the silent film thread

http://www.sloppyfilms.com/murnau/fatree.jpg

That said, Eisenstein's stuff is always worth a view, and I can sit through any number of Lloyd or Keaton comedies (which still seem remarkably fresh). Plenty of British people have a very affectionate memory of Harold Lloyd from the clip shows they used to show in the eighties.

...are my favourites. hypnotic.

That Keaton DVD boxed set looks mighty tempting...but it's $180 (ouch). I am continually amazed that Keaton's stuff makes me laugh aloud, over and over again, often in sheer disbelief. I must point out that Turner Classic Movies is very silent film friendly, and I'm inclined to call it the best TV channel ever.

therefor I couldn't finish fritz lang's siegfried on video (part of it is that I have a very petit television set)

http://www.silentsmajority.com/PhotoGallery3/busstro2.jpg

buster doing von stroheim :-)

http://www.nps.gov/edis/graphics/23430050.jpg

I'm not as familiar with American silents.

a failed thread about WF Murnau: FW Murnau

RRRRRRRRRRROWR x 2

http://www.actj34.care4free.net/lostboysonship.jpg

abel gance, Napoleon

jean renoir, the little match-stick girl

http://users.chariot.net.au/~dkoks/BettyBronson/Pictures/1-344.jpg

wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys:-)

http://users.chariot.net.au/~dkoks/BettyBronson/Pictures/1-45.jpg

and the little match-stick girl is worth checking out if you get the opportunity ... very over-the-top visuals and un-Renoiresque -- almost a parody of contemporary German expressionist films -- and also quite touching (yet ironic -- this is Jean Renoir, after all).

http://www.murray.swinternet.co.uk/bristolsilents/doug1.jpg

do silents get regular viewings in the US?

you know the way in Murnau films he makes a big deal about Doors and Doorways? is there loads of door-action in Sunrise?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005YUO9.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

william haggar made one of hte first chase movies

And 'Silent Movie' by Mel Brooks, obv.

UK version apparently poo, rubly substituting shite talkie Abraham Lincoln for fantastic Orphans Of The Storm, which contains the best car* chase ever.

(* OK, so its really a carriage chase. Still nearly gave me a heart attack.)

silent hitchcoct it had ivor novello

Not mentioned yet: von Stroheim's Greed (saw the 4hr reconstructed version in one of its very few theatrical screenings, es war InSaNe) and Lillian Gish's performance in The Wind.

http://www.monteuve.com/miradas/libreria/avarf1.jpg

In any event, a precis: Search: VICTOR SJÖSTRÖM, the greatest director of silents there was. He made films in Sweden from 1912 to 1922 and in the U.S. from 1922 to 1928. If you can find them: Ingeborg Holm, Terje Vigen, The Girl from the Marsh Croft, The Outlaw and His Wife (available on NTSC VHS), Sons of Ingmar, The Monastery of Sendomir (available on PAL VHS), The Phantom Chariot aka The Phantom Carriage aka The Stroke of Midnight aka Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness (available on PAL VHS), Mortal Clay, He Who Gets Slapped, The Wind (easily available).

Search also: Fritz Lang (Destiny/The Three Lights, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, The Nibelungen, Spies), Louis Feuillade (Les Vampires, Fantômas), Carl Dreyer (The Pardon's Widow, Michael, Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife, The Passion of Joan of Arc), and anything you can find by Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. Those of you in London, keep your eyes peeled, it is a good town for silents.

Many American cities have silent film festivals. New York is of course one of the world's great film towns (Paris being an uncontested no. 1). Chicago is OK, there is a summer silent festival but the Film Center of the Art Institute passed up a recent Mauritz Stiller retrospective (he's another good Swedish filmmaker and the guy who discovered Garbo).

http://www.filmkultura.iif.hu:8080/articles/prints/images/boyer/1.jpg

so, right then, who do you fancy then?

I still have a backlog of world-conquering ambition (from my childhood you understand) to work past (to once and finally convince myself I have neither the tenacity nor the self-confidence to actually see through a film on my own), but once that's done I think I might be suited to the fields of film preservation and programming.

To veer back on-topic:

My favorite moments in Buster Keaton films, and perhaps in all silent films put together, are when Buster submits dutifully and without complaint to what he perceives to be the natural order of things. For instance in Steamboat Bill Jr. when after a succession of folllies involving people being hurled from a steamboat when someone steps in front of them, Buster simply leaps into the water when he sees that someone is approaching. Or in College, when after having knocked over a long succession of hurdles, Buster finally makes the last, he turns around, does a double take, and then with a faint sigh tips over the final hurdle and walks off.

The greatest silent comic though was Jacques Tati who never made a silent film. He was the center of his films, always silent or nearly so, with the madness of the modern world buzzing and creaking and crashing and whirring and dripping around him.

Bauer was a major director of the pre-Soviet era in Russian film, an era which was basically completely ignored until glasnost allowed some such films to seep out of the archives where they had been surprsingly well-preserved (those that survived, anyway--I think about 10-20%). He only made films for a few years (1913-17) before an early death but on the evidence of this DVD they were extraordinary. Bauer excelled at complex lighting effects, carefully coordinated tracking shots (very unusual for the time), deep staging, and really astonishingly vivid and terrifying dream sequences. He began as a stage designer and his sets are perhaps the most remarkable aspect of his cinema--they are often quite elaborate and frequently macabre in keeping with the morbid plots of the movies. (He really was Russian.)

The notes to the DVD assert that Bauer was the superior of contemporaries like Sjöström and Griffith. I don't buy that, esp. not in the case of Sjöström, but he's a great find nonetheless. The DVD also includes a 30-minute lesson in Bauer's style from Yuri Tsivian, a Russian film scholar who teaches at the University of Chicago. It's put out by the BFI and is Region 2. All of you in Europe might take a look at this.

don't be, your information is very valuable

I really don't know French Impressionist cinema well at all, and it's hard to track stuff down.

Have you ever seen "Bed and Sofa" by Avram Room?

This is all I will say for now.

I know precious fuck-all about prewar Soviet cinema outside of the usual suspects--Eisenstein, Kushelov, Vertov, Pudovkin. I've long wanted to see stuff by Kozintsev and Trauberg, Room, Boris Barnet. A lot of good people insist that Barnet's By the Bluest of Seas (actually from 1936) is one of the greatest films ever made. I've always wanted to see Chapayev too. I mean we all know the line about Tarkovsky and Parazhanov rebelling against Socialist Realism or Momumentalism but where are the examples of those genres?

This October the major silent film festival at Pordenone in Italy is featuring a tribute to as Ivan Mosjoukine, the Russian actor and director who left for France during the Revolution and there made Le Brasier ardent (1923) which supposedly anticipates both Soviet montage and French impressionist cinema! He also starred in L'Herbier's Feu Matthia Pascal and Volkoff's Casanova.

Pordenone

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, made by the same folks who, eight years later, would make King Kong is also pretty damned incredible -- it involves nomadic tribes in Iran carrying their livestock up mountains. It's absolutely exhausting to watch them, in a good way.

The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra. It's like something Joel Hodgson might put together if he was a young turk in the 20's: delirious experimentation, short, art deco, lights and shadow, puppets. Shares the look and feel with more than a few eighties videos.

anyway i'm off to see this film for the umpteenth time at the action ecoles. sadly i couldn't round up anyway to go with me because this is like the greatest date movie ever, except that it's so beautiful you'll probably completely forget about your date which depending on your date might be a good thing!

though...

(swedish and bay area ILXors take notes)

a COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE OF THE SILENT FILMS OF VICTOR SJOSTROM is coming first to sweden, some time in january i think, and then eventually to the pacific film archive in berkeley, in february. GO GO GO GO GO

http://cinetecadelfriuli.org/gcm/comunicati_stampa/COMUNICATI_LIVE_03/COMUNICATI_STAMPA_imgs/Mosjoukine.jpg

rowr

sad about the remainder of murnau's career: one film now lost, another cut to ribbons by the producers, the final film a flawed bit of brilliance which only premiered after his death in a car accident.

(admittedly I had just smoked a joint but STILL)

(they were crying and talking? what were they saying?!)

