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Post by Ginnie on Jul 9, 2010 16:52:57 GMT -4
For some reason, I'm very interested lately in the silent movie era - the early classics that for the most part have been ignored by most people for the last eighty years.
I haven't seen very many, and would appreciate any advice on which ones that would be worth viewing. I've seen Metropolis, Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Battleship Potemkin, Birth of a Nation and a few others.
I put on a DVD of Nosferatu that I bought and found out that it came with a rock soundtrack by some Goth band - absolutely horrible and irritating it was.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 9, 2010 18:05:39 GMT -4
The Ten Commandments. Cecil B. DeMile re-made the Biblical portions of his silent film, some portions of them shot-for-shot. The 20's morality play that follows them is less interesting.
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 9, 2010 18:40:24 GMT -4
How long does the copyright last on a movie? I'd like to watch some of them over the web without pirating them. Its available here: v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzQzNDM3ODQ=.htmlHow can I tell if its legal or not? |
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Post by echnaton on Jul 9, 2010 19:55:35 GMT -4
Two I've seen that were excellent. City Lights with Charlie Chaplain Wings with Clara Bow. Gary Cooper's debut role I've not seen Hell's Angels but it was a special effects ground breaker. |
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Post by echnaton on Jul 9, 2010 20:09:40 GMT -4
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Post by echnaton on Jul 9, 2010 20:34:32 GMT -4
And check out Buster Keaton's films.
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Post by gillianren on Jul 9, 2010 21:34:51 GMT -4
Allow me to second Broken Blossoms. (Lillian Gish was assuredly not in Battleship Potemkin, which was a Soviet production; you might be thinking of Birth of a Nation. Also, it's "Roger.") Actually, I watched it on Roger's recommendation myself and found it quite worth watching. Racist, but less so than Birth of a Nation, and he's clearly trying not to be. Some good stuff with the role of women in society, too.
Hmm.
Haxan is interesting, if not always coherent. I watched The Last Laugh yesterday, and it's not bad. The Gold Rush, of course, wherein Charlie Chaplin's perfectionism nearly killed him. (I forget how many takes he went through--twenty or better--eating a licorice shoe.) I feel sure I should know quite a lot more silent films, but it's too bloody hot to think. (It was nearly a hundred degrees out at five this afternoon, when I was on the way home from my therapy appointment.) I can go digging through my files, if you'd like.
And film copyright is, in the US, for the same length as book copyright--minus a few issues which mean that, for example, Night of the Living Dead and To Kill a Mockingbird are both public domain.
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Post by banjomd on Jul 9, 2010 21:41:44 GMT -4
Metropolis: Fritz Lang
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 9, 2010 23:32:21 GMT -4
Two I've seen that were excellent. City Lights with Charlie Chaplain Wings with Clara Bow. Gary Cooper's debut role I've not seen Hell's Angels but it was a special effects ground breaker. City Lights I've yet to see. I used to watch some Chaplin movies years ago but can't remember enough to place the specific film. I find it much harder to appreciate Chaplin than lets say, Buster Keaton - his comedy is timeless as this clip shows: And interesting you mention Clara Bow - I was just reading about her - the "it" girl, the original flapper. I just completed an oil painting with her as the subject matter. Short career, tragic her life. As somebody said, "she was the twenties". I will certainly be interested in checking out some of her films. Is "Hell's Angels" a silent film? |
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 9, 2010 23:41:28 GMT -4
Here are a few from Rodger Ebert. I've seen a bit of it. One of the first documentary films. But the director Robert Flaherty did manipulate the plot somewhat. One I should see in its entirety. She wasn't in The Battleship Potemkin, but I've only seen her in The Birth of A Nation. Quite a scandolous film in its day, especially the way the blacks are portrayed. I saw an interview with Gish where you could tell she didn't "get" how people could see the treatment of blacks as racist. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)I have that one. Interesting movie.
