Very slow week:

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) directed by Carl Dreyer

Street Angel (1928) directed by Frank Borzage

After hearing a lot about how this was one of Borzage's masterpieces, I was excited heading into this, but unfortunately -- unlike my experience with Sunrise, another film I heard a lot about heading into -- I was left disappointed. Obviously, comparing any movie to Sunrise is kind of foolish, but the similarities between these two is almost overwhelming. It seems like Borzage was making his own version of Sunrise, and while equaling it was impossible, he came up quite short.

Some positives, the craft of the this film is still impressive. Borzage's sfumato, soft focus, and fluid camera movments are very evocative, and there are some stunning long takes that break the 180-degree axis. Borzage also messed around with expressionism; the city is presented as towering and maze-like, trapping Janet Gaynor's character within it; looming shadows are aplenty; and sometimes characters are portrayed as grotesque, frankenstein-esque monsters. The experimentation with sound is well done, and Janet Gaynor is predictably great. The film lacks the incredible intricacy and expression found each frame produced by Murnau, the expressionism is for the most part clunkier incorporated, and the sound is less well used, but still.

However, the film's less emotional than you'd expect. Part of this is Charles Farrell. While I hesitate to critique him somewhat, as I've heard good things about him in other movies, here he's all smiles, no real charisma or passion. The other reason, is that Borzage keeps us distant from the proceedings. There's not a lot of close-ups -- most of the film is viewed from middle distance. It's kind of a puzzling decision, as melodrama needs emotion to be a powerful force. The other big flaw of Street Angel is that it glosses over it's conflict too quickly. The death of Gaynor's mother is well-done, but done so quickly that it has not time to sink in. And the two lovers are reunited at the end after one tried to kill the other far too quickly. I get what Borzage was trying to do with the redemptive power of love, but there are limits. It's infinitely rewarding when you give the process some time, as Sunrise proved. Reuniting two people convincingly after one tried to kill the other is an incredibly hard thing to do, and taking some time to do it doesn't weaken your ethos of redemptive love at all.

Really, Borzage just didn't seem like a good fit for this movie, at least at this point in his career. His desire to even out conflict erases most of the dualities that made Sunrise so alluring and removes the power of the redemption that made Sunrise so uplifting.