What's there to say about silent movies?

February 24, 2018 1:31 AM

Perhaps nothing that would be any more illustrative than seeing the images yourself. So here's A Time in Film: 1878-1899, 1900-1909, 1910-1912, 1913-1914, 1915-1916, 1917-1918, 1919, 1920, 1921. These may not contain clips from all the great movies from the era, but they provide an excellent start and the videos are worth seeing even if only as an end in themselves. An ongoing series of 3 to 5 minute videos covering the silent era and perhaps beyond.
posted by gusottertrout (15 comments total)

In the same vein, on Twitter there's @silentmoviegifs, which does exactly what its name implies, making gifs out of scenes from silent movies, e.g. this clip from Wings.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:58 AM on February 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

Silent movies make the best gifs! They're ideal for conveying heightened emotion. I've got a bunch myself, but no where to really put them at the moment.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:06 AM on February 24, 2018

Thanks for this! I'm recognizing a lot of things I've seen on my own mission (and noticed a few curious omissions). That shot of the kitten falling asleep at the tail end of the "1920" one looked so familiar that I actually went digging through my notes looking for what film it may have been from.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:21 AM on February 24, 2018

I love seeing old silent films, though I prefer no graphics overlaid over them. (Just a title card perhaps and then show it to me! All of it!)

But I can't recommend the documentary Dawson City, Frozen Time enough. It very slowly lays out the story of how a large number silent films were found.
posted by Catblack at 5:59 AM on February 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

MartinWisse: "In the same vein, on Twitter there's @silentmoviegifs, which does exactly what its name implies, making gifs out of scenes from silent movies, e.g. this clip from Wings."

A shot that Rian Johnson recently remade in Last Jedi.
posted by octothorpe at 6:05 AM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

1894: Boxing Cats

It didn't take long for cats to make their move.
posted by Increase at 6:19 AM on February 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

I love how deeply weird a lot of early film was; they really loved coming up with some serious nightmare fuel.
posted by octothorpe at 6:47 AM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I once got a book about movies at a used book store and it was only after I got home that I realized it was written in 1935 or so. Therefore, it spent a huge amount of time talking about silent movies I had never heard of as great cinematic landmarks. Thanks to Netflix, I've now watched a lot of these. If there's one movie you have never seen, but should see, it's F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise".
posted by acrasis at 7:05 AM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Watching these clips and gifs with no music overlaid - truly silent - somehow made them even more alive for me. I wonder if the "old-timey" music is more distracting than I thought? Some of the clips look almost contemporary, if contemporary had a an overly enthusiastic set of Instagram filters on it, when the tinkle of the piano is gone. Interesting.

And that "Wings" tracking shot. People have already mentioned the tracking, but watch the second-to-last couple look scandalized at the happy lesbians just across from them. and all the business going on in the background.
posted by Mogur at 7:07 AM on February 24, 2018

If there's one movie you have never seen, but should see, it's F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise".

Yeah, this one surprised me. I concur that you should see it.

However, I also add The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving full-length animated film (there was earlier animation, but it was all shorter subjects, and this was one of the very first, if not the first, full-length feature). It's stop-motion animation done using cut paper silhouettes, and it is beautiful.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:14 AM on February 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Seconding "Dawson City, Frozen Time".
posted by Mesaverdian at 10:05 AM on February 24, 2018

Watching these clips and gifs with no music overlaid - truly silent - somehow made them even more alive for me. I wonder if the "old-timey" music is more distracting than I
thought?

For me, this is definitely true. Thankfully many rereleased silent movies are given new scores, with some being quite inventive and "modern" that help provide better context for the films by removing the association to "old timey music" people came to expect with silents.

One of the things that always strikes me in seeing collected moments from movie history is how rapidly the medium developed, changes, and then rebuilds again around shifting conventions. As a rough guide for thinking about movie history, I tend to group events in fifteen year cycles or waves of invention and growth, convention and stability, maturity and decline followed by the next wave.

So 1900 to 1914 sees the rise and fall of the silent short, 1915 to 1929 that of the silent feature, 1930 to 1944, the rise of the sound film, 1945 to 1959 the dominance of genre, 1960 to 1974 the search for new methods, 1975 to 1989 reestablishment of convention, 1990 to 2014 postmodern revision, and 2015 onwards the shift to long form storytelling and video. Those are only rough onlines of course, where there are smaller waves within the larger ones that hold the ends and beginnings of the preceding and following movements.

It's a more than a little bit amazing to me that the silent feature only establishes itself around 1914 and by ten years later is a fully realized form with movies that are as complex and inventive as any seen today.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:46 AM on February 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

These are quite nice. I have never seen either of those color animation pieces in the 1878-1899 video. That was a nice surprise.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:22 PM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's a more than a little bit amazing to me that the silent feature only establishes itself around 1914 and by ten years later is a fully realized form with movies that are as complex and inventive as any seen today.

It's always a little sad though to watch early talkies and and see how much was lost for a while there until they figured out how to incorporate sound into filmmaking. The late silent era films have great camera work, staging and editing while the early talkies are so clunky and stagebound.
posted by octothorpe at 1:45 PM on February 24, 2018

Yeah, that was an unfortunate cost of in bringing in sound equipment, but even then some directors pushed to find ways around the problem.

This long opening tracking shot from David Butler's 1929 movie Sunnyside Up being a good example of not only trying to work around the problem but making the sound as integral as the camera work. There's another long tracking shot a little later in the movie and they experiment with how to approach characters talking, singing and sound in movies. (Like Janet Gaynor ignoring the fourth wall with this charming little song.)

Some other directors like Clair, Mamoulian and Lubitsch, of course, were also hot on the making use of sound as an added quality while not allowing the camera to become too static, but it took a while for that to become the norm rather than the exception. Actors adjusting to sound too took some time to settle on what audiences would come to find as natural to the form which makes the transition period even more rocky for modern viewers.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:35 PM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]