On the one hand, I hate the tinny ragtime music they have on a lot of silent movie videos; on the other hand, I feel very uncomfortable in the silence of a silent movie. Seeing Keaton film at Film Forum many years ago with a live (and very talented) pianist was king-kameha-meha classique.

amateurist keep posting! yours' are the only posts i check in fr nowadays!

i ws quite surprised that he had this though; doesn't normally go in for silent films. me either.

they once showed nosferatu (murnau, right?) at the GFT with live piano accompinament. pretty cool.

http://www.moma.org/visit_moma/momafilm/sjostrom_2003.html

oh and s1utsky i think it's coming to montreal too in 2004.

And, yeah obviously, Sunrise is the tops. Ivan Mosjoukine is plenty hot, but Murnau was a fox. Forget Malkovich, he should've been played by Dermot Mulroney or Guy Pearce or... but I get off on the tangent.

Amateurist, recommend to me a really good, reasonably priced (say... $70) multi-region DVD player.

...just some of my favorites. And Fairbanks swashbucklers, just about anything with Lon Chaney are also wonderful.

I've also always wanted to see the silent Wizard Of Oz serials. Have these ever been rereleased?

where are you, in the us? best buy was selling some cyberhome 500 models for $60 about nine months ago, and then they disappeared. but they might be back. they're not top of the line players but they can be switched to all-region very easily and are quite cheap.

I'm ashamed that I've yet to see Sjostrom, but I'm also excited that I haven't yet seen Sjostrom. Both he and Mizoguchi are just waiting for me at this point and I'm so looking forward to visiting.

"Greed" and "He Who Gets Slapped" I would rate nearly as highly; as Amateurist says above, HWGS is a truly macabre and impressionistic melodrama. Lon Chaney... magnifique. Such an eerie and sympathetic physical and facial performance.

I'd like to see more of Sjostrom's work...

Wish I could see the 4hr reconstruction of "Greed"; how do people feel that plays...?

How do people rate "The Crowd" and "Flesh and the Devil", out of interest? Those two show up on TCM quite a lot, and I always tend to say I'll get round to watching them.
How would people rate FWM's "Faust"? This looks a very tempting bargain in Fopp @ £7 on DVD.

i've seen like 20 silent films this past month or so, one today in fact, ozu's "i was born but."

i was supposed to go to some hipster silent film expo at the palais de tokyo tonight but it was sold out.

the crowd is beyond excellent, i haven't seen flesh and the devil.

Not being much near London in general, don't think I'd be able to make any such showings. A shame as seeing silents in the cinema is a great experience: I got the full effect from "Sunrise" in seeing it at the local Arts Cinema.

I don't get his reveence for "Sunrise" that so many people have. Maybe it is because critics don't like the genre films in which Murnau really excels.

the reverance is because it's an astounding film

are those other films "genre" films i dunno. they predate current understandings of their genres.

i still "nosferatu" is his best film btw.

The Three Ages, while a good concept and parody, seems to fall a little flatter than the other features I've seen yet (The General, The Navigator, and The Saphead). I'd say my favorite two of his are The General and The Navigator.

His shorts are absolutely k-classic in a way that a feature couldn't possibly be.

the reverance is because it's an astounding film

but doesn't it have no plot?

(spoilers)

a woman from the city convinces a man from a little resort town to kill his wife and run off to the big city with her.

he takes his wife, who has been sad because her husband spends his time off with the woman from the city, on a boat trip and intends to drown her, but he can't bring himself to do it. when they land ashore, she runs away in fright but he follows her. they take a cable car into the city where they gradually reconcile after he apologizes. the catharsis is such that they renew their love affair. they take a boat back to their town, but it is rocked by a storm and the wife disappears. the man is inconsolable when a search party fails to find his wife. when the woman from the city seeks him out, he tries to kill her. but later a fisherman finds the wife, alive, holding on to some reeds. they are reuinted and share a beautiful moment alone as the sun rises on a new day.

are there any other movies you would like explained?

"Plot bores me. These days Noda and I don't rate story very highly. Content, social relevance, and story logic aren't what we're after....What we seek to leave is a good aftertaste."

according to the recent cahiers before making his new movie alain resnais rewatched lubitsch's lady windermere's fan and a bunch of charley chase comdies. (he also professes to own lots of dvds and to have loved "unbreakable")

Meaning? This is rot, you ask me. I don't hate Ozu, but this sort of thing is incredibly dumb -- assuming that it's even possible to leave out 'social relevance'.

i think he means that he was interested in giving a sense of life and emotions which would affect the audience, but without recourse to conventions of plot design and structure or to the kind of contrivances that usually equate to social relevance.

B-b-but of course he was using conventions! Just not the same as, I dunno, Stanley Kramer. His decision not to have much sense of society is just another political position -- I'm curious about it, I've only seen 'Tokyo Story', and as I've said I'd like to see a reading of Japan's tumultuous decades through his films. I think it would be very strange to go out to make films during such a time without paying any attention to what goes on around, don't you? But I really don't see that his m.o. is any less 'contrived' than anyone else's.

yeah yeah, very funny. I can follow what happened in the film, but it is very much this happens then this happens then this happens, and is essentially all a bit so what. It does not have the kind of narrative coherence that the other Murnau films I've seen have, nor is anything that happens in it as interesting.

I feel that Murnau's "Nosferatu" is one of the ten greatest films ever made, and suspect that the only reason people go on about "Sunrise" is that critical opinion does not like to accord just levels of acclaim to a film about a bloodsucking vampire (although I accept that you prefer this film).

i dont prefer sunrise. i think nosferatu is if anything more popular, witness the umpteen versions available on dvd. perhaps in certain critical circles its not as highly rated but that is due as much to the fact of its unavailability for several decades as its being retroactively considered a genre film.

everything has to be a simple conspiracy it seems with some of you...there always have to be a reason, one reason, why something is supposedly not in critical favor (even though you are talking about two movies that are among the most well known of all 1920s films) and if it is in favor you have to denigrate it.

sunrise is a very different film from nosferatu in many ways not just the theme and plot. although i'd agree that there is something very canny and perfect about nosferatu, its various subplots and themes are articulated with great precision and beauty.

i dunno about form/content i find sunrise pretty fucking movng and so do a lot of other people.

see gilberto perez's wonderful essay on that film in his book "the material ghost"

also you are being disingenuous. i of course dont expect everyone to like or love sunrise, nor do i care if you like it (as i said above, i prefer nosferatu, and there are many films i prefer to both) but you made some hypotheses about why sunrise has a supposed greater critical reputation than nosferatu, and speculated that it might be "overrated" for sundry reasons, and i was contesting those reasons.

i'm not really a lumieriste though

also the one of the baby walking is pretty great.

I'm going to ge silent movies on DVD to play in my new computer. 1st chouce = steamboat bill jr, 2nd = Pandora's Box. Can "The Perils of Pauline" be obtained on DVD I wonder.

Also, I'd really like to get like dvds of "fantomas", if they were available.

it probably has more to do with the fact that Sunrise is still a moving film, but Nosferatu (great tho it is) really isn't scary anymore. horror doesn't age well, sadly.

Just saw my first silent film screening with live accompaniment (Red Heroine), and I must say that it is somehow more satisfying knowing that there is a guy sitting there watching the film and weaving together different themes in a coherent whole, non-stop, without any sheet music. Whether or not he memorized the piece or improvised it, very impressive. It doesn't exactly feel totally different than watching a silent film with an added score, but it feels just slightly subliminally fuller.

Also: Tom -- Murnau's 'The Last Laugh' is out soon on DVD -- for a long time this was even more highly regarded than 'Sunrise'.

i havent seen a murnau film i haven't adored--right now i'm big on his faust

Girolamo: No, it is actually out, on Eureka, and I know this because I now possess it! :) I just ask because I won't be able to watch it until March; i.e. my DVD player is at home while I'm at University.

a) that's where my december paycheck went
b) oxford doesn't have a fopp grrr

They've also had in stock (or did, anyway) "...Caligari", "The Blue Angel" and a special edition "Nosferatu". Is the "Nosferatu" package recommended?

--KING VIDOR

http://photos3.flickr.com/5930783_db2693c8c6.jpg

It starred Audree LaFayette and Philo McCoullough

i can check to see if that one exists. somehow i think it does, but i may be wrong.

