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The Iron Mask (1929)
The music killed it for me
Tastes differ so some may consider my review heretic, but there you go. The film itself may be very good, but I found the music accompanying it very, very annoying and utterly unfitting for a silent film. Many I have watched, some in theatres with live music, usually played on a piano, accompanying it. Generally speaking, piano and/or string music isn't exactly my cup of tea when it comes to listening to music, but it is very suitable when it comes to highlighting and/or building up the tensions, emotions and feelings happening in film scenes.
Unfortunately, the copy of "The Iron Mask" I had to endure was accompanied by jazz, which I generally don't like at all as it makes me kind of nervous, because of its disturbance and pretentiousness. Here it absolutely failed to highlight the scenes, but rather distracted from the pictures shown. Never before have I watched a film containing music so unfitting to what was shown. A real pity.
Georg Elser - Einer aus Deutschland (1989)
Facts plus fiction
This review might be more about Johann Georg Elser than this particular movie. He is one of the shining lights in the darkest hour of German history, though Stauffenberg gets all the attention. People seem to forget that Stauffenberg gladly went to war and followed Hitler until he realised that the war would be lost. That's not a hero in my book. Elser, though, is. He decided that Hitler had to be stopped and tried to do so on his very own. As another reviewer on here saw fit to mention that Elser's bomb attack might have been staged by the SS, I feel forced to mention that these claims have been found unfounded some time ago (1964), when the Gestapo's interrogation files were examined.
As for the film, well, I think the acting is pretty good, so is the directing, but it has to be mentioned that it is a bit strange at times. What I absolutely didn't like about this film was that it didn't follow the truth. It might be necessary to add a few things here and there to make Elser's story dramatic enough to fill a feature-length film, though. There is absolutely no evidence that Elser had a fiancée at the time. The same goes for many of the other entanglements we can see on the screen. Disappointing, really. I personally would have preferred a film much closer to actual events. There also exists another film about Elser from the 1960's, which might be closer to what I had hoped to see, but it seems impossible to get hand on that.
tl;dr Elser was a fine man, Stauffenberg not so much. This film adds too much fiction to the real story.
Vertigo (1958)
Disappointing and corny
How this film got into the top 250 films on here remains beyond believe to me and I simply don't understand all the fuss about it.
I have nothing against slow paced films, some films need it to make you think (Tarkovsky's "Stalker" for instance), but here it is it's downfall as one has by far enough time to realise everything that doesn't make any sense at all. I'll give a few examples.
When Scottie (James Stewart) follows Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) through San Francisco you can't help but wonder why on earth she doesn't realise it and how on earth a former police officer is so poor at doing it. He's following her so closely you'd expect him to crash into her car any time. This is highlighted when she turns into that small backstreet to get the flowers. There is no-one else, but still he parks his car a few metres from her's and still she doesn't get suspicious. This must also be the only film set in San Francisco that manages to show no streetcar at all.
Scottie has a friend who seems to love him in Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes, she probably gives the best performance in this film), but it remains beyond my imagination why he doesn't fall in love with her but the artificial looking Madeleine. This guy is making life difficult for himself and during the entire film I started disliking this character more and more. Sadly Midge disappears about half way through this film.
Then, when Scottie meets Judy in the street and he starts making her life a mess one wonders why she doesn't simply tell him the truth. She doesn't seem to be that stupid, but fails to realise that this may well stop him from trying to turn her back into Madeleine. During that part of the film I also started hoping for Scottie to die at the end of the film as he got so obsessed and rude with Judy that it angered me. Unfortunately this didn't happen, but Judy got so scared by a nun that she virtually jumped of that tower. Comically, really.
If this would have been the first Hitchcock film I had ever watched, then it would have been the last, too. Some of the acting is pretty lame and unconvincing, especially from Stewart, but Novak surely could have done better in a few scenes, too. Bel Geddes is good, though. In general the story/plot isn't bad at all, but the translation into a film leaves a lot to desire. During the entire film I have had ideas of how the scenes could have been shot more believable and I am as far from a director as it gets. The pace of the film is, as I have stated before, too slow for the story. Stewart seems to be behind the wheel most of the time, following Madeleine in her aimless journeys. All in all I found this film extremely cheesy. The music overly exaggerated many scenes and made things kind of predictable. Some of the shots are nice, though, but it is an absolutely pointless film. I won't ever watch this again and suggest you don't either.
Rating this waste of time 6/10 is me being generous.