The Horse's Head

The Plot: Molly (Mary Pickford) is one of several orphan children living on a baby farm and forced to do labor for Mr. Grimes (Gustav von Seyffertitz). The children are unable to escape due to the farm being surrounded by a bottomless swamp, itself surrounded by a creek infested with alligators. One day Mr. Grimes purchases another baby for the farm, who unbeknownst to him is the daughter of a rich man named Dennis Wayne (Roy Stewart), who calls the police to organize a manhunt for the kidnappers. Once Grimes learns who the baby is, he plans to kill her and Molly, which prompts Molly and the children to finally attempt an escape. There’s a lot more to unpack in one of Mary Pickford’s final outings as “Queen of the Movies”.

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up is mainly a shoutout to Mary Pickford and her role as a “key founder in the creation of the American film industry”. There’s also a detailed plot synopsis, and a shoutout to the film’s cinematography “akin to German Expressionist cinema”.

But Does It Really?: “Sparrows” gives us two NFR favorites of the silent era: Mary Pickford and child labor. While the subject matter can be hard to swallow at times, I found the film to be an effective melodrama. I haven’t cared for Pickford’s other vehicles on the NFR, but I’ll admit to caring about Molly and the children as they try to escape their plight. “Sparrows” is far from an essential American film, but it carves out just enough of a niche spot for itself that I can’t begrudge its NFR standing.

Wow, That’s Dated: As mentioned in the film’s opening text, baby farms were where children were left by their mothers (typically unwed or deserted) to be sold for slave labor. While there were several instances of these farms in the United States, it was primarily an issue in the United Kingdom (the term “Dickensian” gets thrown around a lot to describe baby farms, and that’s not far off: Oliver Twist briefly lives on a baby farm in his eponymous novel). Britain had already been cracking down on baby farms for decades by the time “Sparrows” was released, and news of baby farms in the U.S. were still making headlines in 1925. Obviously there’s a lot more to say about baby farms, but that’s as much research as I’m willing to stomach right now.

Title Track: “Sparrows” began production under the title “Scraps”, changing its name to “The Baby Farm” mid-production. The title “Sparrows” came during the film’s re-shoots, and is a reference to Matthew 10:29: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” This passage is alluded to in the movie when Molly explains to the children that God hasn’t helped them yet because he’s too busy “watchin’ every sparrow that falls”.

The Plot: “Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son” is an examination of the 1905 Biograph short of the same name, loosely based on the nursery rhyme. A boy named Tom (Actor Unknown) steals a pig from a local fair and is chased by the townspeople, who eventually catch him when he tries to hide in a well. But wait a minute, that’s only the first 12 minutes of this movie, there’s still about 100 minutes to go. What now? Well, Ken Jacobs has got you covered. The rest of the runtime is replaying the short almost frame by frame; freezing and holding specific frames, zooming in on hard-to-see details, and jumping around from scene to scene with no particular rhyme or reason. If you’ve been able to handle the Registry’s other experimental films, this one might break you.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film “a landmark of experimental cinema” and “a ‘structuralist film’ masterpiece.”

But Does It Really?: Oh man this one was a lot. Watching the original short was a slog in and of itself, but another hour plus of frame by frame experimentation was brutal. Still, I’m a sucker for found footage, and researching this post has led me to appreciate Ken Jacobs and where he fits into the history of experimental film. A slight pass for “Tom, Tom”, but this is another NFR entry that may just be for us completionists.

Everybody Gets One: Ken Jacobs’ medium of choice was originally abstract painting before he pivoted to experimental film in the mid 1950s. As the years went on, Jacobs’ films relied more and more on found footage rather than original material (allegedly because of Jacobs’ difficulties with actors). While teaching film at St. John’s University, Jacobs watched a print of silent shorts, including Biograph’s “Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son”. Unfamiliar with the nursery rhyme, Jacobs was confused by the film, which inspired him to do a deep dive. Jacobs and his colleague Jordan Meyers projected “Tom, Tom” onto a translucent screen, filming the images with a 16 mm camera as they adjusted the print. Although completed in 1969, Jacobs would continue to tweak and refine “Tom, Tom” well into the 2000s.