I was gifted with the Keaton box last Christmas. Still, his films are best seen first on the big screen, cuz it's vital to see his face.

Orson Welles said, purely on aesthetics, silents should have continued alongside talkies as a distinctly different art form.

http://www.railwaybridge.co.uk/images/topsyelectrornd.jpg

Seemingly establishing the format as being capable of great cruelty, et al.

Also establishing the notion that most inmates executed under death penalties are either innocent or committed justifiable crimes.

Electrocuting an Elephant is the birth of the 20th century in nearly every conceivable way.

Oh, now I remember where I saw this. On Chris Marker's Immemory. (It's on Netflix!)

We're going to see

http://www.silentfilm.org/thebigparade.jpg

and

http://www.silentfilm.org/2005festival/thescarletletter/images/thescarletletter.jpg

'The Scarlet Letter'

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00005ASOS.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

(that's from an article i wrote about the show)

kind of pudovkin does brit melodrama.

-- Amateurist (amateuris...), April 16th, 2003.

london has a kozintsev and trauberg season on. thus far i've seen 'the devil's wheel' and 'the cloak'. 'the cloak' is based on gogol and possibly debunks (it was attacked for doing so) a classic of russian literature. the problem is that without that cultural background, this doesn;t really go over. it's very reminiscent of 'der letze mann', though trauberg in later life staunchly denied this. it was scripted by one of the formalist critics (tynyanov, sp.) and so has a kind of privileged position in film studies (maybe).

'the devil's wheel', their earliest surviving film (1926, i think) is much better, very 'strike', kind of an 'underground' story. neither of them are really 'montage' films, in terms of editing but they are i suppose about montage in that they are consciously plays of symbols, signs not signifieds and all that.

re. socialist realism -- i think 'Chapayev' was part of this, but also k & t's very popular 'maxim' trilogy (not to be confused w. gorky's own maxim films...).

Is anyone familiar with the director / availability of his films?

kinugasa kept directing films through the 1950s. one of his 1950s films--"gate of hell"--made a major international splash though it's not as highly regarded now. this film should be easy to find on vhs. the others--there's an american vhs bootleg of "page of madness" that's mediocre (although in fairness all the prints in europe and america are mediocre as well). i wouldn't know where you'd find his other films.

before moving into film directing, kinugasa was a female-impersonating kabuki actor.

***

"chapayev" was the model socialist-realism (ahem Stalinist realism) film, in fact. it's actually not a bad film at all. apparenly it was broadcast incessantly on soviet tv until the soviet union went kaput. so, many generations are intimately familiar with this film. which i should add, is not silent. most major socialist realist films are available on video in russia, but not anywhere else. understandly most russians have little interest in seeing these films and probably guess that nobody else would be interested either.

kozintsev and trauberg...i've seen only "new babylon" which is amazing. would like to see others.

Rediscovering Roscoe: The Careers of "Fatty" Arbuckle

http://moma.org/exhibitions/film_media/2006/Fatty_Arbuckle.html

(A friend co-curated this, so consider it slapstick spam.)

http://www.sfgate.com/traveler/postcards/arbuckle.jpg

When Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle checked into the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco for a Labor Day weekend of rest and recreation in September 1921, he was one of the most celebrated and beloved comedians in America. One week later, he was a pariah. On Sept. 11, Arbuckle was arrested for the rape and murder of Virginia Rappé, a 28-year-old actress who passed out during a party in Arbuckle's suite and died a few days later of peritonitis.

It mattered little that Arbuckle was subsequently cleared of all charges. That did not stop Will Hays, the first president of the organization that later became the Motion Picture Association of America, from issuing a ban on Arbuckle's films.

Although the ban was eventually lifted, the black mark against Arbuckle's name remained. Unable to work under his own name, he spent the balance of the 1920's directing shorts (and a pair of important features) for other comedians. Not until the early 30's did he appear on screen again, in a series of short films for Warner Brothers. The shorts were successful, and Arbuckle was celebrating the signing of a new contract when he died of heart failure in New York City on June 29, 1933. He was 46 years old.

Someday it may be possible to write an article about Roscoe Arbuckle without mentioning the scandal that destroyed his career. If that day comes, it will be because of the work of Arbuckle buffs like William Hunt and Paul E. Gierucki, who put together the indispensable four-DVD collection "The Forgotten Films of Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle" (www.mackinacmedia.com), and to Ron Magliozzi, Steve Massa and Ben Model, who programmed the monthlong series "Rediscovering Roscoe: The Careers of (Fatty) Arbuckle," which begins Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art.

Before sound, when movie actors had to state their personalities through a unique physical presence, Arbuckle looked like a sketch out of the Sunday funnies: the large, almost perfectly round head, bisected by a wide mouth that could leer or grin or lustily devour, perched atop an almost equally round body, the spherical qualities of the ensemble accentuated by a bowler hat. He was a large man, but not markedly obese. For all his bulk he was fast and graceful of movement, and many of the jokes in the early Keystone films — he started at Mack Sennett's pioneering comedy studio in 1913, after a career in vaudeville — depend on Arbuckle's surprising agility, as he ducks and dives and dashes to avoid the grasp of a pursuing policeman or the wrath of a jealous wife.

As seen on film, Arbuckle's build is that of both an overgrown infant and an adult sensualist, and he often shifts between the two connotations of his appearance for rich comic effect. He may approach a woman as an awkward, ungainly child, only to shoot a sudden look at the audience that bespeaks a happy, uninhibited lechery — an ambiguity that probably contributed to his image problems when his trial came up. He is also, like Chaplin and several other comedians of his age, an enthusiastic cross-dresser; with his corpulence poured into one of the tentlike bathing suits of the period, he could pass for a curvaceous Victorian woman of the sort only then going out of style. So convincing was Arbuckle as a woman that he made several shorts — "Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers" is one, playing on Friday's program — in which he plays a female character, with no drag alibi involved.

A leering country bumpkin with barnyard manners and a libido to match in the early films, Arbuckle's character grew in complexity once he escaped the direct influence of Sennett, moving his unit in 1915 from California to Fort Lee, N.J., where he could make his own films with little interference. Films like "That Little Band of Gold" (1915) and "He Did and He Didn't" (1916) find Arbuckle moving away from Sennett's frenetic slapstick into a sophisticated comedy of sexual temptation and spousal envy. In the remarkable "He Did and He Didn't" (also playing on Friday), Arbuckle is a respected professional, a doctor who looks quite handsome in his tuxedo as he tries to cope with a flirtation between his wife (Mabel Normand, his frequent screen partner) and one of her old flames. The surreal climax, worthy of Philip K. Dick, reveals that the two rivals turn out to be sharing the same dream.

Arbuckle's richest period came after he left Sennett for the producer Joseph Schenck, who set him up with his own company, Comique. "The Butcher Boy," the first film under the new contract, introduced a new supporting player, Buster Keaton — an old acquaintance of Arbuckle's from the vaudeville circuit. The Keaton of the Comique shorts (there are two full programs of them at MoMA, on Saturday at 6 and 8 p.m.) is not the Great Stone Face of his later work, but a little demon of destruction who sets elaborate traps for Arbuckle and roars with laughter when he falls into them.

As brilliantly kinetic as the Comique shorts are, Arbuckle's character is essentially one-dimensional: the mischief maker who undermines everyone and everything, winking at the audience as he mounts ever greater outrages to human dignity. But when Paramount, the distributor of the Comique shorts, decided to move him into features, Arbuckle needed to add some depth to his screen character. He did so by looking to his old friend Chaplin and drawing pathos into his work.

In "The Round-Up", his first feature (next Sunday at 2 p.m.), Arbuckle is a sheriff in a small Western town whose magical fast draw goes unappreciated by the pretty young woman he has a crush on. "Nobody loves a fat man," reads the film's final intertitle, as Arbuckle lays his head down on a fence post, the picture of neglect and despair.

After the scandal, Arbuckle adopted his father's name, William Goodrich, as his pseudonym for a series of short films for which he served as director and gag man. Working with comics like Al St. John (Arbuckle's nephew, and a colleague since the Keystone days), Lloyd Hamilton and Lupino Lane, he created some highly enjoyable work in the middle to late 20's, all the more impressive for what he must have been going through emotionally at the time. His loyal friend Keaton hired him to direct "Sherlock, Jr." (1925), though apparently the strain of feature work was too much for him and he dropped out of the project. But he ended the 20's with two features: "The Red Mill" (1927), an adaptation of the Victor Herbert operetta starring Marion Davies, and "Special Delivery" (also 1927), a lively vehicle for a young Eddie Cantor, which will receive a rare screening on April 27.

