one aim in my life is to watch all 1001 movies you must see before you die that i have listed in the "1001 movies you must see before you die" book i got one christmas. what with me being a film geek and all that.
however, a lot of the films in't, especially ones made pre 1950's are hard to find, when you do see them on dvd, my god, the prices are quite literally extorniate and when you see a rare gem in a charity shop it is a million to one chance diamond in the rough. which is annoying. so i was tabbing off the films that were widely available/popular, or the ones that were expensive but that i knew were worth the investment. occassionaly scoping out an utter classic for a fraction of the price (2 Disc Metropolis for £12, yes please!) and watching splendiferous films at mere peanuts and with a smashing mid-80's feel (say anything and breakfast club) whilst all the time tabbing off more and more films as i went along. PROGRESS. it was about at this point that i realised that the library at University had a DVD section. a section for films, which i could borrow for free. this was good news. most good news. most good news indeed. so as a result i found more and more classic films, oldies, goldies, newbies, rubies. the whole she-bang. i was tabbing off more and more films. (i am still unsure of how many of the great 1001 i have tabbed off, buuutttt....)
however, when at home, the library in Harrogate, a: charges. and b. isn't as expansive DVD wise. i hit a wall, having to plum solely for films that i found cheap in HMV and various charity shops. but then, in a similar vein to the library discovery, i found out that the answer was at my fingertips the whole time - YouTube.
tada!
i would never have guessed, that the engine i used solely for music videos, funny clips of cats and meme spectacularities, would help me in my 1001 film choosing choosage. but it did. YouTube has some utterly splendid users who load up films, entire films, especially older ones, because the copyright is all but non existent, entire films from the 20's, 30's and onwards can be found there. i began immediately watching le voyage dans la lune, korkarlen, stachka, greed, the unkwnown, un chien andalou, dracula, freaks, a night at the opera and i walked with a zombie to name but a few.
i was pleased.
these films appear in sections, part one, part two and so on. and having observed so many of these old cinematic marvels on new viewing technology i began to notice something slightly peculiar - the view counter. you'd assume that if someone was watching a film the view counter on every single part of the film would be the same. it only seems to make sense that any sane movie viewer would watch part one and then part two and then part three and then part four and so on and so on. but it seems this is not the case.
this:
is 'Stachka' Part 3 of 9.it has been viewed 694 times (all numerical quantities correct at time of printing) however the parts that book end it, 2 and 4, have been viewed 895 and 927 times respectivally. is it just me that is confused by this. who out there is going around picking and choosing what parts of a film they watch. and what are the basis' for not choosing to watch a certain part? why is part 3 so offensive to a person, why has part three been ignored by nearlly 200 odd people (presumably) who watched 2 and 4. obviously i'm jumping to conclusions here, perhaps the best way to get the sense of a film is to only watch the odd numbered parts of it. maybe i am the only one who sits down and watches a film chronologically.
the lowest number of views of this particular film is part 8, with 677 views. so that means that (i hope it means that...) 677 YouTube users have seen Stachka. whereas a further god knows how many have decided to pick and choose between what sections of this Sergei M. classic they saw.
please, i implore you, watch classic films, educate yourself in the ways of how good cinema used to be, the passion, the intensity and the (sometimes unintentional) political implications of silent movies and classic films. but watch the whole thing.
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