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*muses* I watched a trailer for The Artist recently, in the video shop. Hmm.
I'd been vaguely aware of the hype surrounding it, but to be honest I wasn't really paying attention to it before. It hadn't properly crossed my radar. But after seeing that trailer ...
I'd thought they'd been making a movie about the silent movie era. I hadn't realised they were apparently making an actual silent movie. A black-and-white, silent movie, made in the modern era.
I don't even know what it's about. I possibly don't particularly care. Because just that, all on its own ... I just love the form. I LOVE silent movies, and the idea of a modern one, made in celebration of them ... I love that. I think I need to see the movie, when it comes out on DVD. Even if it's utter shite. Just ... just for that. Heh.
Because me and silent movies ... we go back aways.
I'd been vaguely aware of the hype surrounding it, but to be honest I wasn't really paying attention to it before. It hadn't properly crossed my radar. But after seeing that trailer ...
I'd thought they'd been making a movie about the silent movie era. I hadn't realised they were apparently making an actual silent movie. A black-and-white, silent movie, made in the modern era.
I don't even know what it's about. I possibly don't particularly care. Because just that, all on its own ... I just love the form. I LOVE silent movies, and the idea of a modern one, made in celebration of them ... I love that. I think I need to see the movie, when it comes out on DVD. Even if it's utter shite. Just ... just for that. Heh.
Because me and silent movies ... we go back aways.
Okay. Possibly you can blame my attraction to them on two things. The first was the the first silent film I ever saw was Metropolis, which is basically the original science fiction movie, and hits all the buttons from raygun gothic, victorian melodrama (y'all remember I grew up on Jules Verne, right?), mad scientists, biblical allegory (Tower of Babel), and just wonderful overacting. The second being, that I also grew up with the stage, between my father and my grandfather, and ... silent film is very, very evocative of stage (my Dad argues it bears more resemblence to Kabuki than traditional western stage - I've never seen kabuki, so I've no idea how much merit that has).
Silent film is ... a different experience. It does bear a lot of resemblence to stage. The exaggeration of make-up, expression, gesture. I suspect playing without sound is similar to playing to the back of the house. It's larger than life, expansive, to draw the audience in, especially in the absence of certain tools (depends on the stage production, but things like lack of extensive sets, shaky soundsystems, etc. Or maybe just for the ethos of it). In the original cinemas, most of the films would have been accompanied by live music (some scripted, some not so much, and all of them depending on the skill of the player), which I'm guessing would have added to the stage-like effect. Heh. For the DVD versions, I think a lot of the scripted music was just overlaid, which is great, just ... sometimes I think I'd have liked to see one of them live, the way they would have been. *grins sheepishly*
You go into silent movies with a different set of expectations than you do with talkies. Gesture, pantomime, visual gags. There's variance in things like extent of title card use (which are fabulous for other-language movies, actually, because all you have to do is subtitle/translate the title card, rather than subtitle under the action/dub over the movie), and different styles and genres are as apparent in them as in talkies, or stage, or any other medium, really. It's about using the tools you have to make the effect you want. *grins*
There were ... three major silent films/film series that shaped my particular love of them.
The first was, as I said, Fritz Lang's Metropolis (youtube link, full movie in three parts - intro at a live showing, what looks like live scoring throughout). We got it with a newspaper, on a crappy CD. I can't even remember which version of it we got (though not the funky 1980s remastered version with the pop soundtrack), mostly because we then lost the disc shortly afterwards, and until finding the film again online, I hadn't seen it since. But it was ... awesome. *grins* I had no real idea what I was looking at, at first (I was kinda young, at the time). But ... it grew on you. You get into it.