One of the best of the late Warner Brothers shorts, "Buzzin' Around" (1933), which will be shown in the introductory program on Thursday at 6 p.m., reveals an Arbuckle who seems almost his old self, with a soft but sympathetic speaking voice that suggested he would have little trouble making the transition to sound. Arbuckle's fans have taken solace in the fact that he died the night his Warner contract was renewed. However he had spent the last 12 years of his life, he had finally regained the respect of the industry that had expelled him, and the affection of the audience that had turned on him so violently. In the end, some people did love that fat man; after the MoMA series, a few more may love him as well.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

goddamnit, i paid money to see 'a cottage on dartmoor' just a couple months ago.

and there were little old ladies with flowers waiting for her at the stage door.

http://www.mfah.org/main.asp?target=films&par1=1&par2=1&par3=685

Anyone seen this Italian epic, prominently featured in Scorsese's Italian doc? I may go Monday at MoMA.

Cabiria. 1914. Italy. Written and directed by Giovanni Pastrone. With Bartolomeo Pagano, Umberto Moszato, Marcellina Bianco. In Carthage during the second Punic War, the Roman Fulvio Axilla and his faithful servant Maciste rescue the child Cabiria as she is about to be sacrificed to the god Moloch. World cinema's first great historical epic, restored to its original length and vibrant colors. English intertitles. Restored by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin, with the collaboration of MoMA. Silent, with organ accompaniment by Ben Model. Approx. 180 min.

No, but they're playing Maciste at this year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Likeable (albiet somewhat chopped by the look of it) little 10 minute short from 1913, featuring none other than Pearl White:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6063104318913165236&q=%22pearl+white%22

She's pretty cute, an impression you don't get from seeing stills of her. I wonder if THE BARRYS got thrown out of their home as a result of her somnambulistic kleptomania?

Also, typing "hollywood brownlow" into google video's search box yields a good few hours great viewing.

Awesome, thanks for the tip! Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood is pretty much required viewing.

I think Cinema Europe must have been on TV during one of the times when we didn't own one. I don't remember it at all, but I'll watch it over the coming week.

The Hollywood series I remember really vividly. There's probably a bunch of people aroundabout my age who's interest in silent films was brought about by watching this series.

On the ones I've watched, the sound has an annoying tendency to slip out of sync 1/2 way through, but it's still watchable. The section on John Gilbert is heartbreakingly sad, poor fucking guy. Old lady Louise Brooks in the section on Clara Bow has a weird magnetism about her, it's easy to see how she wrapped k tynan around her little finger, she is such a fascinating character. Lack of vintage Leatrice Joy or Norma Talmadge footage is frustrating, but I haven't watched all the parts yet.

Highlight is that clip from "the fire brigade" in the 1st episode, it's so thrilling!

Also holy shit! Colleen Moore!

I must have watched that clip from "the fire brigade" about 20 times over the weekend. It has the same effect on me as the helicopter attack sequence from " Apocalypse Now". I can't believe how exciting it is.

Apparently "Hollywood" briefly came out on DVD in the UK, before getting pulled over a copyright dispute. So pathetic! "lets take all these films that like less than 1 on 10,000 people have even the faintest interest in anyway, and restrict access to them" WTF.

Also, I'm curious about the brief bit you see in the credits between the bit of garbo and gilbert dancing and the bit from "wings" - it looks like Pola Negri - from "Gypsy Blood"?

It'd be so nice to be able to watch this stuff. :(

Restored print of Griffith's Way Down East playing July 20 in NYC:

http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/gswaydowneast.html

The Passion of Joan of Arc is captivating. Falconetti = w0ah!

-- Leee (Leee), Friday, December 6, 2002 6:07 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^^ this is true

god, her expression. Completely rapturous and sad.

It'd be so nice to be able to watch this stuff. :(

Wouldn't it just. It is SO frustrating. Bad enough that you have yr own personal list of lost titles you'd love to be able see for whatever reason, there's the stuff that does exist, that is unavailable to view - Borzage's "Secrets" and "The Lady", feat. Norma Talmadge, for example, then there's a bunch of titles that get exhibited at festivals from time to time, like that "The Fire Brigade" Or "The Lilac Time" w/Colleen Moore & Gary Cooper, or many others that if I could get on a nicely-presented DVD, w/a decent score, I'd happily pay over the odds for. So annoying.

I just ordered Mauritz Stiller's "Hotel Imperial" feat. Pola Negri and a copy of "Norma Talmadge double bill #1" on DVD-R from Grapevine. You take what you can get, I suppose. the Pola Negri Paramount comedy that I bought from them the other month wasn't the best transfer I've seen by a long way, but it was watchable, very enjoyable, and the compiled score was pretty cleverly done & effective. "Hotel Imperial" is supposedly one of their best transfers.

I love "Way Down East", def one of my favourites. Lowell Sherman is great.

well, I specifically meant online video, which is banned at work (and I'm a Luddite at home).

Hahaha oops. You know what I mean though, I'm sure.

MoMA is showing a bunch o' Griffith this month, including 1908-13 Biograph shorts tonight.

I got the package from Grapevine yesterday, & watched some of it last night. I got a Norma Talmadge double bill, featuring "The Social Secretary" (1916) and "The Forbidden City" (1918), "Beggars of Life" featuring Richard Arlen, Louise Brooks and Wallace Beery, and "Hotel Imperial", dir Mauritz Stiller, featuring Pola Negri. I watched a bit of all 4 titles, then watched all of "The Social Secretary" and half of "Beggars of Life". Given that Grapevine is a "PD" company, I guess w/o much in the way of budget, the image quality on all 3 DVDs was acceptable. Dude who runs Grapevine seems to be pretty adept at doing compiled scores as well. "Beggars of Life" has pretty bad image quality, I've read in a few places that only one print of this film has survived, and that print is a pretty poor 16mm reduction in beat-up condition. It's a pity it's not better, because the bit of this film that I watched was really outstanding. The opening sequence, in which Richard Arlen's hobo knocks on the door of a farmhouse, begging for some breakfast, enters the house, only to find the farmer dead, then finds the farmer's adopted daughter, and she recounts how she'd shot him after he sexually molested her was tough & rugged & brilliantly done. I'll watch the rest tonight, and if it keeps up this level, it's got to be one of the best films I've seen. Trawling through alt.movies.silent, it seems that there was a good print of this at some point that got loaned out to a european film festival, and wasn't returned/lost. Wouldn't it be great if it turned up.

One of the things that interests me the most about silent films is these actresses who were massive stars & loved by moviegoers in the '20's, but who are just totally forgotten and ultra-obscure today. Colleen Moore, Corinne Griffith & Norma Talmadge. Talmadge especially because there's a couple of interesting/intriguing backstories - her appearance, the absolute epitome of sophisticated '20's glam, contrasted with her supposed rough upbringing and alleged
harsh Brooklyn accent IRL (which she supposedly managed to hide in her talkies), and also the fact that there's a good proportion of her ouvre that survives mainly complete in decent condition, but which is unviewable(IE almost no DVDs or exhibition prints), unless you book a special viewing session at the LoC.
This site is also responsible for making me more interested. The site author is very enthusiastic about her films, but not uncritically so.
I watched "The Social Secretary" w/great interest & enjoyed it loads. Being from 1916, it has the more direct/simple style of storytelling, and seems much more archaic that "Beggars of Life" or other films from the '20's, this effect magnified by the older-fashioned clothes the players wore. The story (a farce written by Anita Loos) was charming and pretty funny in places. Norma plays Mayme, a temp secretary who's employers all get the hots for her, they keep trying it on w/her, but she's a virtuous girl, and she quits. She then goes back to the female stenographers club (!!) where she hangs out, and shares her woes w/her comrades there. At the same time, a wealthy old lady gets frustrated because all of her social secretaries keep leaving to get married, so she places an ad for a new one, stating that the place is only open to those "extremely unattractive to men". Norma/Mayme sees the ad, combs her hair back tight, wears a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, adopts a dorky/stern-looking expression and gets the job. Rich old lady's daughter is a head-in-the-clouds romantic, who wears so much kohl round her eyes that she looks really fucked up on drugs. The son, Jimmie, is a raving alcoholic. One night Jimmie comes home ripped to the gills. He drops his key, so he has to break a window to get in the house. Mother hears this, you see a title card "oh there's Jimmie, inebriated again" and she goes back to sleep. Norma/Mayme hears it, assumes it's burglars, goes downstairs and beams Jimmie over the head with a vase of lilies. Thus does Jimmie find out that Mayme is actually pretty cuet. They start dating and Jimmie straightens himself out, at the same time as the daughter starts dating one of Mayme's old short-term employers who is clearly a BAD SORT. To add to the trouble, a reporter starts snooping round, the reporter played by Erich Von Stroheim, believe it or not (he hams it up a bit). It all turns out OK in the end. Norma is pretty impressive, she does the telling the story with eyes and facial expressions thing very well, quite subtly, and only overdoes it a few times. Despite wearing some terrible-looking clothes (she also dresses down to get the social secretary job) she looks great too, although in a real old-fashioned way. You could probably drop Louise Brooks or Leatrice Joy into a modern idiom, and they wouldn't look out of place, not so Norma.

