film is rather clever, too, with checkerboard patterns on books, hankies, and floors suddenly transformed into a game board.

(9) * The Fireman of the Folies Bergere (France, 1928) is perhaps my favorite film on the disc; a chubby fireman leaves the Folies and imagines he sees nude women everywhere he goes. Oh, and he spots Josephine Baker dancing in the subway, too. You have to love a movie where a line of firemen doing exercises morphs into a line of topless women dancing, don’t you? Well, I do, anyway. If you ever stop by my house, request this one.

(10) Women who Worry (France, 1930) is another favorite; it’s two popular songs of the day turned into short films by Germaine Dulac, both featuring… well, worried women. Haunting, and maybe the first music videos?

(11) Tulips Shall Grow (U.S., 1942) George Pal Puppetoon, and maybe the best of that series: Jan and Janette’s Dutch honeymoon paradise is invaded by goosestepping “Screwballs”. Brilliant and colorful.

(12) Mighty Like a Moose (U.S., 1926) stars Charley Chase, one of our faves, in one of his silliest but funniest silent comedies. Charley has colossal buck teeth, and his wife has a giant nose; when they surprise each other with cosmetic surgery, they don’t recognize each other and have an affair. Like I said, silly, but Chase is at the top of his game. Leo McCarey directed.

(13) The Man Who Ate Bull Meat (France, 1935) is a very strange short; appears to be a very early silent with not-so-funny commentary added much later. Still, there is something to admire in a movie about a guy who straps on giant pointy horns and wanders the street goring people.

(14) The Flight Around the World (Germany, 1924) is a real treat: the first episode of a lavish and well-done serial. Each successive Retour de Flamme disc has another chapter. Ellen Richter stars as Eleonore Rix, sister of a famed aviator and inventor. When his experimental plane mysteriously crashes on a test run before its maiden flight around the globe and her brother is badly injured, Eleonore tries but fails to find another pilot who’ll undertake the trip, so she volunteers herself. Unbeknownst to her, Rix’s greatest rival, a stinker named Renard, will stop at nothing to bring the flight to a halt. Renard runs a nightclub called the White Cat that caters to shifty characters, and he offers one of them, Henry Turner, a murder suspect on the run who flew planes during the war, $10,000 to kill Eleonore. When the guy refuses, Renard has his own club raided so that Turner has no choice but to agree in order to avoid capture. Meanwhile, a goofy young insurance agent foolishly agrees to insure Eleonore and her plane for 10 million francs; his boss, a fat, bald, blustery guy, orders the agent, Paul Piquet, to go along to make certain nothing goes wrong on the flight. On the morning the flight is due to leave, Eleonore’s mechanic has been ambushed and badly beaten, but Turner – introducing himself as a fellow pilot – steps up and says he can’t bear to see a woman in distress, so volunteers to act as her second on the flight. As the plane taxies to take off, Piquet arrives and jumps from his car to the plane, losing his pants in the process. And so our heroine, her intended assassin, and her oafish protector fly off to their fates as our first episode ends. The serial is in good shape, is as entertaining as all get out, has beautiful original tinting, and as a bonus, there’s a featurette on the silent serial A Woman in Grey, offering several chapter-ending sequences from that thriller.

Retour de Flamme Vol. 1 is available from Amazon.co.uk in England for £24.99. Keep your eyes on the Short Subject Department here at In The Balcony for future reviews of the other discs.
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