Title Track: For the curious: 

The more common version involves Tom eating the pig and then getting beaten, but the film mercifully spares us that version of the rhyme.

• Jacobs was confused by the opening tableaux in which Tom steals a pig amidst a busy fairground, to the point where he didn’t even realize that the pig had been stolen until a repeat viewing. I side with Jacobs on this one: There is way too much going on in this opening. Tom doesn’t even steal the pig until three minutes in! Get on with it!
• The most distressing part about this whole thing is that the pig being used in the film is clearly a real pig. There’s a lot of Tom rolling around on the ground and jumping from rooftops, all while holding a real pig. Stop that! Where’s PETA when you need them?
• The short is comprised of eight scenes (or “tableauxs”), and each of them take their sweet-ass time. The scene that almost broke me is a static shot of Tom escaping his house through the chimney, followed by the entire mob also climbing out from the chimney one by one. This goes on for two uninterrupted minutes. It must have been a lot easier to entertain back then.
• Once the short ends, we begin with our experimentation. Jacobs’ first alteration is zooming in on the opening scene, which frankly is an improvement. Like I said, there’s too much going on at the fair, so the film actually benefits from the cropped footage of Tom and the pig. I could focus more on what was happening.
• Warning: As this is a structural film, there is a lot of flickering going on. Those of you with light sensitivity may want to skip this one.
• After several minutes of the film strip jumping in the projector gate, making a sped-up/elongated version of the film, Jacobs returns to zooming in on various moments within the film. It’s mostly background extras and little details you would only notice on your 1,000th viewing. It makes you wonder why anyone would subject themselves to this. If you’re going to go through a movie frame by frame, why this one?
• As far as NFR movies that are an experimental tampering of other movies, I gotta say “Rose Hobart” did it better (or at least in a fraction of the time).
• Keep watching for a few brief color shots of the screen Jacobs and Meyers viewed the film on, with a plant poking out from behind the screen. Then later on we get more original footage as Jacobs and Meyers resort to shadow puppets!
• At one point they zoom in so close that the film begins to look like a Rorschach test. I didn’t realize “Tom, Tom” contains so many shots of my parents yelling at each other. 
• After a solid hour and a half of experimental tinkering, we conclude with the original “Tom, Tom” short presented once again in its unaltered entirety. By this second viewing you’re so familiar with the short it makes for a completely different viewing experience. One thing I noticed during this second viewing, what happened to the other kid? The one in the striped pants that was running with Tom? The last we see him he hops out the chimney with Tom, and then he’s gone for the rest of the short. Did the adult mob get him and rip him apart in a reverse-“Weapons” scenario?

The Plot: While on a train traveling through Austria, American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) strikes up a conversation with French Céline (Julie Delpy). The two have an instant rapport, and Jesse convinces Céline to get off the train with him upon its arrival in Vienna. Over the course of a day, the two walk around Vienna, learning about each other and having deep conversations about love, pain, gender, death, and everything in between. With Jesse’s pending flight back to America in the morning, how deep will their newfound relationship go…before sunrise?

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up is mostly a salute to Linklater and “[h]is innovative use of time as a defining and recurring cinematic tool”. The film gets a shout-out as “one of cinema’s most sustained explorations of love and the passage of time”.

But Does It Really?: Richard Linklater is one of those filmmakers who should have multiple entries on the NFR, and “Before Sunrise” is a good choice. I had never seen “Before Sunrise” prior to its NFR induction, and overall I enjoyed its lowkey vibe and the chemistry between Delpy and Hawke. Above all, “Before Sunrise” made me nostalgic for the impulsivity of your early 20s when you know everything and can go anywhere, a feeling this movie captures perfectly. As another standout in Linklater’s filmography, and the first in a surprise trilogy, “Before Sunrise” earns its NFR status.

