the silent film thread

oh, at least one Lon Chaney! Hunchback of Notre Dame at least

obviously arguing with somebody else's choices is a pointless endeavour but that's one od the reasons these kinds of list get published

Not to boil it down to "what's aged the best," but an acquaintance who I expect has seen more silents than you or I have once said, "You have to be very careful with (showing) silent dramas today." Contemporary audiences, at least in public screenings, seem much more engaged by even the second-tier, well-made comedies than by all but the creme of the dramas.

Pssst, the same holds true for today's movies too.

xp

i assumed that attitude about comedy informed the tenor of these choices but i wouldn't want to second guess what a "contemporary audience" might be or think - don't see the point in trying to make converts of the reluctant, and a good film is a good film

The Last Laugh is my favorite Murnau, probably my favorite silent film altogether.

don't see the point in trying to make converts of the reluctant

so people are still watching these 50 years from now, if that's possible? Dramas included, but whatever's the gateway.

I went to one of Paul Merton and Neil Brand's silent comedy evenings not that long ago. It was great to see well presented silents on a big screen with an enthusiastic host and audience. We got a Keaton feature, and Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy shorts. As is always the case in my experience, L&H got by far the biggest laughs of the night, yet as a film, theirs was by far the crudest and least artful.

FWIW, Safety Last would be my choice of silent comedy film. And Metropolis should be top ten, prob top five.

for my own taste, The Gold Rush at #66 is way too low. And I don't find anything artless about L&H, esp the ones listed above. (McCarey learned plenty from Charley Chase and Stan Laurel, as he said in interviews.)

Was going to complain about no Italian diva films, but they've got Il Fuoco at #88 (waaaaay too low ... seen it, Eric?); no Asta Nielsen or Ivan Mosjoukine (Ctrl-F-wise, anyway), only one Bauer & only one Vertov ... IDK, this list seems weighted way too much towards Hwood (though ofc #1 is a fine choice etc, happy to see A Page of Madness & the Epstein Usher place decently).

Haven't!

https://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/03b-il-fuoco-1915-pina-menichelli-close-up.gif
https://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/06b-il-fuoco-1915-pina-menichelli-at-castle.gif
https://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/04b-il-fuoco-1915-pina-menichelli-smash-lamp.gif
https://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/il-fuoco-4-sml.gif
https://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/09-il-fuoco-1915-crazy-sad-origami-man-2.gif

Speaking of Safety Last, saw Project A this weekend & thought of you, Morbs. Don't have YT/Tumblr access here in the PRC (though domestic services like Youku etc have been great for delving into HK films), but surely someone's done a supercut/listicle of every Jackie Chan silent comedy homage?

maybe. im not much for supercuts.

city lights is way too low imo.

has anyone seen lang's frau im mond? any good?

tempted to order it unseen b/c i'm kind of in love with the cover:

http://diaboliquemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/91yPP9r1YqL._SL1500_.jpg

I think the other version of House Of Usher is much better.

no Haxan! no Girl in Every Port!

spione is definitely a refinement of the first dr. mabuse films, but i have a very soft spot in my heart for the latter. hard to choose from among lang's silents, which despite being very obviously the work of the same couple (harbou is as important as lang i think), have very different virtues. the two nibelungen films are as startling and involving in their way as the mabuse films, spione, metropolis, etc.

i find that i /admire/ the first sound mabuse more than i really love it. there are some profoundly, wonderfully strange and disturbing things in there, but it also seems a little lumpy, in a way that you could probably chalk up to the relatively new sound technology -- IF lang hadn't already made one of the most fluid and assured of early sound films in "M."

i didn't look at that list b/c i don't need the grief today, but if there's no sjostrom in the top five, no credibility.

xpost

woman in the moon is great! you are not likely to be disappointed.

Oh, had blanked Lang's Nibelungen films - amazing, alien performance from Margarete Schön in Kriemhilds Rache:
https://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/kriemhildsrache_eyebrow.gif

Surprised they couldn't find room for The Goddess or New Woman (or even Piccadilly, heh). No Die Sinfonie der Großstadt!

you guys are really doing this, huh?

where's Heavy Love by Ton of Fun (aka the Three Fatties)?

