With the transition to sound, Hollywood remade many of its past silent hits. Roland West returned to give such a makeover to his own 1926 film.
And what a makeover!
With the transition to sound, Hollywood remade many of its past silent hits. Roland West returned to give such a makeover to his own 1926 film.
And what a makeover!
There is a stilted quality to a lot of early talkies - the technology was cumbersome and a lot of filmmakers were put off from moving the camera.
I brought that assumption to The Bat Whispers and it punctures that notion definitively with the opening shot.
We open on a model shot of a clock tower - so far, fairly standard.
And then the camera tilts downward to show the street below.
AND THEN the camera itself descends to the street amid moving miniature cars and people.
It is the type of shot we do not even blink at today, but it is a bolt of energy that immediately sets this movie apart from its predecessor.
Using two cinematographers and shooting widescreen (one of the first films to do so), West has shaken off the source material’s staginess, turning The Bat Whispers into a more epic and dynamic entertainment.
The movie feels like it is always on the move: In addition to dolly shots, we get shots from inside moving cars and shots tracking and panning rapidly across model landscapes.
Having a camera that can interact with and show more of the environment makes the old dark house feel bigger and more intimate.
The more athletic aesthetic - and rampant use of model shots - also feels like a shift in genre, signalling the way the gothic melodramas the stage show was riffing on were being replaced, first by the pulpy action-focused paperback antiheroes, and later by comic book characters like Batman.
The acting is quite good in both versions - sadly the exceptions are the same roles (Lizzie Allan, the maid, is just scared), which feel like a collection of exaggerated mannerisms.
Chester Morris is excellent as Anderson - the cop who enters the action. Playing the no-nonsense cop with the lightest sliver of ham, he suits the tone, and the reveal at the end of the film.
After a movie that did everything it could to wrestle itself away from its theatrical source, the ending harkens back to it in a way that only works in its new medium.
The film ends and an offscreen voice screams at an unseen crew member to not bring out the end title card.
The camera pulls out to show we are staring at a stage.
The Bat abseils down from the ceiling, lands in a puff of smoke, and then asks the viewer to not divulge the twist ending to any other potential audience member - or else…
A playful, self-reflexive close to a movie that never seems to take itself too seriously.
So is The Bat better when he Whispers?
I watched both Bats back to back and I feel like this is the way to go.
While Whispers has that roving camera, The Bat feels more atmospheric. The changes between the adaptations are in terms of technology and how that affects the aesthetic choices.
Despite its more immersive camerawork, the film misses some of the more expressionistic effects of the original. Richard’s death is re-staged in a similar way, but it feels more naturalistic - part of the issue is that the mansion set feels less stylised, and less conducive to chiaroscuro.
Both versions feel like they complete one another - where one is claustrophobic and tense, the other is spry and expansive. Together they feel like ideals for the imaginative potential of cinema - a fantastical space beyond time or environment, where anything we can imagine can happen.
Related
No comments:
Post a Comment