Tonight I’d rather comment on a not-good movie than a good one.
“Lot in Sodom” by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber is that not-so-good movie. Vintage 1933. It was the bonus film on the Nazimova “Salome” DVD.
I read that Watson and Webber were supposed to have done a fine job with “The Fall of the House of Usher”. I don’t know as I haven’t seen it.
“Lot in Sodom” tries to make its case with special (for the time) effects but surreal and special effects don’t necessarily poetry make. Let me put it this way. It was a very long 28 minutes made up of so much the same stuff that when that 28 minutes was done it felt like I’d been watching 3 minutes over and over for a long while. Handsome young men leap and jump over and over and over and over again. With flickering flames across the bottom of the screen they leap and jump over and over and over again. They leap and jump some more. And more. More flames. More laughing and leaping and jumping and lascivious expressions. More and more. And more. Then more. These are all multiple exposures so you get to see multiple leapings and jumpings at once, then again more leapings and jumpings. Then more. More leapings and jumpings. More little flickering flames. More leaping and jumpings in the black. More. More. And more. Some nicely shaped buttocks and pectorals and biceps, yes, but with all the multiple exposures, over and over and over again, that gets tiresome very shortly and you begin to think you’re just watching the hands of a clock go round and round and round and finally, for me, all I’m seeing is the gas flames of a space heater (yawn) under the clock hands going round and round and it’s gotten mixed up with Jack be nimble and quick jumping over the candlestick.
Then there’s some some naked man (buttocks) being held upside down and Marty thought maybe it looked like he was dropped into a fiery pit by all the other guys because there’s smoke and they sit peering down down down and he doesn’t ever reappear. “What,” I was thinking, “is that supposed to be about? I thought they were supposed to be having a good time here. Why would they take one of their buds and drop him in a fiery pit?” So, unable to comprehend, I rationalized it was a steambath experiment that went awry. Actually, the way our conversation ran, I asked first was that something down the order of a steambath, and Marty said no he thought not, but I’m still unconvinced.
Lot reads a big book and lies down to go to sleep. More flames and faces. An angel arrives. Lot (big big hooked nose) tries to convince the crowd outside that they’d really like one of his daughters instead. They laugh. Lot really tries to convince them. Quotes from the “Song of Songs” make their way in. Eventually this attempting to convince turns into lots of slow-mo flowers opening in bloom shots, water, a silver cord breaking is mentioned somewhere along the way but I don’t recollect when, hands mimic a vagina opening and there’s this big egg sitting there that the new loving mother turns toward which is then a baby.
“That was a big egg wasn’t it?” I ask Marty.
“I think it was an egg,” he says.
About now this sounds like it would be a hoot, doesn’t it? Right? Instead, when you see the big egg you think, “No one should ever want to use an egg in film, poetry or story again.” You don’t think, “Well, others have used eggs better.” No. You just think, “Ok, eggs and flowers have now been done to death. No more of them ever again.”
After the birthing of the egg-child, the angel tells Lot to get out of town. We’ve already seen enough flickering flames mingled with leaping male bodies but we’re not done with the flames yet. Here they come, raining down, Lot’s wife turns around, she looks back, becomes a pillar of salt and immediately after that there’s a shot of Lot’s daughter with a kind of strange expression on her face holding up a goblet of wine I think (we know the rest of that story) and THE END. That’s it.
You will probably think this sounds like a must see.
That’s not my fault.
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