Metropolis was a good choice, I think. It hit a whole hell of a lot of my buttons, as I said above. Symbolism (yes, I was young, but I've always loved the layering of concepts/references on top of each other). Melodrama (maybe it's actually better to see silent movies young - the pantomime and gestures of them have a different tone when you're younger). And, naturally, the mad scientist and his seductive robot. *grins* Though the transformation scene was the best. She looked cooler when she was metal. Later on, I got more of the themes, and the politics of the thing, appreciated things like the Art Deco design, the forerunners of a lot of SF themes (man vs machine, government vs the people, revolution, a touch of anti-capitalism, union strikes - I'm guessing this film probably wouldn't have been popular in 80s Britain, for example - standing up against the man), the biblical allegories. I actually still love it for the bridge it made between old-school Frankensteinian alchemy/science, and more modern AI/robotics based science. Plus, Rotwang was just cool. And Freder was an adorable dolt (honey, you don't want to accuse the woman inciting a riot against the city leaders of being a fake when you are the leader's son, and the mob know it. Just saying). The whole mixing of personal motives (Joh, Rotwang and Hel, vengeance and lost love, Freder and Maria, new love and hope) against political ones (Joh, trying to (brutally) control the working populace, Maria, trying to peacefully win union, Rotwang, trying to ruin all of the above and have the city collapse into chaos, just because). As a story, not just a form, it holds up really, really well.
But I loved the form, too. Freder, in particular, is kind of awesome to watch express himself via gesture and expression (even among the rest of the cast, Freder is melodramatic - only Rotwang keeps up with him - but that makes thematic sense as he's a young, sheltered, passionate idiot a lot of the time), and Robo!Maria is fabulous in twitchy, evil, seductive form. The imagery on the film (demonic machinery, Jeanne d'Arc style focusing for Maria, the more sexual, violent, frenetic focus on Robo!Maria, the towers of the city itself) was fabulous. The symbolism was a little heavy-handed at times (okay, a lot), but ... *grins, shrugs* What are you going to do? It was awesome then, and I still love it now. Heh.
The second major film was actually a film series. The silent serial films of Fantomas by Louis Feuillade (wikipedia link, I'm afraid - you can get some clips on youtube, but I had to buy the DVD to get them in full). I actually saw these fairly recently, only four years ago, which was kind of my first reintroduction to silent film following Metropolis. I got the DVD out of the library out of curiosity (even public libraries in college towns/cities have wonderfully weird selections, sometimes), and ... Well. I scrounged around until I could then buy them, so.
The thing about the Fantomas serials was ... the books (by Allain and Souvestre) were pulp crime. Avant-garde pulp crime, with an incredibly OTT villain to start with. So ... in many ways, the perfect story for silent film. *grins faintly* And the cast is ... kind of fabulous (I have a particular soft spot for the actor playing Juve, mostly because there's this fabulous scene in one of them, I can't remember which, where he's interviewing two street policemen about a disappeared body, and there is honestly no need for title cards, because he just carries the entire thing on expression and physical acting, and it's wonderful). It's crime, and capers, and violence, and a long-suffering hero and a terrible villain, and ... Melodramatic pulpy theatricality, both in-story and out, and I loved it, yes? It sucked me right back into silent film. And, to this day, it's the only version of Fantomas that I've seen (though that will probably only last until I can get my hands on the books).
These films were earlier than Metropolis (1913/4, as opposed to 1927), and in some ways they're an interesting contrast. That said, they were also French vs German, a completely difference genre, and a completely different format (serial vs feature), so there's also that. *grins faintly* These ones, in particular, I mostly just enjoy on their own merits.
The last, then, was Buster Keaton's The General (youtube link - full film. There are actually a number of copies of this one available, since it survived a whole hell of a lot better than Metropolis, but this one has music - the others just use the raw, soundless footage, rather than adding the equivalent to the live scoring. I'm not completely sure why). This one, I saw completely by accident - it was on late one night on the television (late night TV occasionally throws up some gems of movies that you wouldn't otherwise know to look for). We're hopping across the pond for this one, out of Europe and into American cinema. Heh.
