Cinema Europe - The Other Hollywood Rating: Release Date: 30 May, 2000 Retail Price: $49.99 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Kenneth Branagh Joan Bennett Michael Wilding David Cross (II) Complete Cast (9 total)

Cinema Europe - The Other Hollywood Reviews

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There's a reason why these films are unseen...
...They are second rate! Let's face it - outside of the USA and Germany, most silent films had poor entertainment value. The Russians were too busy using film as propaganda - trying to convince the peasants that starving and freezing to death was the path to happiness. The British were too snobby and class conscious to make a single silent movie that had populist appeal ((there is even a dreadful episode here - "Opportunity Lost" - that spends an hour of this series telling us that British films were unpopular everywhere in the world because they were dull) nothing has changed - British films have two minutes of plot stretched out to two hours)). The French made a few clever comedy shorts and Abel Gance made "Napoleon" but the French were (then as now) too self-conscious, too interested in technique for its own sake, too interested in philosophy, and too intellectually bankrupt to make great movies. The USA - whose film industry didn't rely on government handouts or intellectual poseurs - was out to make money - and this could only be done by entertaining people. A great democracy led to great democratic movies. Before Hitler killed all the creative people, Germany (a land of engineers and obsessive organizers) made films of technical brilliance that often entertained and amazed ("Metropolis", etc.).
Cinema Europe is a documentary about the second-rate in silent films. The subtitle of this series is, "the other Hollywood." More accurately, this should be called, "The second-rate Hollywood." I have never seen so many unworthy films given as much first class attention as they are given here. I didn't think that I would ever fast-forward through a Kevin Brownlow documentary but I probably have repetitive motion injury as a result of using my remote on this one.
Dull, tedious, uninteresting movies.
Reportedly, Brownlow wanted to do a fifteen hour series. The producers wisely told him he was dreaming. There simply weren't enough good films to fill such a project.

Extraordinario material
Cinema Europe es la serie completa de seis programas dedicados a los orígenes del cine en el continente europeo. A pesar de haber conocido algunos de estos materiales en cinetecas y otras antologías, la extraordinaria calidad (se trata de transfers directos a partir de negativos de 35 mm) de los fragmentos seleccionados es verdaderamente asombrosa. Dificilmente podrá encontrarse en otro lado la calidad fotográfica de tonos y la definición óptica original que tenía la película utilzada en los primeros filmes, como es posible disfrutarla en este DVD. Un reconocmiento a los productores Kevin Brownlow y David Gill. la única objeción a la serie es la muy notable ausencia de un programa dedicado a los cineastas soviéticos, así como la inlcusión de cinematografías de otros paises europeos menos célebres pero muy importantes como por ejemplo Hungría. Por mi parte espero que pronto aparezca Cinema Europe II.

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