Everybody Gets One: Linklater spent nine months trying to cast his two main characters before finding Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Julie Delpy was born in Paris to artistic parents and began acting at a young age in such films as “Europa Europa” and Krzystof Kieślowski’s “Three Colours” trilogy. Ethan Hawke also started off as a child actor in Joe Dante’s “Explorers”, and was initially reluctant to pursue an acting career until his supporting turn in “Dead Poets Society” led to more acting opportunities. Both actors were segueing into more adult roles when “Before Sunrise” came their way. Fun Fact: Because I had to put this somewhere, Ethan Hawke directed the music video for Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)”. It’s incredibly random until you learn that Loeb was a member of Hawke’s Malaparte theater company in the 1990s.

Wow, That’s Dated: I imagine this whole movie would have been quite different if both Jesse and Céline had smart phones. If nothing else, they could exchange contact information quickly and/or stalk each other on social media.

Seriously, Oscars?: No Oscar nominations, but “Before Sunrise” received an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Kiss, losing to Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly for “Dumb and Dumber”. Both “Before” sequels received Oscar nominations for their screenplays.

• Is this what people think backpacking through Europe looks like?
• I get where the screenplay authorship questions come into play, because this all sounds very natural. As far as I know, everything in this film was scripted, down to the pauses and the overlapping dialogue. This is a Cassavetes-level of natural film acting, easily the hardest type to pull off, and Hawke and Delpy do it with ease.
• Linklater very quickly applies an important filmmaking rule: If you’re going to have a lot of talking scenes, stage them with a lot of movement. Whether it’s on a train or a trolley car or just two characters walking, the background is always changing, which helps keep things visually interesting as all these philosophical ideas get tossed around.

• I was wondering if Jesse and Céline were going to take the “Sound of Music” tour, but then I remembered that’s Salzburg, not Vienna, so never mind.
• As the author of a film blog it is my duty to point out that the ferris wheel Jesse and Céline ride on is the Wiener Risenrad, the same one from “The Third Man”. Do with that information what you will.
• Jesse and Céline take in a game of pinball while discussing their past relationships. This begs the question: Why pinball? This is the most important conversation they’ve had up to this point, and you’re practically muting it with pinball? That’s a choice.
• Céline’s American “dude” accent made me laugh. No further observation, just an amusing moment as this movie rounds the corner into its third act.

• The other thing this movie makes me nostalgic for is the kind of deep late night conversations you have with friends. Good times.
• I’m glad that after all this talk Jesse and Céline are finally entertaining the notion of hooking up. That was driving me nuts the whole movie: they’re in their early 20s, they’re in Europe, and they’ve shared plenty of emotional intimacy. How are they not getting it on like rabbits?
• [Spoilers] Aaaaugh that ending. After much hesitation, Jesse and Céline agree to meet at the train station in six months’ time without exchanging information. It’s equal parts romantic and frustrating. Imagine seeing this in 1995 and leaving the ending at this without knowing that there will one day be sequels. On a more positive note: This may be the last movie to feature a tearful farewell at a train station, a cinematic mainstay of the ‘40s and ‘50s. I assume it was replaced by “dramatically running through the airport”.

• Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy cameo as Jesse and Céline in Linklater’s animated film “Waking Life”, elaborating on conversations they had in “Before Sunrise”. Where this fits into the continuity of the “Before” films I have no idea.

• Richard Linklater’s immediate follow-up to “Before Sunrise” was 1996’s “SubUrbia”, and he has continued cranking out movies for the last 30 years, including several collaborations with Ethan Hawke (“Boyhood”, “Blue Moon”, etc.). Personally, I’m looking forward to Linklater’s most ambitious time concept yet, an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along” filmed over the course of 20 years. See you in the early 2040s!

December 27^th 2006: The Library of Congress gives the world a belated Christmas/Hanukkah present (or a right on time Kwanzaa present) with 25 more films on the National Film Registry, making it a total of 450 movies. Here now for the 20^th anniversary is the Class of 2006 (with selections from my posts on each film):

Traffic in Souls (1913): “a heavy-handed, oft-confusing film”

Tess of the Storm Country (1914): “I have nothing to say about this film. It happened, I saw it, I can cross it off the list. Moving on.”