The first scene I saw in this one, being the point of the movie we were at when I tuned in, was the scene when Johnny Gray accidentally climbs into a meeting of enemy officers looking for some food, and has to hide under the table. And, look, silent movies (and possibly just Buster Keaton himself) did physical comedy like nothing else, okay? Though Laurel and Hardy come close, later on, but they were directly inspired by both Keaton and Chaplin, and came out of silent into talkies, so there's that. But even beyond that, the actual story of the film, the Great Locomotive Chase, is enthralling. You come for the comedy, stay for the drama. *grins* Doesn't hurt that it's set in the Civil War, with pretty damn decent period costume, or that Keaton himself was a surprisingly handsome man. It's bascially just ... kind of awesome.
Those are the main three silent films/series I've seen. A few clips of others, nothing really whole. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but unless you know what to look for, silent films can be kinda hard to get a hold of. Heh. But it's actually not a bad cross-section, really. We've German expressionism and early SF, French crime thrillers and pulpy goodness, and America comedy/drama/period piece. We've got Rotwang to balance against Fantomas, and Johnny Gray to balance against Freder, and Maria to balance against Annabelle. We've got Metropolis' grand concept to balance against the lurid anarchy of Fantomas, and the stirring-yet-comedic adventures of Johnny Gray. *smiles faintly*
And I just ... love the form. I love the range of it, and the examples of it, and the echoes of stage and literature through it. I love the theatricality, the make-up, the physical acting. I love the variance in scores/music (technically speaking, the contested Moroder 1980s version of Metropolis, with the 80s pop score, wasn't really unfaithful to the original ethos, in a way - your musical experience of the film depended on the performer you got at that showing - though probably it's way, waaay more trippy than most). I just ... love the experience of it, really. I think I probably will have to see The Artist. Just because. Heh.
And, while we're at it, if anyone has any recs for silent films I haven't seen, but should, I'll be happy to accept them. *grins*
Silent film is ... a different experience. It does bear a lot of resemblence to stage. The exaggeration of make-up, expression, gesture. I suspect playing without sound is similar to playing to the back of the house. It's larger than life, expansive, to draw the audience in, especially in the absence of certain tools (depends on the stage production, but things like lack of extensive sets, shaky soundsystems, etc. Or maybe just for the ethos of it). In the original cinemas, most of the films would have been accompanied by live music (some scripted, some not so much, and all of them depending on the skill of the player), which I'm guessing would have added to the stage-like effect. Heh. For the DVD versions, I think a lot of the scripted music was just overlaid, which is great, just ... sometimes I think I'd have liked to see one of them live, the way they would have been. *grins sheepishly*
You go into silent movies with a different set of expectations than you do with talkies. Gesture, pantomime, visual gags. There's variance in things like extent of title card use (which are fabulous for other-language movies, actually, because all you have to do is subtitle/translate the title card, rather than subtitle under the action/dub over the movie), and different styles and genres are as apparent in them as in talkies, or stage, or any other medium, really. It's about using the tools you have to make the effect you want. *grins*
There were ... three major silent films/film series that shaped my particular love of them.
The first was, as I said, Fritz Lang's Metropolis (youtube link, full movie in three parts - intro at a live showing, what looks like live scoring throughout). We got it with a newspaper, on a crappy CD. I can't even remember which version of it we got (though not the funky 1980s remastered version with the pop soundtrack), mostly because we then lost the disc shortly afterwards, and until finding the film again online, I hadn't seen it since. But it was ... awesome. *grins* I had no real idea what I was looking at, at first (I was kinda young, at the time). But ... it grew on you. You get into it.
