Directed by the little known Belgian aristocrat Henri d'Ursel,The Pearl (1929) is a lightly erotic silent masterpiece, over 30 minutes long, that links Celine and Julie go Boating, Jean Vigo, Man Ray, Maya Deren and the early crime serials (or should that be surreals?) of Louis Feuillade, which were much admired by the surrealists. In The Pearl, the body-hugging costumes of Musidora in Vampires are brought to mind, by a vampish sexy pearl thief, played by the suitably named Kissa Kouprine, whose mischievous allure and stocking tops entice a young man from fidelity to his fiancée, who is enjoying a languorous idyllic summer setting. The film moves easily between lush meadows, woods, waterways, Parisian rooftops, corridors and bedrooms, with an eye for an image as impressive as the beguiling atmosphere.
2 Reviews
A common modern structure seen way before its time.
Polaris_DiB16 April 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Whereas by the late 1920s, cinematic form had pretty much solidified its narrative grammar and the storytelling mode we understand today had been fully developed, still this movie is strikingly comparable to modern day movies in the way it is shot and cut. In the silent era, because so much emphasis relied on facial expressions and reactions, such visual communications were often shot in a protracted way: the cuts were longer to emphasize the acting and the drama. In the early days of synchronized audio, the requirements of audio recording forced the camera to linger on shots longer as well, which is why in general it is understood that "old movies" are "slower" than "new movies". Faster silent films were typically found in Soviet montages and movies imitating that style, which this movie does not do.
This movie may seem slow, perhaps, to anyone generally not interested in silent or black and white movies based off of a prejudice against "old" and "slow" movies, but the fact is that for its time, it moves quite rapidly through its actions, and the subtle uses of glances and quick reaction shots are more similar to 2011 movies than 1929 movies structurally. Furthermore, The Pearl contains what feels like knowing visual references to previous movies that diverge from the typical form of allusion known at that time. In early cinema, movies either referenced non-cinematic works (well-known books or well-known events or well-known paintings, i.e.) to ease early audience comprehension, or outright copied other movies frame for frame to sell in diverse markets. It was the rare movie at that time that built its original narrative out of visual references to other cinematic productions, a technique much more familiar today and pretty much epitomized in the film school brats of the 1970s and the video brats of the 1990s (in other words, nowadays we expect Tarantino to make an original story via visual allusions to thousands of other movies. Back in the 1920s, this did not happen all that frequently because audiences would not really be expected to catch the references). That is not to say intertextuality was not recognized back in the day... check out Buster Keaton's take-off of Griffith's Intolerance called Three Ages.
However, what's interesting in The Pearl is that it is a very knowingly surrealist film, taking its references thus from the experimental and surreal movies made previously--but still maintaining a closer narrative structure that we can recognize today. The Pearl follows a man as he attempts to bring his fiancée a necklace of pearls; unfortunately, this journey is beset by problems as a seductress thief follows him around, causing him no end of mental anguish, sexual frustration, and ultimately deep guilt. The movie treats the actual events, the man's dreams, and the man's emotional reactions as similar in kind, meaning at any point you may be seeing either what is really happening, what he's just imagining, or how he feels about what is happening as if it's all the same thing--which in the case of most surrealist cinema, it is.
The seductress is clothed at times in a skin-tight cat burgler garment that is incredibly reminiscent of Feuillade's Les Vampires, so that though she may not have a title other than La Voleure, she might as well be known as Irma Vep (or Spider Woman or La Femme Fatale, as she would become later known as after WWII turned these movies into "film noir").
The movie opens with a series of shots detailing the transmutation of the pearl from its organic beginnings to its use in a necklace. This sequence of shots are the most visually referent to more non-narrative surrealism, and look a lot like some of the opening sequence of l'Etoile de mer. This is not the last Man Ray reference in this movie.
La Voleure at one point plays dice in a bathtub with another woman in a scene reminiscent of Man Ray's Le Mysteres du château du de. This is in the midst of probably one of the most confusing (probably purposefully, matching the confusion of the main character) scenes; I like it, in fact, better than its reference, because the use of dice in Ray's work and in this one allude to the same dadaist love of the randomness and play of fate but in this case it is used narratively in a way that is thrilling. Even though the shot does not ultimately seem to affect the main conflict of the protagonist, nevertheless there is a hint that those dice rolls are very significant to the outcome of the conflict, whereas in Le château du de, it is merely a dice game amongst the architecture of dice games.
