I remember when I was a kid, there was a time when there seemed to be a lot of silent movies and programs about silent movies on TV. I guess maybe in the mid-70's or thereabouts there must have been a little craze for them or something. I used to watch them whenever I could, and I loved them, and that's something that's always stuck with me over the years.
Once in a while something will trigger my interest in them again, and up to now there's usually been some reason why I can't really get into watching more than one or two of them - inaccessibility, usually, like I always found it difficult (in the UK) getting titles on video cassette - I had a few prerecorded titles, and some stuff I taped off TV, but not many. When we had a TV, there seemed to be little shown, and rarely. I remember seeing "Greed" and "Broken Blossoms" on Channel 4, probably over ten years ago. I'm sure there is the odd showing still on TV, obv not having a TV anymore, I don't see it!
In the last week, for some reason, something triggered it off again, I watched a few clips on youtube, eg Lillian Gish being rescued from the ice from "Way Down East":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVSJFzm-Kxk
...& got all interested again. This time the accessibility/availability issue is much different. I have 2 computers that can play DVDs, and I have access to the internet. My wife just signed up to an online DVD rental service, which seems to have a half-decent range of silent titles available. I can trawl around various websites & read reviews of what's I can get, and which is the best available version. That's great!
― Pashmina, Thursday, 22 February 2007 14:48 (eighteen years ago)
Less great is finding out just how little is left of all the silent movies. I had no idea how fucking sad this sitiation was 'till last week. I'd figured/assumed that a minority of silent movies, including a couple of significant titles ("Cleopatra" w/Theda Bara is pretty well-known to be a lost film) were lost. I didn't realise that between 80% and 90% of all silent films are lost, and probably lost forever. Fuck, that's unbelievably terrible. This filmography of Norma Joyce - an actress I've never heard of or seen, TBH - c/w survival status of each film, seems to be typical:
http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/AJ/filmography.htm
Here is an alphabetised and partial list of lost silent movies:
http://www.silentera.com/lost/index.html
This list of lost films probably only tells 1/2 the story as well - many of the films I checked on the main film list have their survival status marked as "unknown". "Unknown" I suspect in a lot of cases means "lost, but not 'important' enough for someone to go looking for it.". I'll stop before I just go on and on about this. It's really affected me.
I picked up a copy of Chaplin's "City Lights", which I hadn't seen before, last week, and I totally enjoyed every minute of it, I had pretty high expectations of how good it was going to be, and it was better still. I really like "Easy Street" and "Gold Rush", and I thought "City Lights" was better than either film. "Gold Rush", I'm going to pick up this week. I got "Way Down East" from the DVD rental place this week, and watched it over the last couple of days, for some reason I thought I'd only seen clips of this - esp the ice river rescue scene linked to above, but a lot of the film was familiar as it happens, so I must have seen it at least once. It's grotesquely sentimental, laden with pathos from beginning to end, but that stuff pushes all my buttons & always has. I was rooting for Lillian Gish's poor piteous little character all the way through, I felt so sorry for her when she turned up at the rich relatives' place, and they're quite horrible to her, god I was so angry with them! The little scene after the river rescue where she wakes up & sees Richard Barthelmess, who's been up all night taking care of her brought a tear to my eye, god I'm such a wuss.
I have "Sunrise", "Pandora's Box", some "Fantomas" silents and a couple of other titles queued up at the DVD rental place.
Anyway, if anyone has any interesting links, recommendations of stuff that's available on DVD, news of reissues/restorations/found films, or anything, really, I'd be interested to hear about it. Titles I'm particularly interested in are "White Gold" (this film was listed as lost in a book I have, I saw it available on Sunrise's site, so I guess someone must have found it) "The Crowd", Louise Brooks films made before "Pandora's Box", Colleen Moore Flapper-era comedies, Norma Talmadge films. I'm kind of especially interested in films that were really popular in the twenties, but which have been forgotten now.
― Pashmina, Thursday, 22 February 2007 14:48 (eighteen years ago)
The most interesting thing I've read about in the last week is the discovery of 2 Colleen Moore films that were thought to be lost - "Synthetic Sin", from whence the classic image of Moore as flapper girl:
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/2440/cm1.jpg
And "Why be Good". details here:
http://www.picking.com/vitaphone82.html
More details here, including an mp3 of part of the vitaphone disc soundtrack, some wild and rocking jazz:
http://vitaphone.blogspot.com/2007/01/snows-of-yesteryear.html
I really hope these come out on DVD. I tried looking for various other Colleen Moore films from the late 20's, but couldn't find anything. I enjoyed "Ella Cinders" when I saw it years ago.
― Pashmina, Thursday, 22 February 2007 15:04 (eighteen years ago)