the silent film thread

(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

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/08/mit-extract-sound-audio-silent-video-picture-information/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/nyregion/coming-soon-a-century-late-a-black-film-gem.html

Any NYers planning on attending this? Have had Bert Williams on the mind after reading Caryl Phillips' Dancing In The Dark; hopefully this'll find some form of DVD or digital release.

first ive heard of it, i'm sure it will circulate. also TOO MUCH TO SEE HERE, ALL THE TIME.

You've got to quit your job and adopt the Jack Angstrom diet, Morbius.

-streich

plz i'm close enough to undead already

Misspelt on purpose.

Also, some info on Alex Barrett's neo-'city symphony' film, London Symphony, + info on the BFI's 1914 on film channel:
http://silentsplease.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/british-despatch/

Has anyone ever seen The Living Corpse?

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=11&year=2014#showing-43510

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019609/combined

Critic and MoMA curator Dave Kehr on restoration, specifically Dwan/Fairbanks' The Iron Mask:

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/the-sound-of-silents-us-film-critic-and-curator-dave-kehr-on-his-quest-to-restore-historic-movies-20150415-1mln2k.html

My curator/researcher friend has played a big role in resurrecting the films of comic/director Marcel Perez, big in Europe 1910-15, and he worked in the US too:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/67747/marcel-perez-collection-the/

https://silentology.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/introducing-mirth-maker-marcel-perez/

the Mostly Lost fest, next month in Culpeper VA

http://culpepertheatre.org/mostly-lost/

listicle of 100; fine with #1

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/06/the-100-best-silent-films-of-all-time.html?a=1

Fine with nearly all of the ones I've seen from that list tbh.

#1 is a good choice. Was kinda disappointed by #2.

not gonna argue with the number 1 but the overload of Keaton is borderline challopy

^heretic