The other film, "The Forbidden City", I watched a bit of, but it totally sucked. It was a madame butterfly-ish "east meets west" (cough) piece, somewhat racially awkward to say the least in this day & age, w/Norma looking utterly ridiculous made up to look like a Chinese woman. The title cards looked nice is about the best I can say about it.

Now I want to see "Secrets", "The Lady", "Smilin' Through" and so on all the more. Bummer.

I'll watch the Stiller/Pola Negri film tonight, most likely.

wow.

At MoMA, Henry B. Walthall, Harry Carey (Sr) and Griffith himself all got someone to applaud when they appeared onscreen.

via Dave Kehr's blog:

The good people at the National Film Preservation Foundation have taken the occasion of tonight’s opening of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival to unveil the contents of the third box set in the ongoing “Treasures from American Film Archives” series. Titled “Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934,” the collection consists of 48 films from a time when movies were actively engaged with the world around them, rather than marshalling all available technology to deny it (no, I still haven’t seen “Transformers”). Four features are included: Cecil B. De Mille’s delirious melodrama “The Godless Girl” (1929), with Lina Basquette as a defiant young athiest (if memory serves, she is the president of her high school’s Young Athiest Club) who changes her tune when she finds herself behind bars in a juvenile prison; Victor Schertzinger’s “Redskin,” a two-color Technicolor feature from 1929 with Richard Dix as a Navajo who discovers the limits of assimilation; Lois Weber’s forthright pro-choice drama of 1916, “Where Are My Children?”; and one that is new to me, William Desmond Taylor’s 1920 “The Soul of Youth,” apparently the first film about male prostitution.

http://davekehr.com/?p=207

Way Down East at Linc Ctr tonight at 7 (they sent me a 2-for-1 admission deal, so tix available)

How was the print of "Way down East", I wonder?

I found a eureka double-dvd of Murnau's "Faust" at Borders the other week - Oh man, it's so good, beautiful from beginning to end:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16804034@N00/sets/72157600394601327/

The harp soundtrack is great.

I've never seen a Mary Pickford movie and have the urge to see the plucky little orphan fight & win against whatever adversities life throws at her (or whatever). The DVD of "Sparrows" is apparently rather jerkily transferred, can anyone recommend another title?

Who is following this, I wonder?

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7022

Big, big, BIG news, if the guy isn't kidding people around. Not just for the obv big-name top of the "lost film" list item, but a whole bunch of late fox silents & early sound films from what he says? John Ford? Borzage? Not that any of it is likely to come out on DVD, eh.

^ Was that thread purged?

Not really 'silent,' but relevant:

New DVDs
By DAVE KEHR
NY Times

THE JAZZ SINGER

“The Jazz Singer,” which Warner Home Video is releasing today in a glittering new restoration, has long been fixed in the American imagination as the movie that touched off the sound revolution. When Al Jolson, as the cantor’s son who has abandoned tradition for a career as a Broadway belter, turns to his audience between numbers to promise, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” the silent cinema immediately keeled over and died. Or so the story goes, greatly aided by that spoken line, so seemingly full of portent.

But the truth is more complicated and a bit less poetic. When “The Jazz Singer” opened in a single theater on Broadway on Oct. 6, 1927 — the day before Yom Kippur, the High Holy Day that figures prominently in the plot — filmgoers had been hearing synchronized music, sound effects and even dialogue in commercial theaters for more than a year.

“Don Juan,” the first film to be presented in the Vitaphone process, as Warner Brothers called the sound-on-disc technology it had licensed from Western Electric, made its premiere in New York on Aug. 6, 1926. A lively costume romance starring John Barrymore and directed by Alan Crosland (who would direct “The Jazz Singer” too), “Don Juan” didn’t have synchronized dialogue, but it had a full orchestral score augmented by sound effects. More important, the first half of the program consisted of a selection of musical shorts, introduced in a three-and-a-half-minute speech by Will H. Hays, the former postmaster general selected to be president of the industry’s lobbying group, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.

If anything, it was Hays’s flat Midwestern voice that touched off the initial sensation, not Jolson’s wildly emotive blackface balladeering. Warner Brothers made three more Vitaphone features before “The Jazz Singer”; one, “The Better ’Ole” (showing on Turner Classic Movies tonight at 12:45 a.m.), was preceded by a Vitaphone short called “Al Jolson in ‘A Plantation Act,’ ” in which he performed three blackface numbers standing in front of a painted backdrop of a cotton field. He speaks almost as much in that 10-minute short as he does in the whole of “The Jazz Singer” and uses the “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” line twice. It was not the improvised exclamation that studio publicists later made it out to be, but his standard tag line.

Box office figures for early films are hard to come by and notoriously unreliable. But the film historian Donald Crafton, in his splendid history of the period, “The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926-1931” (University of California Press), devised a formula based on the earning power per seat of Broadway movie theaters. It suggests that while “The Jazz Singer” was a substantial hit, it was outgrossed in New York by the real sensation of the season, William A. Wellman’s “Wings” (a synchronized sound film from Paramount that went on to win the first Academy Award for best picture), as well as by Edmund Goulding’s “Love,” with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert; a “sonorized” reissue of Raoul Walsh’s “What Price Glory”; and Frank Borzage’s romantic drama “Seventh Heaven.” (The season’s big flop was a film now widely regarded as one of silent film’s greatest achievements, F. W. Murnau’s “Sunrise,” which itself had a synchronized music and effects track courtesy of Fox’s rival sound system, Movietone.)

If “The Jazz Singer” heralded a revolution, few if any contemporary observers noticed it. The critic for The New York Times, Mordaunt Hall, predicted that “the future of this new contrivance is boundless” in his “Don Juan” review. But he seemed less impressed by the talking sequences in “The Jazz Singer”: “The dialogue is not so effective, for it does not always catch the nuances of speech or the inflections of the voice so that one is not aware of the mechanical features.”

But “The Jazz Singer” will always have its place in history, if only because, as Mr. Crafton suggests, it is easier to put a name and a face to an innovation than to trace a slow and complicated transformation, which wasn’t really complete in America until 1930. (Silent film hung on in other countries, notably Japan, until the mid -’30s.) The picture remains one of the crown jewels of Warner Brothers, and the new version does it royal honors. The images shine, and the sound — which for decades has been heard only through a poorly re-recorded optical soundtrack — has been taken from the original Vitaphone discs. Though presumably some electronic twiddling has been done, the audio is now deep and clear, presenting Jolson’s performances of both “Mammy” and the Kol Nidre prayer with a new immediacy.

And Warner Home Video hasn’t skimped on the extras. The three-disc set includes a new documentary, “The Dawn of Sound: How the Movies Learned to Talk,” produced by Turner Classic Movies, as well as a number of promotional shorts from the period; examples of two-color Technicolor (a process that flourished along with the early talkies); a brilliant Tex Avery cartoon parody, “I Love to Singa,” starring a feathered crooner named Owl Jolson; and a surprising rarity: a 1938 short, “Hollywood Handicap,” that features a brief appearance by Jolson but is more notable as the next to last directing credit of one of the medium’s fallen giants, Buster Keaton.