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/81/1164570497.jpg

forthcoming bio of the comedy pioneer Clyde Bruckman, gettin good word

http://thecriticalpress.com/books/the-gag-man/

Homunculus, restored German scifi serial screening today in NYC

http://www.moma.org/calendar/events/1514

Kristin and David pick the ten best of '25 (think i've only missed Lazybones and Tartuffe:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/12/28/the-ten-best-films-of-1925/

^now only Lazybones

Yet more of Gance's Napoleon on the way:

http://news.sky.com/story/1631395/epic-five-hour-napoleon-film-restored

last year's top video releases, he says

http://moviessilently.com/2015/12/08/the-best-silent-movie-home-video-releases-of-2015/

dude and I saw the first 4 parts of Les Vampires yesterday and they were GREAT!! I think we wanna watch the rest.

just saw a newly restored 35mm print of Mantrap (1926, Victor Fleming) with Clara Bow laying waste to Minneapolis and the rural Canadian backwoods, along with the libidos of Ernest Torrence and Percy Marmont (who looks like a rougher middle-aged Bowie). A sex comedy adapted from a grim Sinclair Lewis novel!

L'Inhumaine (1924) Blu out, never before on disc... an "infamous, long-sought mega-splash of au courant cinematic futurism, and one of silent cinema's most notorious follies"

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film5/blu-ray_reviews_70/l_inhumaine_blu-ray.htm

http://criticsroundup.com/film/linhumaine/

it's a fascinating film, totally worth watching, though in a strong sense it's not really very... good.

on Roscoe Arbuckle

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/fatty-arbuckle/

seen any Lois Weber?

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/rare-classic-films-by-female-directors

Well, whaddaya know?

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

Roscoe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Duoo7z0kJM

^the concluding minutes feature some wild stuntfighting by Arbuckle

Not sure I'd ever heard of this Clara Bow-Gary Cooper from '27:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/children-of-divorce

My curator friend's latest comedy series at MoMA, in January; gotta see the one that the lead photo's from:

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/3630?locale=en

HELLO

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51xn1yV9z5L._SY445_.jpg

amazed Coop can hold his head up with that much mmakeup on

best of the year in silent video

http://moviessilently.com/2016/12/28/the-best-silent-movie-home-video-releases-of-2016/

on MoMA's comedy shorts series

http://www.filmjournal.com/moma-showcases-cruel-and-unusual-slapstick-shorts-fifth-year-running

“Without the pioneering work of film preservationist David Shepard, who died this week, our understanding of silent cinema would be much poorer. Shepard not only sought out and restored silent films, but he was determined to release as many as possible on to home video, where they could be enjoyed by the widest audiences. He owned the formidable BlackHawk Films library and ran Film Preservation Associates, but also collaborated with imprints and festivals worldwide—as well as contributing Méliès clips to Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011). Among many other names, he preserved and shared films by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Cecil B. DeMille, Raoul Walsh, Fritz Lang, Abel Gance and D.W. Griffith.”

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/obituaries/david-shepard-silent-film-hunter-sharer

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/david-shepard-dead-silent-film-preservation-giant-was-76-970975

was going through a stack of letters from a recently deceased buddy who used to send us lists. he mentioned a 5 star review for Maya Deren in a 1992 film guide (dont' know which) and i just watched meshes of the afternoon yesterday. not a expert on this stuff by any means, but it seemed to have a awful lot in common with some Bunuel which means it may be some of the best art of its kind. i dunno. just throwing this out there since search is broken and i was wondering if anyone (Dr M?) was into this stuff

i haven't seen much Maya Deren besides Meshes, i see mostly omnibus shows of avant-garde stuff now and then

there's a dvd that contains all of her released short films. meshes is great, at land is pretty good, everything else is minor.

RIP Stuart Oderman, longtime accompanist at NYC MoMA and elsewhere

http://www.silentfilmmusicblog.com/2017/08/stuart-oderman-1940-2017-silent-film.html

The Vortex (Brunel, 1928): A coherent and competently made drama (I'm not familiar with the original play; I gather that it was somewhat watered down in the adaptation).

Canned Harmony (Guy, 1911): A rewatch to try to figure out if the phone call sequence is true split-screen (I don't think so, but it would help if I knew more than the basics of film composition and theory).

Algie the Miner (Guy, 1912): Question to anyone who is familiar with The Celluloid Closet: does it attempt to assess how contemporary audiences perceived material that viewers who have been conditioned to look for subtext now read as gay? This dirty-minded fangirl smirked her way through the bits with Algie's tiny gun, and when Algie kissed the men he met upon arriving in the west, but...do we know anything about how the original audiences received these images?

i've been thinking of watching every available movie from exactly 100 years ago. is this a crazy idea?

well, imdb lists 5,498 titles from 1917. assume that 90% of them are lost (the standard estimate), and you've only got about 550 to watch. actually tracking down copies of all those films, however, is, yes, probably very crazy.

is this a project you would continue indefinitely? seems like it would become impossible after a certain point, maybe around like the mid-30s. might be cool for 1920 and before.