To sum up, this movie is very surprising, both in the way it is shot and how it builds a visual narrative out of lesser known cinematic references, in context to the time in which it came out.
Need a viewer be familiar with the references to enjoy or understand it? Far from. What is really beautiful about this movie is that it does, in fact, exist as an individual and solid personal vision--despite how much emphasis this review has placed on references, I only state that to point out the structural elements of the movie. Outside of that structure, I honestly have not seen another movie quite like this one, even in recognition of its genre. It is a very beautiful film.
--PolarisDiB
This movie may seem slow, perhaps, to anyone generally not interested in silent or black and white movies based off of a prejudice against "old" and "slow" movies, but the fact is that for its time, it moves quite rapidly through its actions, and the subtle uses of glances and quick reaction shots are more similar to 2011 movies than 1929 movies structurally. Furthermore, The Pearl contains what feels like knowing visual references to previous movies that diverge from the typical form of allusion known at that time. In early cinema, movies either referenced non-cinematic works (well-known books or well-known events or well-known paintings, i.e.) to ease early audience comprehension, or outright copied other movies frame for frame to sell in diverse markets. It was the rare movie at that time that built its original narrative out of visual references to other cinematic productions, a technique much more familiar today and pretty much epitomized in the film school brats of the 1970s and the video brats of the 1990s (in other words, nowadays we expect Tarantino to make an original story via visual allusions to thousands of other movies. Back in the 1920s, this did not happen all that frequently because audiences would not really be expected to catch the references). That is not to say intertextuality was not recognized back in the day... check out Buster Keaton's take-off of Griffith's Intolerance called Three Ages.
However, what's interesting in The Pearl is that it is a very knowingly surrealist film, taking its references thus from the experimental and surreal movies made previously--but still maintaining a closer narrative structure that we can recognize today. The Pearl follows a man as he attempts to bring his fiancée a necklace of pearls; unfortunately, this journey is beset by problems as a seductress thief follows him around, causing him no end of mental anguish, sexual frustration, and ultimately deep guilt. The movie treats the actual events, the man's dreams, and the man's emotional reactions as similar in kind, meaning at any point you may be seeing either what is really happening, what he's just imagining, or how he feels about what is happening as if it's all the same thing--which in the case of most surrealist cinema, it is.
The seductress is clothed at times in a skin-tight cat burgler garment that is incredibly reminiscent of Feuillade's Les Vampires, so that though she may not have a title other than La Voleure, she might as well be known as Irma Vep (or Spider Woman or La Femme Fatale, as she would become later known as after WWII turned these movies into "film noir").
The movie opens with a series of shots detailing the transmutation of the pearl from its organic beginnings to its use in a necklace. This sequence of shots are the most visually referent to more non-narrative surrealism, and look a lot like some of the opening sequence of l'Etoile de mer. This is not the last Man Ray reference in this movie.
La Voleure at one point plays dice in a bathtub with another woman in a scene reminiscent of Man Ray's Le Mysteres du château du de. This is in the midst of probably one of the most confusing (probably purposefully, matching the confusion of the main character) scenes; I like it, in fact, better than its reference, because the use of dice in Ray's work and in this one allude to the same dadaist love of the randomness and play of fate but in this case it is used narratively in a way that is thrilling. Even though the shot does not ultimately seem to affect the main conflict of the protagonist, nevertheless there is a hint that those dice rolls are very significant to the outcome of the conflict, whereas in Le château du de, it is merely a dice game amongst the architecture of dice games.
To sum up, this movie is very surprising, both in the way it is shot and how it builds a visual narrative out of lesser known cinematic references, in context to the time in which it came out.
Need a viewer be familiar with the references to enjoy or understand it? Far from. What is really beautiful about this movie is that it does, in fact, exist as an individual and solid personal vision--despite how much emphasis this review has placed on references, I only state that to point out the structural elements of the movie. Outside of that structure, I honestly have not seen another movie quite like this one, even in recognition of its genre. It is a very beautiful film.
--PolarisDiB
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