the silent film thread

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

going to MoMA tonight for Gloria Swanson / Allan Dwan

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/18188

i watched one of hers yesterday - Stroheim's 'Queen Kelly'. The first 2/3s is standard historical melodrama. The last 1/3 is pretty grim and also incomplete. I can see why she abandoned the project lol.

A longtime friend has written a book about neglected silent comedians. So far I've zipped through the chapter on the silent Our Gang series (and the various ripoffs of it).

http://www.bearmanormedia.com/image/cache/data/LameBrainsLunatics-500x500.jpg

http://www.bearmanormedia.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=638

^ and he's curating another MoMA series sorta based on the book.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1413

^begins tonight at NY MoMA; I hear great things about Tangled Tangoists

if you haven't seen the digital restoration of Intolerance, you should

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/intolerance

Missed it at the FF but would still like to see it. In the meantime Fritz Lang's Spies is still streaming over at Mubi.

u can rent it!

"To no one’s surprise, the news is bleak. Only 14% of the 10,919 silent films released by major studios exist in their original 35mm or other format, according to the report, ‘The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929.’ Another 11% survive in full-length foreign versions or on film formats of lesser image quality."

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/library-of-congress-only-14-of-u-s-silent-films-survive-1200915020/

Yeah, been seeing a few links to http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub158
in the past few days. Glad to have some accurate figures, at least ...

that's feature films. what about short subjects, newsreels, etc.? I suppose that'd be a hard report to write, since there aren't many reliable filmographies of that sort of thing.

it is good to have a solid number though, for features anyway. i've heard anything from 60% to 99% quoted. of course, it depends on when the film was made. as you move toward the end of the silent era, it's more likely that a studio feature has been preserved. that doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't many high-profile cases of late silent features that have been lost. but if you move back to the early-mid 1910s it gets much worse.

Thompson and Bordwell's best of '23:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2013/12/29/the-ten-best-films-of-1923/

tl; dr; not in proper list format

wait for their Oscar blog

I've been on a major silent film binge this month. I think I've seen all the major titles now apart from The Wind, The Crowd and Napoleon. I saw The Wedding March last night and wow, Stroheim was a total master. Some other highlights from my watching spree: Safety Last, Un Chien Andalou, The Phantom Carriage and Menilmontant.

Anyone seen any good ones lately?

Apparently the Italian Futurists made a number of stage and film productions that focused on the feet. None of those survive, but a clown at L'Ambrosio Studios made this, in 1914 -- things get real interesting around 1:45 (turn the music off):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx11nKrAv24

I'm sure somehow that Quentin Tarantino knows about this.

what... the... that was interesting.

i finally saw The Crowd. that's another one I can tick off "the list". it didn't disappoint!

Recent discoveries include Mickey Rooney's first starring short:

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.de/2014/03/good-news-for-silent-film-fans.html

Is that link SFW?

Yep.

Surprised that link didn't mention the Balfour/Pearson discovery in the Netherlands!

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/announcements/lost-british-silent-masterpiece-rediscovered-holland

Do any ILXors head to the Giornate del cinema muto?

(Also, how gorgeous are the set desgins in Lubitsch/Negri's Die Bergkatze? Expressionism meets, IDK, The 5000 Fingers of Dr T.)

a British silent primer

http://whitecitycinema.com/2014/06/09/a-silent-british-cinema-primer/

Looking for recommendations for a good silent comedy "chase" scene to show a class. Could actually be any silent scene with movement and cutting on action, but I think chases work best for exploring space, screen direction, etc.

Harold Lloyd might be yr best bet there. Seems like there's been a good chase scene in every Lloyd film I've seen, though that hasn't been very many.

Cool, I just took the first few discs of that big Lloyd set out of the library.

The chase scene in Keaton's 'Cops' is p special

Keaton dodging boulders and brides at the climax of Seven Chances?

something a little more straightforward, the final chase in Sherlock Junior.

xxp

yeah, i was gonna say seven chances but it's a long scene.

maybe harold lloyd's never weaken?

this reminds me i ought to watch that blu-ray of the freshman