Lucas' Mechanical image: D.W. Griffiths Supreme Achievement- "A Corner in W...

Lucas' Mechanical image: Buster Keaton "The Boat".

"The Boat" written and directed by Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline is a quintessential Buster Keaton Film, containing many familiar gags. Buster blunders, fumbles and wrestles with the mechanics of his created environment. Though we may sympathise with Busters' family he never comes across as a fool or idiot, but bounces from mishap to mishap with a charming wistfulness. Ingeneous and determined always, it is with Buster I found myself sympathising.

I am not sure weather it is all silent film, or good silent film, or just Buster Keaton films , but I find I am engaged with the medium in a way that is more akin to reading a book than watching a film. I don't feel like a passive viewer, I am relied upon to embellish elements of sound, narrative and even character. It's a good thing to be a more active viewer I think.

The technological limitations of the time seem to enhance the work rather than detract from it. The black and white, still, silent, long shots render the film with a certain romance. I don't think colour and sound would in any way enhance the work but rather give it a cartoon quality and indeed it would seem the 'Looney Tunes' cartoons owe a lot to Buster Keaton. The black and white, silent format gives the work a grace and sophistication that could perhaps be achieved no other way.

D.W. Griffiths Supreme Achievement- "A Corner in Wheat"

Griffiths’ 1909 short film "A Corner in Wheat" is a poetic meditation on capitalism based on a Frank Norris poem.  

Griffiths’ ushers in the beginnings of film as narrative, as a new artistic story telling medium.  This must have been quite the revelation for audiences of 1909.  For a modern day viewer this simplistic, black and white silent film is prehistoric in style and content.  It is like a museum piece.  Despite this and perhaps because of this the film is very engaging.  

“A Corner in Wheat” is so incredibly foreign to the present day experience of modern cinema, though in it we recognize the great great grandfather of contemporary film.   Griffiths’ film utilizes the same cinematic language of the parallel montage that is so intrinsic and vital to contemporary cinema.  As a contemporary viewer I understood Griffiths’ language, though for me it was not about what he said so much as the way in which it was said.  The long still shots saturated in monochromatic tones accompanied by a musical piece that was just as vital to the narrative and atmosphere of the piece was elegant and poetic.  The marriage of the visual image and music is delightful.  I only wish Griffiths had not tried to explain so much to the viewer by employing intertitles and melodramatic actors, but let the silent simplicity of this newfound medium radiate unencumbered.