The third disc is devoted to Vitaphone shorts, many recovered with the help of the nonprofit Vitaphone Project. (A detailed account of the group’s activity can be found at vitaphoneproject.com.) The two dozen titles included here — from the nearly 2,000 shorts produced by Warners between 1926 and 1930 — are the results of patient detective work, involving tracking down long-separated silent prints and sound discs and putting them back together.

These fascinating documents may belong more to the history of American theater than of American film: perfect records of some of the most celebrated vaudeville performers, nightclub singers and opera stars of the day, performing exactly as they would before a live audience. To watch George Burns and Gracie Allen soft-shoe their way through “Lambchops,” the turn that had sustained them as vaudeville headliners for years, is to be transported back to an orchestra seat at the Palace. The fixed camera and proscenium framing are throwbacks to the earliest years of the movies, but here the outdated technique enhances the illusion: an evening’s entertainment on the Great White Way in the days when the bulbs burned most brightly.

that's all true but quite america-centric. there had been regular sync-film programmes, with dialogue, in public cinemas in london since 1925 -- fox actually tried to buy up the process c. 1926. but also it's feature-film-centric, the worst centric of all. the british programmes were often of music-hall (trans. vaudeville) acts.

Are you getting that "Jazz Singer" set, Morbius? I don't particuarly like the film myself (Jolson's act too OTT, overly sentimental - this from a guy who blubs @the end of "City Lights") but the extras certainly are tempting. The segment from GDoBW might swing it for me, though annoyingly it isn't all of the surviving material.

The criterion thread seems to have been moved fro some reason. It's here:

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7040

Fairly certainly a hoax @ this point, which is a shame. Who hasn't imagined themselves in such a situation, though?

I like Jolson in shorts I've seen, and Hallelujah I'm a Bum, Wonder Bar etc. I buy very few discs, but I imagine I'll rent that one. The Burns & Allen short is great btw.

I lost, &^ in fact didn't even come close:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250180308235&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=015

:( :( :(

It would have looked great on my wall.

from Dave Kehr's NY times review of the John Ford at Fox box:

Least familiar to most will be the five silents included here. Ford’s first film for Fox, “Just Pals” (1920), already displays his innate, impeccable sense of composition and his manner of moving fluidly and invisibly from shot to shot, each angle and edit calculated to shape the audience’s impressions without calling the slightest attention to technique.

“The Iron Horse” (1924), a sweeping account of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, established Ford as a major director. It is presented here, a bit confusingly, in two different versions: an “international version” that runs 2 hours 12 minutes and a “U.S. version” with a running time of 2 hours 29 minutes. Though the export version has been subjected to extensive digital restoration and will probably look more pleasing to the casual viewer, the domestic, taken from a print held by the Museum of Modern Art, is the one to see. It has more scratches and speckles but is truer to Ford’s intentions. The 1926 film “3 Bad Men” is an even greater work, with a thematic complexity that anticipates Ford’s postwar westerns. A commercial failure, it would be his last western for 13 years, until he returned with “Stagecoach” in 1939.

In 1927 the great German filmmaker F. W. Murnau came to Fox’s Hollywood studios to make his masterpiece, “Sunrise,” a study in lighting and camera movement that left a profound impression on American moviemaking in general and young John Ford in particular. Ford incorporated elements of Murnau’s technique into his “Hangman’s House” (1928) and, supremely, “Four Sons,” a devastating 1928 antiwar film that made creative use of Movietone, Fox’s new sound-on-film technology. Unfortunately, because of music rights clearance problems, the original Movietone soundtrack has not been used here, though, like “The Iron Horse,” it is accompanied by a fine, newly commissioned orchestral score by Christopher Caliendo.

I got that Edison box set, pretty great stuff though missing the now-available Edison Frankenstein which is truly fucking awesome - the end scene of it is the most haunted moment, just shocking and revelatory.

also has anybody seen any Japanese silent cinema?

Does anyone speak/read spanish?

This appears to be a Spanish DVD issue of Borzage's "7th Heaven". I want to order it, but damned if I can navigate the page! (yes I am lame)

http://www.culturalianet.com/pro/prod.php?codigo=21771

A must-have, surely!

Help!

google translate

I'll order it in January, I think.

10 minutes from Norma Talmadge's first talkie, "New York Nights":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPaNuo4E3c

There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with either her diction or her acting, I mean, she's a bit creaky, but who wasn't in 1929? Pity she didn't make it in talkies. She was a looker, for sure.

Japanese silent cinema?

Haven't seen any, but kabuki plays would cross the bridge into silent cinema pretty easily.

A Page Of Madness is the only Japanese silent I've seen. I'm guessing it's pretty atypical though, being some kind of surrealist fever dream set in a madhouse.

The most durable and watchable silent films seem to be comedies and films with a heavy dose of surrealism like Nosferatu or Metropolis. The dramas and romances are just too overwrought for contemporary tastes, but wild exaggeration works just fine for comedy and surrealism.

Something I've read about quite a few times, but have never seen is Marion Davies taking off Mae Murray, Lillian Gish and Pola Negri from "The Patsy". Thanks to (as usual) youtube, here she is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff4X4E1JdSE

I've never seen any Mae Murray films, so I can't judge on that one, her Negri takeoff is very good, she has some of Negri's facial mannerisms down, but seems to owe as much to Gloria Swanson as it does to Pola, The Lillian takeoff is killer, though, WOW. When she sits in front of the mirror, she almost seems to turn into Lillian Gish! It is very, very cruel, but also v v funny.

This sounds like a good, funny movie, I wish I could get it on DVD.

The dramas and romances are just too overwrought for contemporary tastes, but wild exaggeration works just fine for comedy and surrealism.

I've lend a few DVDs out to relatives and friends since I started buying them, and weirdly enough, the one that people seem to like the best is "A Woman of the World", a 1925 rom-com starring Pola Negri (who pretty much defines "overwrought"!) That said, it is a pretty funny film, though not physical/slapstick funny. Not sure whether this backs up what you say, contradicts it, or what TBH. Worst responses, again weirdly, from "Pandora's Box" (depressing/Lulu is very annoying) I think Pandora's Box is great, personally, but whatever....

Borzage's "Seventh Heaven", split into 12 parts, and the italian intertitles translated by its uploader:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ykwwpASbOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWdv-zV5pTs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya73AddlCPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4MSxXa-sBQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZRemY8dEL0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxMwTtVOUL4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5MMoEBvFBs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNmyto4YaQk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9OvCeqRfhw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZehBExWIWaM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1kUTkGYpNQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRbnTXmMUbg

Also, Donnell Media Center, NY is showing five Norma Talmadge titles, including one directed by Borzage over the summer:

http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/NT/home.htm (scroll down a little)

I'm jealous of those in or near NYC! I'd love to see these films.

I thought they were closing that place down

Donnell always shows films in midafternoon on work days. Avg audience age: 79.

Haha. I used to work on that block. The only movie I was ever able to see there was Les Mistons.

(Running Time: 18 min.)

that is a sometimes younger crowd than MoMA tho

Ron Howard went to that block one afternoon to cast extras for Cocoon.

Flicker Alley has a 5 DVDset of Douglas Fairbanks movies forthcoming:

http://www.flickeralley.com/fa_fairbanks01.html

It looks well tasty, plenty of stuff from 35mm or orig. negatives too.

Apparently somewhere on Fox Studio Classics' website can be found this graphic, which does suggest rather strongly that a DVD of "7th Heaven" is on it's way. There's (maybe) more, though:

http://scarletstreet.yuku.com/topic/5560/t/Most-in-need-of-DVD-releases.html?page=1

The beginning of the guy's second paragraph is somewhat compelling:

"Having just recorded interviews for an upcoming box set I never thought I'd see -- a collection of the films of F.W. Murnau and Frank Borzage from their late silent/early sound Fox period (LAZYBONES, 7TH HEAVEN, SUNRISE, THE STREET ANGEL, CITY GIRL, THE RIVER [wht there is of it], FOUR DEVILS [a documentary on the film, which is lost], LUCKY STAR, THEY HAD TO SEE PARIS, SONG O' MY HEART, LILIOM)...."

