The Chicago Film Society presents a special screening of Maurice Tourneur’s 1915 silent film, Alias Jimmy Valentine, at the Music Box Theatre this Sunday.
Complete with live musical accompaniment by David Drazin, this screening emphasizes the theme of color in cinema.
Tourneur’s film, a gangster-goes-good tale, demonstrates Gallic lyricism and reflects an aesthetic drawn from the French cinematic tradition.
After relocating from Paris to the U.S. in 1914, Tourneur began directing films for the Eclair company’s American branch.
The presentation of Alias Jimmy Valentine utilizes a beautifully tinted 35-millimeter print sourced from the Library of Congress, highlighting how silent films engaged with color in various ways, including tinting, toning, and stenciling.
While reality vibrates with color, black-and-white films often sought to replicate that dynamism, leading to an uncanny artifice that reflects more of a crafted reality than the world itself.
This phenomenon is particularly notable in Tourneur’s adaptation of the 1909 play based on O. Henry’s 1903 short story, A Retrieved Reformation.
The film features a remarkable scene where a safecracker is shown breaking into a bank vault from a bird’s-eye view, resembling a diorama with all actions visible.
This shot illustrates cinema’s inherent artifice, a hallmark of poetic realism that offers an expansive tableau while emphasizing the constructed nature of film.
In a separate exploration of artifice, the Film Center showcases Douglas Sirk’s melodrama, Written on the Wind (1956).
As someone who recently wrote about Camp in relation to Sirk’s work, the intersection of sincerity and extravagance in film remains striking.
Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” suggests that the transformation of man into artifice encapsulates the essence of Camp.
While both Alias Jimmy Valentine and Written on the Wind exhibit elements of artifice, Tourneur’s film is typically regarded as more serious in its approach.
Sirk’s works, despite their exaggerated emotional landscapes, exude a genuine engagement with their themes, akin to Tourneur’s deliberate stylistic choices.
Additionally, an intriguing documentary titled Grand Theft Hamlet is available on Mubi.
Directed by Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, the film follows Crane and a fellow actor as they attempt to stage Shakespeare’s play within the framework of the Grand Theft Auto game.
This viewing was inspired by a recent exhibition titled SEQUENCEBREAK// Experimental Arcade at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York.
The exhibition featured works from artists who challenge mainstream video game culture through experimental play and radical aesthetics.
In today’s cultural landscape, video games epitomize artifice and may serve, ironically, as the embodiment of Camp; yet they are taken seriously by audiences around the world.
These intersecting themes of artifice in both film and video games provide a rich ground for contemplation and discussion.
As moviegoers continue to engage with these artistic forms, the exploration of sincerity amidst artifice remains a pertinent inquiry in contemporary cinema and beyond.
Until next time, moviegoers.
image source from：https://chicagoreader.com/film-tv/the-moviegoer/alias-jimmy-valentine-camp-grand-theft-hamlet/
