the silent film thread

and there were little old ladies with flowers waiting for her at the stage door.

http://www.mfah.org/main.asp?target=films&par1=1&par2=1&par3=685

Anyone seen this Italian epic, prominently featured in Scorsese's Italian doc? I may go Monday at MoMA.

Cabiria. 1914. Italy. Written and directed by Giovanni Pastrone. With Bartolomeo Pagano, Umberto Moszato, Marcellina Bianco. In Carthage during the second Punic War, the Roman Fulvio Axilla and his faithful servant Maciste rescue the child Cabiria as she is about to be sacrificed to the god Moloch. World cinema's first great historical epic, restored to its original length and vibrant colors. English intertitles. Restored by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin, with the collaboration of MoMA. Silent, with organ accompaniment by Ben Model. Approx. 180 min.

No, but they're playing Maciste at this year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Likeable (albiet somewhat chopped by the look of it) little 10 minute short from 1913, featuring none other than Pearl White:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6063104318913165236&q=%22pearl+white%22

She's pretty cute, an impression you don't get from seeing stills of her. I wonder if THE BARRYS got thrown out of their home as a result of her somnambulistic kleptomania?

Also, typing "hollywood brownlow" into google video's search box yields a good few hours great viewing.

Awesome, thanks for the tip! Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood is pretty much required viewing.

I think Cinema Europe must have been on TV during one of the times when we didn't own one. I don't remember it at all, but I'll watch it over the coming week.

The Hollywood series I remember really vividly. There's probably a bunch of people aroundabout my age who's interest in silent films was brought about by watching this series.

On the ones I've watched, the sound has an annoying tendency to slip out of sync 1/2 way through, but it's still watchable. The section on John Gilbert is heartbreakingly sad, poor fucking guy. Old lady Louise Brooks in the section on Clara Bow has a weird magnetism about her, it's easy to see how she wrapped k tynan around her little finger, she is such a fascinating character. Lack of vintage Leatrice Joy or Norma Talmadge footage is frustrating, but I haven't watched all the parts yet.

Highlight is that clip from "the fire brigade" in the 1st episode, it's so thrilling!

Also holy shit! Colleen Moore!

I must have watched that clip from "the fire brigade" about 20 times over the weekend. It has the same effect on me as the helicopter attack sequence from " Apocalypse Now". I can't believe how exciting it is.

Apparently "Hollywood" briefly came out on DVD in the UK, before getting pulled over a copyright dispute. So pathetic! "lets take all these films that like less than 1 on 10,000 people have even the faintest interest in anyway, and restrict access to them" WTF.

Also, I'm curious about the brief bit you see in the credits between the bit of garbo and gilbert dancing and the bit from "wings" - it looks like Pola Negri - from "Gypsy Blood"?

It'd be so nice to be able to watch this stuff. :(

Restored print of Griffith's Way Down East playing July 20 in NYC:

http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/gswaydowneast.html

The Passion of Joan of Arc is captivating. Falconetti = w0ah!

-- Leee (Leee), Friday, December 6, 2002 6:07 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^^ this is true

god, her expression. Completely rapturous and sad.

It'd be so nice to be able to watch this stuff. :(

Wouldn't it just. It is SO frustrating. Bad enough that you have yr own personal list of lost titles you'd love to be able see for whatever reason, there's the stuff that does exist, that is unavailable to view - Borzage's "Secrets" and "The Lady", feat. Norma Talmadge, for example, then there's a bunch of titles that get exhibited at festivals from time to time, like that "The Fire Brigade" Or "The Lilac Time" w/Colleen Moore & Gary Cooper, or many others that if I could get on a nicely-presented DVD, w/a decent score, I'd happily pay over the odds for. So annoying.

I just ordered Mauritz Stiller's "Hotel Imperial" feat. Pola Negri and a copy of "Norma Talmadge double bill #1" on DVD-R from Grapevine. You take what you can get, I suppose. the Pola Negri Paramount comedy that I bought from them the other month wasn't the best transfer I've seen by a long way, but it was watchable, very enjoyable, and the compiled score was pretty cleverly done & effective. "Hotel Imperial" is supposedly one of their best transfers.

I love "Way Down East", def one of my favourites. Lowell Sherman is great.

well, I specifically meant online video, which is banned at work (and I'm a Luddite at home).

Hahaha oops. You know what I mean though, I'm sure.

MoMA is showing a bunch o' Griffith this month, including 1908-13 Biograph shorts tonight.

I got the package from Grapevine yesterday, & watched some of it last night. I got a Norma Talmadge double bill, featuring "The Social Secretary" (1916) and "The Forbidden City" (1918), "Beggars of Life" featuring Richard Arlen, Louise Brooks and Wallace Beery, and "Hotel Imperial", dir Mauritz Stiller, featuring Pola Negri. I watched a bit of all 4 titles, then watched all of "The Social Secretary" and half of "Beggars of Life". Given that Grapevine is a "PD" company, I guess w/o much in the way of budget, the image quality on all 3 DVDs was acceptable. Dude who runs Grapevine seems to be pretty adept at doing compiled scores as well. "Beggars of Life" has pretty bad image quality, I've read in a few places that only one print of this film has survived, and that print is a pretty poor 16mm reduction in beat-up condition. It's a pity it's not better, because the bit of this film that I watched was really outstanding. The opening sequence, in which Richard Arlen's hobo knocks on the door of a farmhouse, begging for some breakfast, enters the house, only to find the farmer dead, then finds the farmer's adopted daughter, and she recounts how she'd shot him after he sexually molested her was tough & rugged & brilliantly done. I'll watch the rest tonight, and if it keeps up this level, it's got to be one of the best films I've seen. Trawling through alt.movies.silent, it seems that there was a good print of this at some point that got loaned out to a european film festival, and wasn't returned/lost. Wouldn't it be great if it turned up.