OK, WOW, if that's true.

Flicker Alley have just released Abel Gance's La Roue, 4.5 hours long apparently. Gance's J'Accuse is scheduled for release in September. Grebt news. Now all we need is Coppola/Zoetrope, Ken Brownlow, or whomever has the rights to release Napoleon, hopefully that'll happen in my lifetime.

dude, napoleon is on dvd in australia... or it was back in 2005.

I think that version misses a few hours of footage. I'm really hoping we get the version Brownlow has been sourcing and putting together for years. Apparently there's some dispute over rights, soundtrack etc

The full premiere, assumed-lost version of METROPOLIS has been unearthed!

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006330.html

woah. i am very interested in this (though have not quiiiite got round to cracking the spine on the current most-complete version). though talk of 'original versions' is questionable, to say the least, even on the film's release in london in 1927 real heads were saying it was missing loads of stuff that they'd seen in previews lang had given in germany.

I don't really know what to say except this is really exciting.

Yeah my impression of pre-war German movies was that wildly different versions would be in circulation in different countries.

That's fantastic news.

Wow, holy shit! It's always a blast when something like this shows up, isn't it. Gives you hope that some other lost classic movies will show up somewhere yet as well.

The Fox Christmas '08 Murnau/Borzage box set appears to be for real.

next, the lost reels of Greed! (jk)

anyone know a Lon Chaney vehicle, Mockery?

http://bam.org/view.aspx?pid=681

I mentioned on the NYC Snob thread that a friend is co-curating a silent-short series at MoMA, "Cruel and Unusual Comedy." Tonight's program at 7, "Gratuitous Violence," is the only evening show, and a likely sellout. Here is their blog of notes for the series:

http://www.cruelandunusualcomedy.info/2009/05/may-27-at-7pm-gratuitous-violence.html

RIP Bob Mitchell, last remaining organist who accompanied films in the silent era, aged 96. i saw him play a little over a month ago at the silent movie theater in LA; he (deservedly) got a standing ovation. (the article seems to indicate that that might have been his last public performance, actually...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bob-mitchell9-2009jul09,0,1836294.story

got myself a wknd pass! missed opening night feature (lupe velez's screen debut!), but will probably go to nearly everything else:

http://www.silentfilm.org/

Pasadena's showing Daddy Long Legs for free Saturday night outdoors, with a live band doing the score.

http://www.oldpasadena.org/gc_calendar_detail.asp?cal_id=1135

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/movies/07silent.html?hp

A late silent feature directed by John Ford, a short comedy directed by Mabel Normand, a period drama starring Clara Bow and a group of early one-reel westerns are among a trove of long-lost American films recently found in the New Zealand Film Archive.

Some 75 of these movies, chosen for their historical and cultural importance, are in the process of being returned to the United States under the auspices of the National Film Preservation Foundation, the nonprofit, charitable affiliate of the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board. (This writer is a member of the board, and has served on grant panels for the foundation, though none related to the current project.) Chris Finlayson, New Zealand’s minister for arts, culture and heritage, is expected to announce the discovery and the repatriation officially this week.

The films came to light early in 2009, when Brian Meacham, a preservationist for the Los Angeles archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, dropped in on colleagues at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington during a vacation....

Because of the importance of the John Ford film, “Upstream” — a backstage drama from 1927, a year that was a turning point in the development of one of America’s greatest filmmakers — it is being copied to modern safety film stock in a New Zealand laboratory, rather than risk loss or further damage in transit.

The whole aesthetic of melodrama in early silent movies was a straight holdover from the theater of the previous half-century, and it was enormously popular at the time, but I can't say it has any hold over my imagination.

The best silent comedies, notably Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd, are still pretty entertaining stuff imo, although the earliest ones still suffered from the technique of undercranking the camera to speed up the action and make it "funnier".

What has been wholly lost is the experience of live musical accompaniment, which I'm sure had a lot more emotional impact and appeal than the soundtrack music that's put with silents on DVD. Too bad, so sad. Nothing to be done.

I wonder if there's a list of the 75 titles somewhere. One of them seems to be a Clara Bow film, which seems like it shd be a big deal I guess.

Someone on another board linked to this little clip from 1922. It's a test strip of a Kodachrome 2-strip process w/beautiful phantasmagoric colour. Mae Murray, pouting away at the end has some kind of amazing prescence about her, eh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_RTnd3Smy8

Terrific Criterion package of 3 von Sterberg silents out tom'w.

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1556-mit-out-sound-mit-out-solution

Ten best of 1920:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=11070

I love his (and Kristin Thompson's) best ofs! Such a fantastic blog!

"Way Down East" is so good, one of my favourites.

I have the Kino Norma & Constance Talmadge double bills on the way over from the States. I'm pretty hyped to see them.

Got them!
"Within the Law" w/Norma a little bit draggy to be honest, the piano accompaniment I don't think suits it, probably could have doen w some mopey-sounding blues music or suchlike. Interesting class-war-ish theme running through parts of it, with Norma's character falsely accused of thieving from the shop she works at and sent down for 3yrs, the shop owner knowing she is innocent, but sending her down as an example to the other shop workers. This film was remade pre-code, with Joan Crawford in the lead, I suspect probably a bit better than this, I did enjoy it though.

"Her Sister from Paris", w/Constance is an absolute treat, a frothy, sub-Lubitsch romantic comedy w/Ronald Colman, v funny & fast-paced with a great ending.

I haven't watched "Kiki" or "Her Night of Romance" yet, I'll stick them on over the weekend.

long-absent Arbuckle comedy screens:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/archives/After_90_years_Fatty_Arbuckles_rarely-screened_LEAP_YEAR_returns_to_pub/

Lonesome, starring Barbara Kent, who died this week at 103:

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

if ya'll haven't watched your blu-rays of phantom carriage yet, DO SO NOW. and if you ever have any friends skeptical about watching silent films, show that one to them.

I have to admit that I rarely find silent movie streams on youtube.com or downloads from archive.org very unsatisfying from a variety of perspectives: dubious sources, compressed files, teeny-weeny images.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 13 March 2006 Bookmark

Wonder if that has changed in four years -- anyway I've started to sceen a few silents off youtube and so far I'm surprised/pleased by the quality of the little I've seen so far. There are a few silent film screenings coming up in London I'm interested in, but they are also on youtube and I probably won't be able to wait. The hunger is great..

Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc is so tender, brutal and intimate. Takes your breath off when they go outside of the room for the near torture and then the execution. Not sure that Bresson's version (which I saw years ago now) adds (or subtracts) anything from this.

I guess it needs to be said but its apparent where Sinead O'Connor got her look from -- I mean, tried to fish a quote earlier but couldn't find it.

One thing w/the whole silent film bag is the soundtrack. Just a quick look and I see a lot of ppl adding a soundtrack: like Nick cave or what have you. Its a minefield. For Joan of Arc its an ochestral score by Richard Einhorn. Didn't work - the images told me: a lot less music, less intrusion. Maybe one of the few silent films that could actually be left silent and alone. Maybe a hangover from seeing this on Vivre sa Vie

A Page Of Madness is the only Japanese silent I've seen. I'm guessing it's pretty atypical though, being some kind of surrealist fever dream set in a madhouse.

― Matt #2, Saturday, 22 December 2007 Bookmark

Cracking interview with the academic who wrote a book on the film. Led me to watch Kirsanoff's Ménilmontan. Can see Rivette and Marker going all over the clocks-and-cats imagery. Really tight.

Watched it w/some iffy 'modern' orchestral score -- again didn't work, and if you read how A Page of Madness has been improvised with in that interview, etc. its a perhaps sad confirmation of my worst fears, esp unsuitable when you have images of the girl utterly desolate in the streets of Paris. Apparently this ws Pauline Kael's favourite film if you believe the comment on the thread of this excellent piece on Sunrise.

David Denby on acting in the silents:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/02/27/120227crat_atlarge_denby?currentPage=all

i like that article

Dreyer season on at the NFT in March..

so there's a new 330-minute restoration of Gance's Napoleon that will be shown 4x in OAKLAND... and that's it! Oakland!

