The 2020-2021 Film Journal Entry #34: "Samson and Delilah (1949)"

I always aim to see at least one old film each cinematic year. Not "old films" as described by too many internet denizens, referring to pieces from forty years ago. I mean old films from when the original Warner brothers still ran their film studio. The films my grandparents watched as children, or my great-grandparents saw in theaters around my age. I could wax poetic on the beauty of dusty-old films and their importance to more than just cinema fans. But I am no film professor so I will not give into that lecture. Instead, I will say I just really love old movies.

Gun Crazy, Son of the Sheik (sans that unforgivable plot flaw), 1939's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Bicycle Thief, Miracle on 34th Street. These pre-sixties films have a special magic that cannot be attained anymore. Their filmmaking concepts, casts, crews, cinema cultures, and technologies no longer exist. For me, seeing these films is not about fulfilling some cultural identity requirement or bowing to some intellectual nonsense. Watching them is about discovering real enjoyment from works nearly alien to how I know cinema. Some old films are quaint; meant to be enjoyed in a special perspective. But I have seen several that are so finely crafted they easily surpass many modern films in quality.

One reason for this awe is because olden time cinema was made entirely through ancient, by-hand production practices. Today's blockbusters rely so heavily on computer-generated imagery, enhancements, and tricks that some can be considered not as live-action features but hybrid films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? There is hardly any true "one-shot take" anymore because technological capabilities permit the illusion of such a feat. Stunts are safe by greater engineering and know-how, no matter how over-the-top they look. Costumes and props are manufactured with state-of-the-art tools like 3D printing. Green screen or, more recently, the more compelling virtual set screens showcased in the television series, The Mandalorian, create alien locales all from a computer. The production resources for casting, scheduling, transportation, payroll, and catering have increased exponentially thanks to the evolving internet; or, even decades ago, by hand-held calculators.

In contrast, old cinema had none of these opportunities, capabilities, or technologies. Computers? Calculators? Modern tools? Digital inventions? Back then, non-existent practically within the common imagination. Everything on screen in 1949's Samson and Delilah, still impressive to behold seventy-two years later, is one-hundred-and-ten percent real and crafted in the hardest ways, without any shortcuts. Sure, there are a few ticks. I am sure Victor Mature's stunt double was not always facing a lion in close-ups but some puppet mock-up. But in long-shots, that lion was real. The filmmakers had no contemporary techniques to use anything except a living, unsafe lion on screen, which feels raw and awesome for a modern viewer like myself.

Contemporarily, the climactic setting of the Philistine temple of Dagon would be filled with CGI extras, simulated environment details like dust, Steadicam visual movements, and clearly digitally crafted heights, like for the idol of the false god that looms over the scene. But in 1949, five years before the invention of mass polio vaccinations, the temple is filled with hundreds and hundreds of real people! The set they reside in is huge and real, without any computer extensions. The camera feels uniquely heavy and tangible, letting the audience's eyes soak in this great set. The Dagon statue and the temple's upper areas are crafted as a nearly forty-foot miniature, later composited with the rest of the shot by archaic editing and printing apparatuses I, once a paid video editor, cannot understand.

Likewise, Samson and Delilah's fake sets are filled with matte paintings, studio lights, and California locales: all real and with a distinct visual flavor I never see today. The costumes, so perfectly a mixture of campy textures, rich colors, inaccurate designs, luxurious tones, and dazzling looks, are real, probably made through the sweat and tears of a ludicrous number of tailors without any contemporary technology. This kind of reality within grandiose films decades before my time is so rare to see and feel today. Except for some sincere artistic crafters, this aesthetic is a lucky consequence from the lack of technological capabilities to make anything that looks or feels artificial. Everything in Samson and Delilah can be touched with absolute certainty, and, greater, impresses me in 2021 as I am sure it did to audiences in 1949.