the silent film thread

also has anybody seen any Japanese silent cinema?

Does anyone speak/read spanish?

This appears to be a Spanish DVD issue of Borzage's "7th Heaven". I want to order it, but damned if I can navigate the page! (yes I am lame)

http://www.culturalianet.com/pro/prod.php?codigo=21771

A must-have, surely!

Help!

google translate

I'll order it in January, I think.

10 minutes from Norma Talmadge's first talkie, "New York Nights":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPaNuo4E3c

There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with either her diction or her acting, I mean, she's a bit creaky, but who wasn't in 1929? Pity she didn't make it in talkies. She was a looker, for sure.

Japanese silent cinema?

Haven't seen any, but kabuki plays would cross the bridge into silent cinema pretty easily.

A Page Of Madness is the only Japanese silent I've seen. I'm guessing it's pretty atypical though, being some kind of surrealist fever dream set in a madhouse.

The most durable and watchable silent films seem to be comedies and films with a heavy dose of surrealism like Nosferatu or Metropolis. The dramas and romances are just too overwrought for contemporary tastes, but wild exaggeration works just fine for comedy and surrealism.

Something I've read about quite a few times, but have never seen is Marion Davies taking off Mae Murray, Lillian Gish and Pola Negri from "The Patsy". Thanks to (as usual) youtube, here she is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff4X4E1JdSE

I've never seen any Mae Murray films, so I can't judge on that one, her Negri takeoff is very good, she has some of Negri's facial mannerisms down, but seems to owe as much to Gloria Swanson as it does to Pola, The Lillian takeoff is killer, though, WOW. When she sits in front of the mirror, she almost seems to turn into Lillian Gish! It is very, very cruel, but also v v funny.

This sounds like a good, funny movie, I wish I could get it on DVD.

The dramas and romances are just too overwrought for contemporary tastes, but wild exaggeration works just fine for comedy and surrealism.

I've lend a few DVDs out to relatives and friends since I started buying them, and weirdly enough, the one that people seem to like the best is "A Woman of the World", a 1925 rom-com starring Pola Negri (who pretty much defines "overwrought"!) That said, it is a pretty funny film, though not physical/slapstick funny. Not sure whether this backs up what you say, contradicts it, or what TBH. Worst responses, again weirdly, from "Pandora's Box" (depressing/Lulu is very annoying) I think Pandora's Box is great, personally, but whatever....

Borzage's "Seventh Heaven", split into 12 parts, and the italian intertitles translated by its uploader:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ykwwpASbOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWdv-zV5pTs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya73AddlCPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4MSxXa-sBQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZRemY8dEL0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxMwTtVOUL4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5MMoEBvFBs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNmyto4YaQk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9OvCeqRfhw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZehBExWIWaM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1kUTkGYpNQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRbnTXmMUbg

Also, Donnell Media Center, NY is showing five Norma Talmadge titles, including one directed by Borzage over the summer:

http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/NT/home.htm (scroll down a little)

I'm jealous of those in or near NYC! I'd love to see these films.

I thought they were closing that place down

Donnell always shows films in midafternoon on work days. Avg audience age: 79.

Haha. I used to work on that block. The only movie I was ever able to see there was Les Mistons.

(Running Time: 18 min.)

that is a sometimes younger crowd than MoMA tho

Ron Howard went to that block one afternoon to cast extras for Cocoon.

Flicker Alley has a 5 DVDset of Douglas Fairbanks movies forthcoming:

http://www.flickeralley.com/fa_fairbanks01.html

It looks well tasty, plenty of stuff from 35mm or orig. negatives too.

Apparently somewhere on Fox Studio Classics' website can be found this graphic, which does suggest rather strongly that a DVD of "7th Heaven" is on it's way. There's (maybe) more, though:

http://scarletstreet.yuku.com/topic/5560/t/Most-in-need-of-DVD-releases.html?page=1

The beginning of the guy's second paragraph is somewhat compelling:

"Having just recorded interviews for an upcoming box set I never thought I'd see -- a collection of the films of F.W. Murnau and Frank Borzage from their late silent/early sound Fox period (LAZYBONES, 7TH HEAVEN, SUNRISE, THE STREET ANGEL, CITY GIRL, THE RIVER [wht there is of it], FOUR DEVILS [a documentary on the film, which is lost], LUCKY STAR, THEY HAD TO SEE PARIS, SONG O' MY HEART, LILIOM)...."