Cabiria (1914)
From what I've read, its the first big spectacle on film, though the story itself isn't so good. A must see movie though. This film inspired D.W. Griffith to make Birth of A Nation. |
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 9, 2010 23:55:05 GMT -4
Allow me to second Broken Blossoms. (Lillian Gish was assuredly not in Battleship Potemkin, which was a Soviet production; you might be thinking of Birth of a Nation. Also, it's "Roger.") Actually, I watched it on Roger's recommendation myself and found it quite worth watching. Racist, but less so than Birth of a Nation, and he's clearly trying not to be. Some good stuff with the role of women in society, too. I was hoping you'd join in this thread Gillianren! Regarding Battleship Potemkin - I read that this movie is just as entertaining today as it was back when it was made. I found it slow at times - it surely spent too much time with certain scenes. Of course I just had to see the Odessa steps sequence - one of the most visually captivating scenes in cinematic history. Broken Blossoms - the film is very familiar to me in reading about it but I haven't see it yet. Hmm. I saw this many many years ago when I was a kid. (back in the day when they did actually show silent movies on television sometimes). Found it to be very creepy and mysterious. Of course I was only about twelve years old... Hmm.... how come I've never heard of this one? A must see film. For some reason though I have a hard time sitting through a Chaplin film. Is it just me? Night of the Living Dead is public domain because it was registered under a different title and a copyright notice wasn't put in its prints. Cost George A. Romero millions in lost profits! This movie is the best horror movie of all time in my opinion. |
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2010 0:00:21 GMT -4
I have this one on DVD. Not the colorized Morodor version. A great movie. Another good one is Things to Come (1936). Its not a silent movie but very good. |
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Post by gillianren on Jul 10, 2010 2:17:54 GMT -4
I was hoping you'd join in this thread Gillianren! It had the word "movie" in the title! Oh, yes. The film itself isn't exactly my glass of tea, but that's at least as much a subject matter issue as anything else. Sometimes, a plot simply doesn't grab you, even if you're programmed by your film studies books to believe it will. It may be harder to find--I'm pretty sure I got it through the library, though, which means Netflix almost certainly has it. It's got some intriguing stuff to it, and some neat camera tricks. With more obscure films, the answer tends to be "because no one cares about silent films anymore, and certainly not ones from outside the US." This is not one where my immediate thought is, "Because you've been living in a cave?" Doubtless not. However, I really like a lot of them. I watched a lot of Charlie Chaplin and a lot of Laurel and Hardy in my misspent youth. When I was a kid, the library played films--films, mind you!--every afternoon at 3:30. Mostly one- and two-reelers, because they didn't have a lot of faith in our ability to sit still. On one memorable occasion, however, they ventured playing The Hobbit in all its animated glory. And several bathroom breaks, to the point that I'm pretty sure the library was closed before the movie ended. Sure. And apparently, someone failed to renew copyright on Mockingbird, which was required after one of the various copyright extensions in the US. (The running joke is that copyright dates to just before the creation of Mickey Mouse, and it will continue to do so.) However, those two factors means that determining if something is in the public domain or not can get tricky. Eh. I'm more for psychological. Zombies bore me. Oh, except I Walked With a Zombie, which is the authentic voodoo kind. Also a retelling of Jane Eyre. With voodoo. |
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2010 9:37:09 GMT -4
Eh. I'm more for psychological. Zombies bore me. Oh, except I Walked With a Zombie, which is the authentic voodoo kind. Also a retelling of Jane Eyre. With voodoo. Zombies are great! I noticed that the comedy "Shaun of the Zombies" was almost identical to a "serious" Zombie movie. I first saw "Night of the Living Dead" in my high school theatre in 1972. It was very creepy walking home in the dark! Are you aware of the books, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter", and "Jane Slayre', Vampire Hunter" ? |
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Post by gillianren on Jul 10, 2010 13:33:18 GMT -4
I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and found it more entertaining than I expected to. Certainly more entertaining than any of its follow-up books; I got about five pages into Little Women and Werewolves before tossing it aside. (It suggested that as much as a quarter of the population was werewolves, and they needed to eat human flesh occasionally to survive. You see the problem.) I'm a little disappointed, too, because I was hoping Android Karenina would be good just because of the title, but as I recall, it's by the same person who wrote Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which was quite bad.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, I'm on the hold list for. Jane Slayre, I've been contemplating, because it's actually a book I've read and enjoyed in the "original." There's a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, I can't remember what it's called, that someone wrote wherein Mr. Darcy turns out to be a vampire, and that was really bad. It seems the genre does follow the rule that 90% of it is crap.
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