Music Videos and Silent Films: A Match Made in Movie Heaven?

If you haven't already figured it out, I'm a pretty big fan of music videos as a genre - when done well, they have all the entertainment value of a feature-length film distilled into three minutes of sold gold goodness. They also, more often then not, bear a certain resemblance to ye olde silent films of yesteryear, telling stories that exist outside the lyrics and allowing the music to become an accompaniment to the action of the film.

Unsurprisingly, some videos have taken this comparison even farther. Two examples stand out in my mind immediately, the first being the video for "Tonight Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins.



A fun story, right? Boy and girl go up in a rocket ship to the moon, beat some aliens with umbrellas, take a dip in the sea to hang with mermaids, and live happily ever after. Seems like I've seen some of this imagery before . . .

"Voyage a la Lune" by George Melies is the first-ever movie made with an actual plot - before that, it was all movies of people sneezing, horses running, sunrises, trains, etc. Here, we see true theatrical mastery: a storyline and special effects, with lots of women in short pants thrown in for kicks. I believe they call it "cheesecake."

A final note: My apologies for the distracting voiceover, it was better than some of the ridiculous soundtracks I found out there, but still it's very distracting.




From the more recent end of the musical spectrum, we have "Living Dead Girl" by Rob Zombie. In the video, the mysterious Doctor reveals the 'Living Dead Girl' to the carnival-goers, to varying degrees of horror and amazement. When she escapes, the townspeople chase him out of town.



Pretty old fashioned looking stuff -- so old fashioned looking, in fact, it shouldn't be a surprise that the video's imagery is taken almost verbatim from an original silent film called "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" directed by Rober Weine. The highly stylized sets seen in both films come out of German Expressionism, an art movement that sought to manifest psychological moods in environment. The film is nearly an hour long, but if you have the time to watch it, I promise you won't be dissappointed -- but if you don't and just want to see the carnival scene, the fun starts around 7:56.





Good times, right?

Pop Music Contemplates God

I like music, and I like religion. No necessarily for the same reasons, but there is some interesting crossover. Particularly when music contemplates religion without preaching it, as in Regina Spektor's song, "Laughing With."

Between the M.C. Escher -style backgrounds and the (as always) truly lovely vocals and piano, this one never stays buried in my YouTube playlist for very long.

Another favorite, a little older (okay, more like a lot older, in pop years): Joan Osborne's "One of Us."



Interesting how Ms. Spektor and Ms. Osborne both use the close-up face shots - maybe to show off their luscious lips? Maybe it's just me, but it certainly seems like there may be a trend in lady musicians with prominent mouths singing about religiosity (okay, yes I know that's too specific to be a trend) -- after the jump, consider Tori Amos, with her song "Crucify."