the silent film thread

so there's a new 330-minute restoration of Gance's Napoleon

Saw a DVD of this and, well, it is 'final frontier' type stuff.

i mean of all movies to have this weird "best silent film ever" reputation.

who, exactly, has said this? (btw I reviewed it in a 1981 college weekly and partic remember panning Artaud's performance as Marat)

Well these were a treat today, esp Singe de Pétronille. I've never seen an actress throw a monkey in someone's face:

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1253

who, exactly, has said this?

it definitely has a cult -- coppola, kevin brownlow, david robinson, some other folks. the hyperbole really became feverish in the late 70s.

makes a lot of sense that coppola would take a shine to abel gance -- they are similar dudes, interested in impossibly grand spectacle, technologies, and making movies whose lead characters reflect their directors' megalomania. basically every film gance made after la roue was "abel gance's..." or "...as seen by abel gance," etc.

so waits dr. morbius is like 50-55 y.o.? hmm.

no

Coppola partly funded the restoration of the damn thing 30 years ago, didn't he? (I saw it with his father conducting his score for it.) Does he have to consider it "the greatest silent film" to have done that? Not necessarily.

I mean the film was essentially considered lost til the restoration, hence the "hyperbole."

Last great silent film list I've seen -- there have been a few since The Artist -- doesn't mention Gance.

More of a Dreyer/Murnau/Eisenstein mixed list (the latter w/'please ignore the propaganda caveat its really great cuz it invented action films' - type bollocks)

more info + torture

http://sfsilentfilmfestival.blogspot.com/2012/02/napoleon-faq.html

they're straight-up billing this as "the cinema event of a lifetime"

yeah well, ya gotta have a slogan.

*sigh*

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-gladysz/abel-gance-napoleon_b_1273020.html

4) GREATEST FILM EVER MADE: Over the years, many films have been said to be the greatest film ever made. For reasons of film history, for reasons having to do with its own history, and for reasons of artistic achievement, this may be the one film most deserving of the claim. Here is what Vincent Canby had to say in 1981 in the pages of the New York Times. "As one watches Napoleon, one suddenly realizes that there once was a film that justified all of the adjectives that have subsequently been debased by critics as well as advertising copywriters. Napoleon sweeps; it takes the breath away; it moves (itself as well as the spectator); it dazzles."

whatevs.

this event is pretty fucking cool, i have no doubt. just wish it were a worthier film.

Man was Napoleon good! I'm still a bit confused why Gance, after J'accuse, as worthy an anti-war film as any, would make such a paean to such a proto-fascist warmongerer but the cinematography was amazing and Gance's little acting turn as Saint-Just is excellent.

remember panning Artaud's performance as Marat

It's awfully broad but then he was playing Marat...

was Marat a whoopee-cushion kinda guy?

we all hate u for seeing this btw

He was a fire-breathing, some would have said slightly unhinged radical which is what Artaud was trying to protray though I think his acting might have been better suited to the stage than to film.

we all hate u for seeing this btw

But the gf made me go! I was kind of dreading it tbh but even that long a movie was more compelling than I anticipated.

V.jealous, Michael!

Been working my way through Asta Nielsen's early (~1910 onwards) films via my partner - gorgeous and way ahead of comparable US/UK stuff. Her director/husband was named URBAN GAD!

Carl Davis' score was very good and I was once again very impressed with any orchestra that can play along with a motion picture, esp for 5 and a half hours. My gf is a member of the SF Silent Film Festival so I knew I was going to this back in September or October last.

Some Napoleon-fanatic lady who'd flown out from Pittsburg to see it told me that Dieudonné (Napoleon in the film) hated horses and water which made me laugh.

My friend went to see the Napoleon restoration and all I got was this lousy message board

urban gad is a really good director, he actually wrote one of the first "here's to make films, folks" books.

if you're in NYC they have a bunch of rare asta nielsen films you can view if you have research cred.

by "they" i mean MoMA's research center

oops

arrrgh "here's HOW to make films, folks"

i can't type anymore

Are you typing from Zing on your iPhone?

no, i'm typing from a keyboard on my macbook. embarrassing.

ok, who knows non-canonical Soviet silents?

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/14868

Saw Victor Fleming's 'Mantrap' w/the alluring Clara Bow, 'The Mark of Zorro' and von Sternberg's 'The Docks of New York' at the SF Silent Films festival this weekend. I was quite surprised by 'The Docks of New York' - it's gritty but quite poetic.