OK, WOW, if that's true.

Flicker Alley have just released Abel Gance's La Roue, 4.5 hours long apparently. Gance's J'Accuse is scheduled for release in September. Grebt news. Now all we need is Coppola/Zoetrope, Ken Brownlow, or whomever has the rights to release Napoleon, hopefully that'll happen in my lifetime.

dude, napoleon is on dvd in australia... or it was back in 2005.

I think that version misses a few hours of footage. I'm really hoping we get the version Brownlow has been sourcing and putting together for years. Apparently there's some dispute over rights, soundtrack etc

The full premiere, assumed-lost version of METROPOLIS has been unearthed!

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006330.html

woah. i am very interested in this (though have not quiiiite got round to cracking the spine on the current most-complete version). though talk of 'original versions' is questionable, to say the least, even on the film's release in london in 1927 real heads were saying it was missing loads of stuff that they'd seen in previews lang had given in germany.

I don't really know what to say except this is really exciting.

Yeah my impression of pre-war German movies was that wildly different versions would be in circulation in different countries.

That's fantastic news.

Wow, holy shit! It's always a blast when something like this shows up, isn't it. Gives you hope that some other lost classic movies will show up somewhere yet as well.

The Fox Christmas '08 Murnau/Borzage box set appears to be for real.

next, the lost reels of Greed! (jk)

anyone know a Lon Chaney vehicle, Mockery?

http://bam.org/view.aspx?pid=681

I mentioned on the NYC Snob thread that a friend is co-curating a silent-short series at MoMA, "Cruel and Unusual Comedy." Tonight's program at 7, "Gratuitous Violence," is the only evening show, and a likely sellout. Here is their blog of notes for the series:

http://www.cruelandunusualcomedy.info/2009/05/may-27-at-7pm-gratuitous-violence.html

RIP Bob Mitchell, last remaining organist who accompanied films in the silent era, aged 96. i saw him play a little over a month ago at the silent movie theater in LA; he (deservedly) got a standing ovation. (the article seems to indicate that that might have been his last public performance, actually...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bob-mitchell9-2009jul09,0,1836294.story

got myself a wknd pass! missed opening night feature (lupe velez's screen debut!), but will probably go to nearly everything else:

http://www.silentfilm.org/

Pasadena's showing Daddy Long Legs for free Saturday night outdoors, with a live band doing the score.

http://www.oldpasadena.org/gc_calendar_detail.asp?cal_id=1135

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/movies/07silent.html?hp

A late silent feature directed by John Ford, a short comedy directed by Mabel Normand, a period drama starring Clara Bow and a group of early one-reel westerns are among a trove of long-lost American films recently found in the New Zealand Film Archive.

Some 75 of these movies, chosen for their historical and cultural importance, are in the process of being returned to the United States under the auspices of the National Film Preservation Foundation, the nonprofit, charitable affiliate of the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board. (This writer is a member of the board, and has served on grant panels for the foundation, though none related to the current project.) Chris Finlayson, New Zealand’s minister for arts, culture and heritage, is expected to announce the discovery and the repatriation officially this week.

The films came to light early in 2009, when Brian Meacham, a preservationist for the Los Angeles archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, dropped in on colleagues at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington during a vacation....

Because of the importance of the John Ford film, “Upstream” — a backstage drama from 1927, a year that was a turning point in the development of one of America’s greatest filmmakers — it is being copied to modern safety film stock in a New Zealand laboratory, rather than risk loss or further damage in transit.

The whole aesthetic of melodrama in early silent movies was a straight holdover from the theater of the previous half-century, and it was enormously popular at the time, but I can't say it has any hold over my imagination.

The best silent comedies, notably Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd, are still pretty entertaining stuff imo, although the earliest ones still suffered from the technique of undercranking the camera to speed up the action and make it "funnier".

What has been wholly lost is the experience of live musical accompaniment, which I'm sure had a lot more emotional impact and appeal than the soundtrack music that's put with silents on DVD. Too bad, so sad. Nothing to be done.

I wonder if there's a list of the 75 titles somewhere. One of them seems to be a Clara Bow film, which seems like it shd be a big deal I guess.

