Item #: 21865DV Category: SILENT Format: DVD MPAA Rating: U

Woolly Rating: 5/10 (22 votes)

MEMBER COMMENTS ON THIS VIDEO

jd	Jun 24, 2005 @ 15:49:30

<[:-| zzzzz
i never made it all the way through this snooze. its a good looking film but it seems pointless. there's something in it about the huguenot / catholic fuss. its gotten consistently good reviews, so iguess i'm the odd man out again.

The end is the best part!
French historical epics of the 1920s--and in that I include Abel Gance's 'Napoleon'--are pretty much all a tough slog. This expensive 1927 film, beautifully restored, has gotten a lot of 'buzz' mileage out of the fact that it was released the same year as the Gance film and in many ways resembles it, down to the use of handheld cameras in some action scenes. The director Raymond Bernard was supposed to have been an innovator in the usage of handhelds for battle scenes, predating Gance in that regard, and using it supposedly well in his 1925 epic "Miracle of the Wolves." All of these films were panned by American reviewers at the time for the same essential problems pointed out by JD: slowness and slack narrative. And I agree with those reviewers and with JD. The "Chess Player" has its partisans, especially among Gance fans who discovered it and "...Wolves" several years ago in silent film festival screenings--thus bringing the forgotten director Bernard back to some critical respectibility. Regardless, it's all silly and confusing, though the scene where the automaton men snuff out their creator is interesting (even though you wonder why this sci-fi tangent is in the film at all.) Like many of the silent works of Jean Epstein, Jacques Feyder, Marcel L'Herbier and Gance, there are good things, but more often than not there's just stultifying stasis. As much of the promotional hype is fond of pointing out, this film was forgotten for more than 70 years. But sometimes, there's a perfectly good reason for that. * The Chess Player (1927) -2005 Kevin Rayburn

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a genius reality check 4 our race we may live in the white mans land & call it hme bt in doing that we deny the truth of our being. All brown skin people nomatta hw light r african rayalty ... (lady swirl)