TDoNY is part of a triple von Sternberg package Criterion put out 2 years ago:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/3-silent-classics-by-josef-von-sternberg/1797

Had no idea there were any Soviet slapsticks as funny/manic as Pudovkin's Chess Fever; up there w/prime Chase/Keaton, and w/fantastic cameos/cinematography to boot.

My partner has just spent the past week at Pordenone; k-jealous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6m711ddZk

didn't know John Ford's bro Francis was such a Lincoln student/portrayer:

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/16479

of course, of the best picture nominees I haven't seen the Abel Gance.

http://www.fandor.com/blog/video-announcing-the-oscar-winners-of-1922

not sure they've noticed what kind of pictures win Best Picture

heh, obv David and Kristin are running the Jazz Age academy

can't watch the link to La Roue outside of the US :(

out of the 3 i've seen i'd've gone with Mabuse

only clearcut choice they don't list: Cops for best short

Heading along to an Alice Guy-Blaché retrospective tonight.

Didn't get any answers on the Yasujiro Ozu thread, so I'll ask here. I noticed that his Dragnet Girl ('32 I think) is on Youtube, but it's completely silent -- no piano accompaniment, no nothing. It was weird and offputting to watch it without any music at all, so I only lasted a couple of minutes. Anybody have any recommendations for music to play along with the film? Obviously nothing's going to work perfectly, but if anything comes to mind, let me know.

Saw The Crowd with live accompaniment this afternoon. With a few exceptions, silent films usually feel like homework to me--no need to berate me, Morbius, I just happen to be hard-wired to sound--but The Crowd was quite good. All the way through I was thinking that this shot and that shot was lifted by some other director (Wilder and the overhead office shot the most obvious example, but there were a few others).

Bit surprised there isn't a D.W. Griffith thread...I saw Intolerance the other night, again with live accompaniment (same woman as The Crowd). I'm pretty sure I slept through most of it in film class years ago--certain parts seemed familiar, although possibly just from clips and stills.

Does it still draw votes in the Sight & Sound poll? It's impressive, and the idea of it being a massive middle-finger to Birth of a Nation's critics is interesting (I think Griffith kind of loses that argument...), but it was just something to look at and think about for me. At no point did the stories actually engage me. I thought the best single image was a close-up on (I think) Margery Wilson in the Renaissance story.

Intolerance was near the bottom of last year's Sight and Sound top 100 movies, yeah

Thought this revive was to tell us to watch Die Schlacht der Idioten on Mubi before it goes away, a scratchy silent recreation in the ballpark of a Guy Maddin film, featuring Udo Kier as a vampire.

Who's seen 'Greed'? Does it live up to the legend? I really want to see the shorter version but not so bothered about the 4 hour one.

I just watched The Last Laugh which was awesome. There are no intertitles which makes it a little difficult to adjust to, but easy to follow once you have.

Yeah, The Last Laugh is like, the best movie ever. Emil Jannings is so incredible. Like, I've seen him in Variety as well, where he is this strong and hunky acrobat, and at the same time he could play so old and pathetic. It's just remarkable. Such a great actor, though apparantly not such a great person.

When he was strutting about being admired by everyone i thought he must've been Kaiser Wilhelm II. He had amazing screen presence.

the 4-hour version of Greed mostly has added stills -- and narration? Not gonna find more, I think.

Anyone else seen those 3 early Fritz Lang films that just got DVD'd? Just formative works, but worth seeing once.

http://www.kinolorber.com/video.php?id=1343

(ie, I wd go first w/ the traditional Greed we have, you won't be 'taken out of' the narrative imho.)

'greed' is very very good imo, completely lives up to the hype. one of the bleakest and most incredible endings of any film.

The four-hour version is "reconstructed" with stills and narration added years after the fact. Don't bother imo. The 2.5 hour or so version I saw does live up to the hype, though.

Greed was awesome. I never thought I'd say I watched a 2 and a half hour silent film and didn't get bored, but it was captivating throughout. I thought the butchery-of-stronheim's-original-vision thing would make it a bit messy but it was easy to follow and v. enjoyable.

Chaplin and company acting slowly, so the speed-up will look natural:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZiRHOh-ShM&feature=youtu.be