the silent film thread

^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.

RIP Stuart Oderman, longtime accompanist at NYC MoMA and elsewhere

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

I'd probably continue it until I finished one full year. I haven't done any planning for it yet, just one of those big hobby project ideas I throw around in my head. like watching every Best Picture winner or everything Hitchcock did.

i've seen Algie, j.lu, but i don't know the answer to your second question and i don't have my copy of the Russo book handy. But in every era surely there'd be different responses by different sectors of the audience.

abanana, on a more manageable level, the film-log site Letterboxd lists 392 films for 1917, around 300 of which have been logged as 'seen' by at least one person. I doubt you could get your eyes on more than 150-200 if you tried exhaustively.

mostly silent, anyway:

You can watch the entire out-of-print TREASURES FROM AMERICAN FILM ARCHIVES set legally & for free here:https://t.co/pVytte9vZu

— Movies Silently (@MoviesSilently) October 2, 2017

Saw Pandora's Box restoration w/ a new orchestral score at NYFF last night. Janus/Criterion was thanked, so BR from them shortly?

That Pabst was somethin' else.

Kristin Thompson's best of 1927

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/12/27/the-ten-best-films-of-1927/

att Londoners, 10-11 March

https://us16.campaign-archive.com/?u=09e702562c5a537dc524bded5&id=e5b23c015b

http://www.kenningtonbioscope.com/

A hell of a program! If you have any interest in silent comedy, do not miss "Seven Years Bad Luck" or "Battle of the Century." There's nothing quite like a good comedy as seen with an appreciative audience.

some nice 110-year-old animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-1t9sId5I

oh wow, thanks for the heads-up! And Kevin Brownlow will be there.

Steven Spielberg came into my curator/librarian friend's workplace the other day to watch something, and they had a chat about silent comedy. :o

Only got to catch one session of that festival mentioned above. As a silent cinema neophyte I was particularly impressed by the previously unknown to me Lupino Lane!

The Holy Mountain (Arnold Fanck) - I loved this. The Skiing, dancing, views of the moutains, the dream images and even Leni Riefenstahl. She's an unusual leading actress, her posture is often bent over and I've never seen anyone quite like her.
Eureka disc came with documentary The Wonderful Horrible life Of Leni Riefenstahl (3 hours long) which is great too. Kind of incredible to see her filming underwater at 90 and stroking the backs of stingrays. Really want to see Blue Light, Tiefland and maybe Olympia. What could have been if she hadn't got involved with Nazis.

anyone been to the SF Silent Fest?

https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/list.aspx?epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&

Going to see Pandora's Box tomorrow, which I've never seen. Any good?

amazing acting by louise brooks, imo the best screen performance of the era

yes

btw:

https://www.kinolorber.com/film/pioneers-first-women-filmmakers

Morbs is my favourite critic tbh

Brooks looks all kinds of chic in the pics I've seen.

thank you Ross, but i really am not one

That was really good! And surprisingly busy. The ‘dad’ villain was really good, though the heavy villain reminded me of bill ponderosa from always sunny...

The whole film relies on Louise Brooks though - if she wasn't as charismtic/photogenic etc. I'm not sure it would have worked. A lot of gay women at the showing too - I guess the countess is a notable gay figure?

The interview with Brooks in The Parades Gobe By is very good.

The movie that made Mary Pickford a star, The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) is one of the more visually inventive silents I've seen. The character design in the fantasy sequences is quite remarkable, and the entire film (despite some expected sap) is very playful and fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd6yRluZW7I

my friend wrote Slapstick Divas

https://silentlondon.co.uk/2018/10/15/sisters-in-slapstick-two-books-on-silent-comediennes/

Your friend will be presenting an Alice Howell program as part of AFI's 2018 Silent Cinema Showcase. I ordered my series pass last night; is anyone else going?

Right after Thanksgiving, NY MoMA will be doing ten days of Silent Comedy International:

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5021

Yay Max Linder!

Outstanding article on a director I've never heard of until now:

The Lost Apocalypse of Romaine Fielding - https://www.acidwest.com/lostapocalypse

Big international comedy retro at NYC MoMA beginning Friday

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5021?locale=en

http://www.silentfilmmusic.com/category/silent-comedy-international/

Looking forward to my first Charles Puffy film.

Will you be seeing Le petit café? I was urging the AFI Silver programmer to keep these films in mind when planning the 2019 Silent Cinema Showcase, but he sidetracked into that recently rediscovered Oswald the Rabbit cartoon.

I haven't had time to look up individual titles... I'd likely be seeing the whole series if it wasn't for, y'know, effing Thanksgiving.

Me, watching: oh hell fuckin yea here we go. pic.twitter.com/XoM1cwH1dk

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) November 29, 2018

Finally got the Griffith Biograph shorts disc (Kino) out of the library... may not have seen any of em before. Musketeers of Pig Alley still works as a crime film, and Those Awful Hats still delivers as a fantasy about bad filmgoers.

seeing tomorrow

On Benjamin Chapin/ John M. Stahl's The Lincoln Cycle (1918), playing @FilmLinc as part of @FilmComment Selects, for @reverse_shot: https://t.co/I1M3wVJX50

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) February 8, 2019