Someone on another board linked to this little clip from 1922. It's a test strip of a Kodachrome 2-strip process w/beautiful phantasmagoric colour. Mae Murray, pouting away at the end has some kind of amazing prescence about her, eh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_RTnd3Smy8

Terrific Criterion package of 3 von Sterberg silents out tom'w.

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1556-mit-out-sound-mit-out-solution

Ten best of 1920:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=11070

I love his (and Kristin Thompson's) best ofs! Such a fantastic blog!

"Way Down East" is so good, one of my favourites.

I have the Kino Norma & Constance Talmadge double bills on the way over from the States. I'm pretty hyped to see them.

Got them!
"Within the Law" w/Norma a little bit draggy to be honest, the piano accompaniment I don't think suits it, probably could have doen w some mopey-sounding blues music or suchlike. Interesting class-war-ish theme running through parts of it, with Norma's character falsely accused of thieving from the shop she works at and sent down for 3yrs, the shop owner knowing she is innocent, but sending her down as an example to the other shop workers. This film was remade pre-code, with Joan Crawford in the lead, I suspect probably a bit better than this, I did enjoy it though.

"Her Sister from Paris", w/Constance is an absolute treat, a frothy, sub-Lubitsch romantic comedy w/Ronald Colman, v funny & fast-paced with a great ending.

I haven't watched "Kiki" or "Her Night of Romance" yet, I'll stick them on over the weekend.

long-absent Arbuckle comedy screens:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/archives/After_90_years_Fatty_Arbuckles_rarely-screened_LEAP_YEAR_returns_to_pub/

Lonesome, starring Barbara Kent, who died this week at 103:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNDzHLzsHQc

if ya'll haven't watched your blu-rays of phantom carriage yet, DO SO NOW. and if you ever have any friends skeptical about watching silent films, show that one to them.

I have to admit that I rarely find silent movie streams on youtube.com or downloads from archive.org very unsatisfying from a variety of perspectives: dubious sources, compressed files, teeny-weeny images.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 13 March 2006 Bookmark

Wonder if that has changed in four years -- anyway I've started to sceen a few silents off youtube and so far I'm surprised/pleased by the quality of the little I've seen so far. There are a few silent film screenings coming up in London I'm interested in, but they are also on youtube and I probably won't be able to wait. The hunger is great..

Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc is so tender, brutal and intimate. Takes your breath off when they go outside of the room for the near torture and then the execution. Not sure that Bresson's version (which I saw years ago now) adds (or subtracts) anything from this.

I guess it needs to be said but its apparent where Sinead O'Connor got her look from -- I mean, tried to fish a quote earlier but couldn't find it.

One thing w/the whole silent film bag is the soundtrack. Just a quick look and I see a lot of ppl adding a soundtrack: like Nick cave or what have you. Its a minefield. For Joan of Arc its an ochestral score by Richard Einhorn. Didn't work - the images told me: a lot less music, less intrusion. Maybe one of the few silent films that could actually be left silent and alone. Maybe a hangover from seeing this on Vivre sa Vie

A Page Of Madness is the only Japanese silent I've seen. I'm guessing it's pretty atypical though, being some kind of surrealist fever dream set in a madhouse.

― Matt #2, Saturday, 22 December 2007 Bookmark

Cracking interview with the academic who wrote a book on the film. Led me to watch Kirsanoff's Ménilmontan. Can see Rivette and Marker going all over the clocks-and-cats imagery. Really tight.

Watched it w/some iffy 'modern' orchestral score -- again didn't work, and if you read how A Page of Madness has been improvised with in that interview, etc. its a perhaps sad confirmation of my worst fears, esp unsuitable when you have images of the girl utterly desolate in the streets of Paris. Apparently this ws Pauline Kael's favourite film if you believe the comment on the thread of this excellent piece on Sunrise.

David Denby on acting in the silents:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/02/27/120227crat_atlarge_denby?currentPage=all

i like that article

Dreyer season on at the NFT in March..

so there's a new 330-minute restoration of Gance's Napoleon that will be shown 4x in OAKLAND... and that's it! Oakland!

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/762802/abel-gances-legendary-napoleon-restored-again-by-kevin-brownlow-heads-to-oakland-for-unique-screenings