The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916/1917): “written and directed by a Chinese woman, a rarity of both ethnicity and gender.”

Flesh and the Devil (1927): “helped launch [Greta] Garbo’s star.”

The Last Command (1928): “a fine showing for [Josef] von Sternberg, but can it stand on its own as a classic?”

Applause (1929): “the film’s usage of its soundtrack…is downright revolutionary by 1929 standards.”

St. Louis Blues (1929): “the only existing footage of Bessie Smith.”

The Big Trail (1930): “a unique enough curio in film history to warrant a spot on the NFR.”

Red Dust (1932): “[Clark] Gable and [Jean] Harlow are irresistible together”

Daughter of Shanghai (1937): “an underrated, largely forgotten film that was vastly ahead of its time.”

Early Abstractions #1-5, 7, 10 (1939-1956 or 1946-1957): “a seven-part collision of art, film, shapes, and music.”

Siege (1940): “an on-the-ground account of [World War II’s] first two weeks.” “lightning in a bottle documentation”.

Notorious (1946): “an excellent example of [Hitchcock’s] signature style.”

In the Street (1948): “a unique collaboration between three people who, as far as I know, had never made a movie prior to this.”

A Time Out of War (1954): “proved there was an audience for [student] films outside of the classroom.”

Think of Me First as a Person (1960-1975): “strikes the right tone with its delicate subject matter”

The T.A.M.I. Show (1964): “the greatest American film ever made, and I will fight you on this one.”

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-1972): “a sort of film collage…[with] an emotional story at this film’s core.”

Blazing Saddles (1974): “my favorite Mel Brooks movie”, “uproariously funny”.

Rocky (1976): “gave the world something that had been missing from the ‘70s movie scene: Hope.”

Halloween (1978): “an effectively scary movie”, “a fresh 90-minute adrenaline rush”

sex, lies, and videotape (1989): “an erotically charged character study with a well-cast ensemble.”

Uksuum Cauyai: The Drums of Winter (1989): “an engaging glimpse at an oft-ignored culture.”

Groundhog Day (1993): “may in fact be a perfect movie”.

Fargo (1996): “one of [the Coen brothers’] more accessible, twistedly funny films.”

The Plot: Graham Dalton (James Spader) returns to Baton Rouge to visit his college friend John Mullany (Peter Gallagher). While Graham realizes he now has little in common with John, he hits it off with John’s wife Ann (Andie MacDowell), who is unaware that John is having an affair with her sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). As their friendship grows, Ann learns that Graham is impotent, and can only achieve an erection while videotaping women talking about their sexual experiences. Sex is frankly discussed, lies are exposed, and videotape is…taped in the directorial debut of Steven Soderbergh.

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up on the movie is two brief sentences; one celebrating the film’s “low-key style”, the other declaring that it “launched an independent film renaissance.”

But Does It Really?: I feel like every decade has a movie that reignited the American independent film scene (“A Woman Under the Influence”, “Pulp Fiction”, etc.), and if “sex, lies, and videotape” happens to be that movie for the ‘80s, so be it. As a film, “sex, lies, and videotape” still works as an erotically charged character study with a well-cast ensemble. As an NFR entry, the film represents its era of independent film, as well as the filmography of Steven Soderbergh, who somehow still only has one film on the Registry. And if nothing else, this movie fully delivers on its title. While it’s not the most excited I’ve ever been about a film’s NFR status, I understand and support the induction of “sex, lies, and videotape” into the Registry.

Shout Outs: We meet the annoying barfly character while he’s doing an impression of Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”.

Everybody Gets One: Born in Atlanta and raised in Charlottesville and Baton Rouge, Steven Soderbergh became interested in filmmaking in his teen years, and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles and became a freelance editor. Soderbergh had been thinking about “sex, lies, and videotape” for a full year before he started penning the screenplay on a road trip from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles (hopefully he wasn’t driving). “sex, lies, and videotape” was Soderbergh’s feature directorial debut, and was filmed in the summer of 1988 in Baton Rouge on a budget of $1.2 million. Oh, and Soderbergh was 25 while he was making the film. Let that sink in.

