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I'm about halfway through watching The Last Days of Pompeii. This is the landmark Silent Film from 1913 (I think I have the year right), not the modern movie of the same name. I'm so mesmerized by the look of the thing, it's hard to concentrate on the plot. I can see why this movie gets mentioned when people disguss the early history of film. The camera is still static as in all extremely early film, but you can see the filmakers experimenting with elements such as filming on location, complex sets with depth, and artistic framing of shots. Striking painterly scenes seem randomly interspersed with more static and traditional linear set designs and shots. This weird straddling of two cinematic worlds is threaded through the whole production. In one of the earliest scenes, there is a street scene with all these extras (The film is lavish with the extras in a weirdly naturalistic way. Ordinary looking people in period costumes wander through the background of shots seemingly in conversation or going about their business.) most of the male extras seem to be dressed in outfits right out of Roman era art and sculpture, although the periods are a little mixed. Unfortunately the hairstyles show the era mixing rather drastically, but the men as a group in the shot look good. The women though... it looked like they hired an Edwardian couture designer to do Roman inspired high fashion. The effect is extremely sexy when one sees them walking from behind, but so anachronistic that it continued to distract me throughout the film. The names of the characters suffered from the same problem: The male names were chosen sensibly. Roman aristocrats had names like Glaucus and Claudius. The Priests of Isis had appropriate Greek names. Then there's the women. Nidia for a slave women didn't bug me, but what were they thinking when they named the female Roman aristocratic love interest Jone? Seriously Jone? Why not something traditional like Junia, Tertia, or Fulvia? note the a's on the ends of those names. That's the feminine nominative singular. You, know, the letter you find on the end of Latin women's names in the nominative and vocative. I guess she must have time traveled back from the 20th century with the fashion trends. she can't be Greek because of the j. Anyway, it just... picked at me. The acting had the same straddling two eras look. Nidia and the villains are doing the classic stylized silent movie acting that's been endlessly parodied since, but several of the other actors and actresses have wandered in from somewhere significantly more subtle and modern. it's weird seeing some of these performances in the same scene side by side.

The villain is hilarious, BTW. He's this over the top campy priest in what appears to be an Egyptian fabric pattern Mumu. The effect of his strange costume and over the top performance is that I keep thinking "drag queen" watching him prance about and trust his pelvis while gesturing wildly. Seriously, I can't stop staring.

I suppose it says something that I'm more involved with the often heart stopping beauty of the better bits of photography and the prancing about than I am with the plot, but I really am. I love watching all that innovation. I love imagining the excitement as they try out new techniques, as someone decides, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we had the actors walk diagonally in this shot?"

I wish I knew more about Silent Film, but accounts seem so dry if one can't actually watch the film. beginnings have always fascinated me, that moment when anything seems possible because so little is known and so less has been tried. There is a special kind of excitement that gets captured in the best of those early films. There is a lot of it in this one.