I watch a lot of silent movies. I mean, really a lot – in a typical week I may see 4 or more. For a guy who’s really into technology and everything cutting edge, what is it about silent movies that I enjoy so much? I know you didn’t ask, but I’ll tell you anyway.
The Finishing Touch (1928)
It all started with my love for Laurel and Hardy movies. When I was a child (and still today), one of my favorite movies was March of the Wooden Soldiers (AKA Babes in Toyland) staring Laurel and Hardy. It’s not really a kid’s movie – and certainly not a typical L&H movie, as it’s got all kinds of odd creepy things going on in it, and the sets were strange – I loved it. I went through a period where I tracked down old L&H shorts and copied them to videotapes. But one day in the early 1980’s, I rented a movie called Laurel and Hardy’s Laughing 20’s. It presented a bunch of scenes from SILENT shorts from L&H. I wasn’t even aware that L&H had a silent career – and a vast silent career at that. Most of the routines I knew were actually remade from the silent era. It was a revelation to me, they were really really funny – but – also, they vividly showed life in a simpler time. The roads were mostly dirt, cars were a new concept, the LA/Hollywood area was actually very rural, without houses right on top of each other. Just watching was like being in a time machine, and I felt it was very relaxing. So for years aftwards, whenever I really wanted to relax late at night – I would watch that movie. And then sometime in the early ’90s, all of the old L&H silent shorts were released on DVD – 10 disks worth. I watched them over and over. I was getting hooked on watching these L&H shorts before going to bed, but after a while I decided to check out some more. I was in for quite the suprise…
I started by watching some of the D.W. Griffith movies – Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, and Orphans of the Storm. What was hard not to notice was how different the plots were from the formula we’re all used to. If something bad might happen, what actually happens will be shockingly worse. The ending might not be happy at all. Certainly not predicable. Frequently my jaw would drop – sometimes I was so amazed at how non-PC things were that I just couldn’t believe it.
Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) – Georges Méliès The Man with the Rubber Head (1902) – Georges Méliès
And then there were the shorts of Méliès done in the late 1800s/early 1900s, with special effects so incredible that they are stunning even today. Some of the prints were hand tinted, and the colors are AMAZING. If you’ve never seen any of these shorts, you don’t have any idea what you’re missing.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
And then there are the German Expressionist films, with ultra wierd plots and even wierder sets. The most famous of these is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. If you’ve never seen this, you have no idea how strange a movie can be. And then there’s all the early Fritz Lang films, Dr Mabuse, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis (mega classic!), Spies, and Woman in the Moon, which are all cooler, creepier, stranger, and more interesting than practically any modern movie. Pretty much every frame of some of those movies could be made into a classic photograph, the attention to detail in framing every single shot is stunning.
Metropolis (1926) – Fritz Lang
I also could go on about Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and the other masters of physical humor – before the age of stunt men. Amazing stuff.
In addition, there are many singularities – odd movies with odd stories behind them. Take the story of The Passion of Joan of Arc – the original was lost in a fire and considered gone forever – until a pristine print was found in a janitor’s closet of an Oslo mental institution in 1981. Or the really strange story of Greed – one of my favorite movies, even though only a fraction (abeit a lengthy fraction) of it still exists. One really cool visual thing about Greed is that everything that should be gold in color is actually gold, while everything else is in black and white. And maybe the most odd of them all is a D.W. Griffith short film called The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916). This astounding film stars Douglas Fairbanks as Coke Ennyday, a detective who divides his time into “Sleep”, “Eat”, “Dope” and “Drink”. This film may be the very definition of political incorrectness, and it’s a must see.
So, what I’ve discovered is that silent movies are relaxing, strange, shocking, and almost always a suprise. They are at once simpler and more complex than modern movies. Most important – there is no formula! All modern movies follow a formula, even those that pretend they’re not. There are A LOT of them too – so there’s always a new discovery waiting. And as an added bonus, you can watch them with the sound turned way down or even off!
So, did I mention I love silent movies?