Wow, That’s Dated: Well obviously a third of the title. Speaking of…

Title Track: “sex, lies, and videotape” was one of several titles Steven Soderbergh considered for his film, though he favored “46:02” (supposedly the length of Ann’s videotape). And yes, the title is all lowercase. 

Seriously, Oscars?: Despite sweeping the Independent Spirit Awards and winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, “sex, lies, and videotape” only received a single Oscar nomination for Soderbergh’s Original Screenplay. In a stacked category that included “Do the Right Thing” and “When Harry Met Sally…”, they all lost to “Dead Poets Society”, which is a fine film (and somehow not on the NFR), but come on.

• Speaking of San Giacomo’s performance: With her wry line delivery and sex positive attitude, Cynthia is very close to being Roz from “Frasier”.

• As someone with thick eyebrows, I appreciate Peter Gallagher’s lifelong effort to make thick eyebrows sexy (because otherwise all we’ve got is Eugene Levy). Side note about Gallagher’s character: Yes, his name is John Mullany, pronounced the same as but spelled differently from the similarly named comedian. 
• I noticed in the early scenes that the camera is almost always moving. This was deliberate on Soderbergh’s part in an effort to keep the dialogue scenes from being too static. In fact, Soderbergh and cinematographer Walt Lloyd do an overall good job of keeping the film from being a filmed play of four characters talking. Soderbergh also spices things up with the editing, which he did himself before his longtime collaboration with the elusive yet artistically similar Mary Ann Bernard.
• Spader pays $400 rent for a duplex in Baton Rouge, which is a little over $1000 in today’s money. I’ve been saying it for the better part of a decade: We truly suck at inflation. 
• Perhaps the most impressive thing about this film for me: Despite all the talk about sex in this film, we see very little of it. We get a few shots of John and Cyn pre and post “the act”, but there’s no nudity. The film’s surprisingly erotic dialogue more than makes up for this, letting the viewers’ imaginations fill in the blanks.
• Graham’s impotent? Buddy, just give it a few years and Viagra will change your life.
• Either Andie is trying to drop her Southern accent, or Laura is trying to pick it up. The results are in that muddy Leslie Howard gray area.
• I’m guessing the real life version of Graham’s hobby would not nearly be as sexy or appealing to anyone else. Spader crawled so the pervy teen from “American Beauty” could walk.
• One scene I would have liked to see is John, upon confronting Graham about his videotape hobby, asking how to operate the VCR. “Is there an ‘Input’?”, “No, it has to be on Channel 3…”

• Yeah, I had a feeling that rain in the final shot wasn’t planned. According to cinematographer Walt Lloyd, the shoot was occasionally interrupted by “biblical rains”. Having gone through my first summer in the South, I get how those summer storms sneak up on you. Speaking of that final shot: Wait, that’s it?
• The film is dedicated to Ann Dollard, Soderbergh’s agent who died during production.

• Our quartet of actors have all maintained successful careers nearly 40 years after this film’s release. Andie MacDowell parlayed this film’s success into a movie career (though nowadays she considers herself best known as Margaret Qualley’s mother), while Spader, Gallagher, and San Giacomo all found continued stardom on TV. I recall enjoying San Giacomo on the sitcom “Just Shoot Me!”, and Spader’s Emmy-magnet turn on “Boston Legal”. My wife remembers Peter Gallagher as “the hot dad from ‘The O.C.’”

• “sex, lies, and videotape” is one of those movies that still gets referenced every so often, but only for its title. Every TV show has done an episode with a pun-based version of this title. Even an episode of “Goof Troop” got in on the act with “Wrecks, Lies, & Videotape”!

• Soderbergh made “an unofficial sequel of sorts” to this film with 2001’s “Full Frontal”, even though no one can explain to me what exactly the connection between the two films is. Soderbergh has stated in recent years that he wrote a more direct sequel during the COVID pandemic that focuses on Ann and Cynthia 30 years later. MacDowell and San Giacomo have expressed interest, but nothing further than that has happened with the project.