Not-so-silent Films of the 1920s

[altivo]

I never make polls, but answering a meme about films over on Facebook inspired me to ask these questions of LJ readers.

[Poll #1445665]

Comments

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I've been to a silent movie theatre in Los Angeles, and to a silent film festival in San Francisco.

They're great fun!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

They are high art, there's no doubt about that. I find they are best when accompanied by a decent pipe organ and an organist who knows how. Unfortunately, we have now lost nearly all the organists old enough to have learned their art from doing the real thing.

The Son of the Sheik is available on video with the sound track recorded by the late Gaylord Carter on a real Wurlitzer theatre organ. It's one of Valentino's finest performances, but the music makes the whole thing far better.

[ben-who.livejournal.com]

Well...it may be more accurate to say that the ones that survived are high art...that old celluloid has a tendency to turn to goo after a short time, and only the ones that were copied and re-copied survived. There are probably a few crap silents floating around today, but you're more likely to find one of the Canonical Classics rather than some piece of rubbish. The only bad silent movie I've ever seen is "Birth of a Nation."

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I agree, mostly. Unfortunately, the ones that have been copied again and again (including, of course, Birth of a Nation) are not always the best, they are just the best known, most studied, or most popular.

Consider Disney's Fantasia, which we know today as a masterpiece. When it was first released, the reaction was almost universally negative. It was radically different, a concept that wasn't well accepted. If it had been printed only on that early and ephemeral film media, it might be among those that are lost today. I'm sure there were some masterworks that we have lost, and its obvious that some of the worst have still survived.

Birth of a Nation has to be considered in light of its age, as well. It was released in 1915, more than a decade before the silent film reached its peak quality and art level. ;p (I agree, it's pretty awful. Griffith did do better in his later works.)