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/762802/abel-gances-legendary-napoleon-restored-again-by-kevin-brownlow-heads-to-oakland-for-unique-screenings

even nosebleed seats are like $50

they can't show it once at Radio City Music Hall on a Monday in August?

(where I saw the '81 version)

Film Forum showed the trailer for this event. It's so frustrating.

Aargh

Now you New Yorkers know what it's LIKE

srsly though napoleon isn't really all it's chalked (sp?) up to be. i mean if you can see it in a huge auditorium and they're doing the widescreen stuff it's grand spectacle, but about 75% of the movie is really dull. worth waiting for the good parts i suppose.

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

Now you New Yorkers know what it's LIKE

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Thursday, March 15, 2012 11:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

haha was thinking the same thing

would pay to see "highlights from abel gance's napoleon" more than i would to see "abel gance's napoleon"

if you need to watch a really long late french silent movie, there's an american DVD of a film called "the chess player" (dir. raymond bernard) which is seriously entertaining.

damn it's out of print: http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Player-Pierre-Blanchar/dp/B00009Q4W8

find a copy in a library or something. it's good. just a good epic movie. also:

This French silent movie was apparently discovered and refurbished by a group of British computer scientists fascinated by the automaton chess player from which the film gets its title.

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

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

Mabuse doesn't even place!

i didn't say it was mistake-free. haven't scrolled the whole thing yet anyhoo.

and i think two of the talkie Mabuses are perhaps superior

fair enough but i'm just saying he could've foregone 1 or 2 of his comedies to correct that kind of "statement"

ah, kickin' comedy to the curb, you Kop!

i haven't come across any objectionable choices, but you get to the end of the list and realise that there's 25 Buster Keaton movies and a stack of omissions that satisfy his own criteria imo, i.e. "the best silent films, not the most historically significant ones"

still it's good to have an offbeat aesthetic i guess

yeah it's fine and expected to object to some choices, but I consider all of those comedies pretty "significant" too.

Spione is probably better than the first Mabuse too

i wd've found a space for Der Golem and i'd've put The Last Laugh much higher, amongst others

haven't noticed any other omissions i'd consider heinous at the moment

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.

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

Enoch Arden (1911) is one of the more formally intriguing Griffith shorts... first two-reeler? (It was shown in two parts due to exhibitors refusal to run it all for one admission.)

More closeups, particularly when the departing seafarer's lips can be read telling his wife "I'll come back."

https://backtothepastweb.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/enoch-arden-1911/

Coeur fidèle (Epstein, 1923) is playing this weekend at the National Gallery of Art, with accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra. Is anyone else going?

no, but same show tnite at Lincoln Center

good performance -- not sure it's a *great* film but an absorbing and stylish one

A standard melodrama, told through breakneck cutting and editing. And I still haven't heard an Alloy Orchestra accompaniment I didn't like.

You know you're watching Laurel & Hardy's Bacon Grabbers with a specialized audience when Edgar Kennedy gets a hand on his entrance. (In other shorts, so did James Finlayson and Jean Harlow.)

nerds

watched Griffith's True Heart Susie yesterday -- only Lillian Gish can convincingly pour her secrets out to her cow.

I'm midway through watching Intolerance right now and wow is it confusing, even more than was expected, was DW Griffith on a coke bender or something?

This is wonderful news for the silent film community. @tcm affirms its commitment to our arcane art form by appointing a leading scholar in the field, Jacqueline Stewart (@ProfJStewart), as the host of its weekly Silent Sunday Night program.https://t.co/h5lcSYgAJX

— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) September 10, 2019

Cool

Very pleased by this development. Let's hope it's matched by programming of films outside of the rather short list of silent titles TCM keeps rotating.

Motion Picture Classic September 1928 recently came
across this article entitled, "Is Time Rotting Our Film Records?"
by LynnFairfield, which was basically a true prophecy of the future loss of the films being made at that time. Fascinating read pic.twitter.com/QtEUwXuW0j

— cyprian du faur (@Cyprian_DF) September 10, 2019

there is a Harry Langdon fest this weekend in Fremont CA

http://nilesfilmmuseum.org/?tv=4997833899900928

https://silver.afi.com/Browsing/EventsAndExperiences/EventDetails/0000000011

The 2019 AFI Silver Silent Cinema Showcase. (I've a bone to pick with the programmer over certain reruns, but I am going to order a series pass as soon as I can log in to their web page.)

New podcast episode!

What did film SOUND like in the "silent era"? Film scholars Rick Altman and @SignalsToNoises take us on a sonic journey back in time.https://t.co/H9F67NNc6q

— Phantom Power (@PhantomPod) November 1, 2019

https://silver.afi.com/Browsing/Movies/Details/f-0100002740

AFI Silver has just announced that Friday's screening of The Oyster Princess is going to be free. Anyone else interested in going?

my friend has written an Arbuckle book

https://travsd.wordpress.com/2019/12/16/rediscovering-roscoe-a-terrific-new-book-on-the-films-of-fatty-arbuckle/

Thompson checks in with '29

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2019/12/26/the-ten-best-films-of-1929/

Ben Model streaming a silent-comedy watch party Sunday at 3pm Eastern time

https://www.silentfilmmusic.com/streaming-a-silent-film-show/

great idea, definitely watching. ta for the tip.

bump

in 5 mins

enjoyed that, the lofi-ness of the presentation fit with the films somehow. could do without the mouse pointer on screen though lol.

Aaaaand Maryland theaters (and restaurants) have been ordered completely closed as of 5pm today. Just as AFI was about to open its Fox Film Corporation 1915-1935 series.

also sunk: the MoMA Edison/Biograph series

first 'official' show this Sunday w/ three shorts; they will rerun the Hank Mann vehicle

https://www.silentfilmmusic.com/watch-party-01/

Watched Ford's Four Sons las night, a rather sprawling WWI narrative for a 96-minute film. His last silent? Certainly shows the Murnau influence, and the strength/bluntness of the actors' gestures shows perhaps why vets like him (he made silents for get accused of allowing hammy performances in the talkie era... it worked well here, and was probably hard to throw out of your toolkit.

one of the most dreamlike of films

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfmH7WyWXg8

Ben Model stream begins in 3 minutes

update: they've experienced a YT snafu

search on YT for "the Silent Comedy Watch Party"

now set for 3:30 pm EDT

this is the new link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UE0j2WeFbo&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0zbjXxfGc3-JFxPKe3LQqGmVwT3m89K6zi6IVnIYXeUlzzTZyKyxEznGI

oh, just search

I've been slowly watching Haxan in installments over the past few months. Really hit the spot this morning

this weekend's show (will be archived):

https://www.silentfilmmusic.com/watch-party-02/

today's program:

https://www.silentfilmmusic.com/watch-party-5/

An empty Paris.
A world on the verge of stopping completely.

No it's not today, it is 1925's sublime PARIS QUI DORT (THE CRAZY RAY) by René Clair. With English intertitles (and French sub). It's for free, it's avalailable worldwide & it's only on Henrihttps://t.co/CZAV3LVE94 pic.twitter.com/ak0TrcdP5C

— La Cinémathèque (@cinemathequefr) May 5, 2020

Thank you, will watch this tonight (aka At 3:25).

Harold Lloyd fuels his Model T with stolen heroin around 15:00 here (the short is one of his best)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1-kR7o34cA

also little Sunshine Sammy Morrison, later of Our Gang, steals all his scenes, and no racial stereotyping

Harold Lloyd On Heroin would be a good band name.

btw there is now The Roscoe Arbuckle Appreciation Society easily findable on FB, tons of links to online films

triggers: mother-in-law, cat in oven, man eating dishware (and that's just the first 8 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kR5ouegUmg

^This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1995.

with an accent on Biograph:

During the month of August, we’ll be streaming treasures from MoMA’s film archive and sharing fascinating cinema history—with a new selection of films released each Thursday. We’ve chosen films that everyone—from famous filmmakers and actors, curators and eminent scholars, to high school students just discovering cinema studies—asks to see again and again. You’re gonna get a little Warhol, a lotta Dada, and more about the landmark early Biograph studio than you knew you wanted to know.

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5239

After a recent series of events, I've decided to embark on a strange writing project involving shorts, and boy did reading this thread make me miss Morbz and wish he was here to advise.