The power of Pure Film

MARQUEE

Ever since I became seriously interested in cinema, I've felt a strong attraction towards silent films. Most of my favourites to begin with were in horror and fantasy "" movies by F W Murnau (the vampire classic Nosferatu) and Fritz Lang (Metropolis, Siegfried), or those starring the great Lon Chaney, a master of make-up and disguise, and popularly known as the Man of a Thousand Faces.

The great silent movies in these genres have an unmatched visceral effect: they are creaky and other-worldly, with a chilling effect that sophisticated computer-generated effects just can't replicate.

But my interest in silent films had to do with more than genre-love; it had to do with a growing awareness that the best of these films most closely captured the essence of moviemaking. Cinema is a visual art form with its own grammar and syntax, but it is too often reduced to being a mere extension of literature. And films that are driven largely by narrative (that is, heavily reliant on good scripts and spoken words) often undermine the strengths of the medium.

It's understandable that a conventional plotline is important for the casual viewer who is concerned primarily with a good, engrossing story. But for someone interested in cinema as Art (and I don't mean this in a boring, pedantic way), the simple use of the camera can be endlessly fascinating. In the hands of a great director, eloquent stories can be told with little or no help from the scriptwriter.

Importantly, films of this sort don't have to be inaccessible. One of the most popular directors of all time, Alfred Hitchcock "" whose work was loved by mainstream audiences around the world "" was also an unparalleled visual artist.

In his films, there are countless examples of scenes that appear to be dialogue-driven but where camera movement and cutting is simultaneously used to create tension, often by working against the words. (This is an effect one commonly sees now in the best graphic novels.) Closer home, I recently re-watched the delightful 1980s Kamal Hassan-starrer Pushpak "" a contemporary silent movie that was hugely entertaining but which achieved most of its ends by non-verbal methods.

I was thinking of all this while watching Martin Scorsese receive his long-overdue best director Oscar last month. Scorsese is undoubtedly a master, but my candidate for the best American director of that generation is a man who has never seemed to be in Oscar contention at all: Brian DePalma, renowned in cult circles but a pariah when it comes to debates about the best film directors "" perhaps because the pulpish subject matter of his movies precludes the respectability that can be given to someone like Scorsese.

DePalma's visual sense, his understanding of how the camera can be used as a tool of manipulation, is masterful "" his films have a kinetic, visceral energy that's analysis-defying. For just one example, take the brilliant, wordless museum sequence from his 1980 Dressed to Kill.

The scene involves a middle-aged woman being attracted to a handsome stranger, walking away from him, then finding that he seems to be stalking her through the winding corridors and halls "" until she realises he was only trying to return a lost glove, and then she in turn becomes the pursuer. The camera creates its own layers of meaning here, manipulating our responses towards both participants in this balletic cat-and-mouse game.

DePalma's movies are testaments that the art of pure cinema didn't die with the silent era. The most popular of his films, such as Carrie, Sisters and Blow-Out, are now widely available on DVD, and strongly recommended if you want to be stimulated by more than just words.

(jaiarjun@gmail.com)