Meliès showing the world what cinema is capable of.
Anything.
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Le village de Namo - Panorama pris d'une chaise à porteurs 1900
Everything essential about cinema is already here.
Light, movement, faces.
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Stagecoach 1939
Ford's direction is almost musical.
So utterly poetic...The whole of America crammed into a stagecoach.
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Victory 1919
This is self-conscious aestethic porn, and I love it.
Tourneur's films are always a pleasure to watch because of their cinematic beauty but this is where he goes all in: dramatic compositions, foreground imagery, chiaroscuro (and other lighting effects), extreme camera angles, texture (smoke, shadows), baroque tinting, depth of field.
And we're only in 1919 !!Victory is a giant leap in the development of cinema towards a more visual style and it is easy to see Tourneur's film as a precursor to other stylist such as Josef von Sternberg all the way to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
