The Spiders Episode 1: The Golden Sea

#30 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. German critics were apparently dismissive of this, Fritz Lang's third feature film (and first surviving one), deriding as sensationalism and nothing more. I don't disagree, but I also don't really see much wrong with it. The narrative and thematic ambitions are modest, focused more on purely entertaining…

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Hell Bent

#61 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. The amount of material covered in John Ford's Hell Bent, his ninth feature overall and third surviving, is enough to comfortably fill an 80-90 minute long film. At fifty-one minutes, though, everything ends up feeling stunted and shallow. Remove a couple of things and allow the rest…

Bucking Broadway

#37 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. This is better. Obviously built from the ground up as a feature length film, Bucking Broadway, John Ford's fourth feature length film (and only second surviving), as the sinews of a story that fills its screen time healthfully. It's another simple tale with broadly drawn characters and…

Straight Shooting

#54 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. You can do subtlety in silent film, but it requires a certain attention to specific moments that go well beyond what we normally expect from sound films. You need to focus down with a small scope and bring out details that are harder to do without some…

The President

#11 in my ranking of Carl Theodor Dreyer's filmography. Carl Theodor Dreyer had a history as a writer, and it shows in his first feature film as a director, The President. There's a literary aspect to the production that emphasizes character and structure that gives the film's final resolution a surprising amount of satisfaction. However, being…