MovieChat Forums > The Call of Cthulhu (2005) Discussion > It just doesn't look like a vintage sile...

It just doesn't look like a vintage silent movie

posted 11 years ago by hitfan
6 replies | jump to latest

I thought the premise of this movie was great: what if a silent movie was made in 1926 about HP Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" ?

Since I'm a big fan of silent movies like Birth of a Nation, Cabinet of Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis, and I'm also reading a lot of Lovecraft lately, I figured that I was pretty much the target market for this.

The look and feel just felt wrong--especially when we got to see closeups of the actors' faces which looked too much like modern video and it suspended the atmosphere I was expecting. At times, during those brief moments where it did capture the look and feel of a silent movie, we get distracted by a fast pan of the camera, or the picture quickly blending into another.

Maybe blended shot technology was available in 1926, but I doubt it was used nearly as often as it was here.

The filmmakers should have watched more of the old silent movie classics and familiarized themselves how they looked like back in the day. And they should have avoided closeup shots of the actors' faces, or they should have had the rest of the cast wear white makeup like the lead actor did so that it would look more authentic.

The actors who played the parts of the guy with the eyepatch or the first mate on the ship looked too much like 2005 than 1926. Even the ship's captain had a hairstyle that looked far too modern.

Also, the camera angle view changed far too often for a movie that was supposed to look like it was made in 1926.

The parts that I did like best were the final minutes with the claymation Cthulhu (although others have complained about it) and where the main character pleads that all of the writings be destroyed, followed by the brilliant score during the end credits. I think the music of the end credits should have been used as a motif throughout the entire movie, in fact.

I think that the filmmakers had good intent, and obviously, they're not Hollywood grade talent. Perhaps a good editor can de-emphasize those parts where it looks too much like it was shot on video, as well as reduce the number of view perspective changes which I find to be a distraction.

[–] sopclod 11 years ago

I've seen a lot of people criticize the attempt to recreate a silent film, but honestly I've never seen a modern movie do that successfully. This one was as good as any and for that I give them props.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

"The Artist" is probably the one that comes closest.

[–] shoobe01-1 8 years ago

Agree totally. This had an odd artifice of being an old silent film, but is clearly just some guys with modern DV equipment, good tripods with fluid heads, modern zoom lenses, digital editing software, modern makeup techniques, and good lighting.

People make films today (color, unabashedly modern films) by making very, very deliberate choices of things like which lenses they will use. This was very film school feeling. Every trick used without much clear reason as to why.

Now, let's look at what equipment was available back then. Not much fixed cameras. Fixed lenses and not many of them. SLOW film. Editing is via cutting and splicing. Lighting is awful.

So, were I to make it with the sort of budget presumably available, I'd have also used digital video and digital editing but:
- Set the camera to
- Set the camera to ISO 200 or slower.
- And likewise, tried to get a camera that can be set to capture at 16 fps.
- Investigate 1 color CCDs. Vague recollection you can get these or make the CCD capture only one color. Color to B&W never looks right.
- Pick some likely lenses, and if I cannot interface them with modern equipment, still pick only 2-3 focal lengths to work with. Strictly.
- No zooming.
- No panning. No dollies. No cranes. Fixed camera.
- Think about getting a crappy old wood tripod no less. Discourages you from playing about, and you can get used to other issues of setup and action which keep you realistic also.
- Get old lights. This is easy and I even have a few. Basically because they are not loved, so you can get 1960s lights on eBay for a steal. They are bright, but have mediocre reflectors, and have a temp you do not get today.
- As little use of depth as possible. No long shots through trees, etc.
- Edits are all jump cuts. If you have the money and time, get a film print and do the final edit by hand (play on the digital side but finish it in film) then re-transfer that. I would help. Could even physically stress it for scratches and so on like they did in the old days instead of adding faux scratches.

A few scenes looked really good. Mostly rthose with natural lighting. A few of the night shots with the fog. They could have done it, but if anything the inconsistency made it worse.

(P.S. Props, models and some rooms/sets also look awful too much . Much reliance early on especially of newspaper clippings which all have modern typography and are clearly laser printed on modern bright white paper. Looks very, very, very wrong.)

[–] osolis 8 years ago

Good points all. One of the things I've noticed in silent films is that the takes were generally long. A scene would be played out as much as possible in one shot, with a close up breaking up the scene on occasion but only if it were needed. Camera movement was generally limited to a slow pan. There were exceptions to this such as the brilliant night walk in the swamp in "Sunrise".

If anyone is interested I recommend a book entitled "The Parade's Gone By" by Kevin Brownlow. It is a remarkable and well written account of silent film era.

One more thing: People tend to forget that when silent films were first projected they were on clear and clean prints. The scratches and fuzziness associated with them is due to the fact that we are seeing copies of well worn prints that may have gone through several generations of copying. If you can see "Sunrise" which has been beautifully restored as well as "Pandora's Box" to see what silent films could achieve in terms of story, beauty and cinematography.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Good point.

[–] hitfan (213) a year ago

I just rewatched the movie tonight and my opinion hasn’t changed in the nine years that have passed after posting my original message on the IMDB forums (now moviechat).

I appreciate your reply which I have just read for the first time. I feel that if the filmmakers had put in more thought about the constraints of 1920s filmmaking and worked with that, the final result would have been more authentic. I’d also even put in some color tinting for good measure.

I do still like the stop motion special effects that were used to depict Cthulhu here, and the musical score during the end credits is quite good.