One of the things that interests me the most about silent films is these actresses who were massive stars & loved by moviegoers in the '20's, but who are just totally forgotten and ultra-obscure today. Colleen Moore, Corinne Griffith & Norma Talmadge. Talmadge especially because there's a couple of interesting/intriguing backstories - her appearance, the absolute epitome of sophisticated '20's glam, contrasted with her supposed rough upbringing and alleged
harsh Brooklyn accent IRL (which she supposedly managed to hide in her talkies), and also the fact that there's a good proportion of her ouvre that survives mainly complete in decent condition, but which is unviewable(IE almost no DVDs or exhibition prints), unless you book a special viewing session at the LoC.
This site is also responsible for making me more interested. The site author is very enthusiastic about her films, but not uncritically so.
I watched "The Social Secretary" w/great interest & enjoyed it loads. Being from 1916, it has the more direct/simple style of storytelling, and seems much more archaic that "Beggars of Life" or other films from the '20's, this effect magnified by the older-fashioned clothes the players wore. The story (a farce written by Anita Loos) was charming and pretty funny in places. Norma plays Mayme, a temp secretary who's employers all get the hots for her, they keep trying it on w/her, but she's a virtuous girl, and she quits. She then goes back to the female stenographers club (!!) where she hangs out, and shares her woes w/her comrades there. At the same time, a wealthy old lady gets frustrated because all of her social secretaries keep leaving to get married, so she places an ad for a new one, stating that the place is only open to those "extremely unattractive to men". Norma/Mayme sees the ad, combs her hair back tight, wears a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, adopts a dorky/stern-looking expression and gets the job. Rich old lady's daughter is a head-in-the-clouds romantic, who wears so much kohl round her eyes that she looks really fucked up on drugs. The son, Jimmie, is a raving alcoholic. One night Jimmie comes home ripped to the gills. He drops his key, so he has to break a window to get in the house. Mother hears this, you see a title card "oh there's Jimmie, inebriated again" and she goes back to sleep. Norma/Mayme hears it, assumes it's burglars, goes downstairs and beams Jimmie over the head with a vase of lilies. Thus does Jimmie find out that Mayme is actually pretty cuet. They start dating and Jimmie straightens himself out, at the same time as the daughter starts dating one of Mayme's old short-term employers who is clearly a BAD SORT. To add to the trouble, a reporter starts snooping round, the reporter played by Erich Von Stroheim, believe it or not (he hams it up a bit). It all turns out OK in the end. Norma is pretty impressive, she does the telling the story with eyes and facial expressions thing very well, quite subtly, and only overdoes it a few times. Despite wearing some terrible-looking clothes (she also dresses down to get the social secretary job) she looks great too, although in a real old-fashioned way. You could probably drop Louise Brooks or Leatrice Joy into a modern idiom, and they wouldn't look out of place, not so Norma.

The other film, "The Forbidden City", I watched a bit of, but it totally sucked. It was a madame butterfly-ish "east meets west" (cough) piece, somewhat racially awkward to say the least in this day & age, w/Norma looking utterly ridiculous made up to look like a Chinese woman. The title cards looked nice is about the best I can say about it.

Now I want to see "Secrets", "The Lady", "Smilin' Through" and so on all the more. Bummer.

I'll watch the Stiller/Pola Negri film tonight, most likely.

wow.

At MoMA, Henry B. Walthall, Harry Carey (Sr) and Griffith himself all got someone to applaud when they appeared onscreen.

via Dave Kehr's blog:

The good people at the National Film Preservation Foundation have taken the occasion of tonight’s opening of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival to unveil the contents of the third box set in the ongoing “Treasures from American Film Archives” series. Titled “Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934,” the collection consists of 48 films from a time when movies were actively engaged with the world around them, rather than marshalling all available technology to deny it (no, I still haven’t seen “Transformers”). Four features are included: Cecil B. De Mille’s delirious melodrama “The Godless Girl” (1929), with Lina Basquette as a defiant young athiest (if memory serves, she is the president of her high school’s Young Athiest Club) who changes her tune when she finds herself behind bars in a juvenile prison; Victor Schertzinger’s “Redskin,” a two-color Technicolor feature from 1929 with Richard Dix as a Navajo who discovers the limits of assimilation; Lois Weber’s forthright pro-choice drama of 1916, “Where Are My Children?”; and one that is new to me, William Desmond Taylor’s 1920 “The Soul of Youth,” apparently the first film about male prostitution.

http://davekehr.com/?p=207