Metropolis was a good choice, I think. It hit a whole hell of a lot of my buttons, as I said above. Symbolism (yes, I was young, but I've always loved the layering of concepts/references on top of each other). Melodrama (maybe it's actually better to see silent movies young - the pantomime and gestures of them have a different tone when you're younger). And, naturally, the mad scientist and his seductive robot. *grins* Though the transformation scene was the best. She looked cooler when she was metal. Later on, I got more of the themes, and the politics of the thing, appreciated things like the Art Deco design, the forerunners of a lot of SF themes (man vs machine, government vs the people, revolution, a touch of anti-capitalism, union strikes - I'm guessing this film probably wouldn't have been popular in 80s Britain, for example - standing up against the man), the biblical allegories. I actually still love it for the bridge it made between old-school Frankensteinian alchemy/science, and more modern AI/robotics based science. Plus, Rotwang was just cool. And Freder was an adorable dolt (honey, you don't want to accuse the woman inciting a riot against the city leaders of being a fake when you are the leader's son, and the mob know it. Just saying). The whole mixing of personal motives (Joh, Rotwang and Hel, vengeance and lost love, Freder and Maria, new love and hope) against political ones (Joh, trying to (brutally) control the working populace, Maria, trying to peacefully win union, Rotwang, trying to ruin all of the above and have the city collapse into chaos, just because). As a story, not just a form, it holds up really, really well.
But I loved the form, too. Freder, in particular, is kind of awesome to watch express himself via gesture and expression (even among the rest of the cast, Freder is melodramatic - only Rotwang keeps up with him - but that makes thematic sense as he's a young, sheltered, passionate idiot a lot of the time), and Robo!Maria is fabulous in twitchy, evil, seductive form. The imagery on the film (demonic machinery, Jeanne d'Arc style focusing for Maria, the more sexual, violent, frenetic focus on Robo!Maria, the towers of the city itself) was fabulous. The symbolism was a little heavy-handed at times (okay, a lot), but ... *grins, shrugs* What are you going to do? It was awesome then, and I still love it now. Heh.
The second major film was actually a film series. The silent serial films of Fantomas by Louis Feuillade (wikipedia link, I'm afraid - you can get some clips on youtube, but I had to buy the DVD to get them in full). I actually saw these fairly recently, only four years ago, which was kind of my first reintroduction to silent film following Metropolis. I got the DVD out of the library out of curiosity (even public libraries in college towns/cities have wonderfully weird selections, sometimes), and ... Well. I scrounged around until I could then buy them, so.
The thing about the Fantomas serials was ... the books (by Allain and Souvestre) were pulp crime. Avant-garde pulp crime, with an incredibly OTT villain to start with. So ... in many ways, the perfect story for silent film. *grins faintly* And the cast is ... kind of fabulous (I have a particular soft spot for the actor playing Juve, mostly because there's this fabulous scene in one of them, I can't remember which, where he's interviewing two street policemen about a disappeared body, and there is honestly no need for title cards, because he just carries the entire thing on expression and physical acting, and it's wonderful). It's crime, and capers, and violence, and a long-suffering hero and a terrible villain, and ... Melodramatic pulpy theatricality, both in-story and out, and I loved it, yes? It sucked me right back into silent film. And, to this day, it's the only version of Fantomas that I've seen (though that will probably only last until I can get my hands on the books).
These films were earlier than Metropolis (1913/4, as opposed to 1927), and in some ways they're an interesting contrast. That said, they were also French vs German, a completely difference genre, and a completely different format (serial vs feature), so there's also that. *grins faintly* These ones, in particular, I mostly just enjoy on their own merits.
The last, then, was Buster Keaton's The General (youtube link - full film. There are actually a number of copies of this one available, since it survived a whole hell of a lot better than Metropolis, but this one has music - the others just use the raw, soundless footage, rather than adding the equivalent to the live scoring. I'm not completely sure why). This one, I saw completely by accident - it was on late one night on the television (late night TV occasionally throws up some gems of movies that you wouldn't otherwise know to look for). We're hopping across the pond for this one, out of Europe and into American cinema. Heh.
The first scene I saw in this one, being the point of the movie we were at when I tuned in, was the scene when Johnny Gray accidentally climbs into a meeting of enemy officers looking for some food, and has to hide under the table. And, look, silent movies (and possibly just Buster Keaton himself) did physical comedy like nothing else, okay? Though Laurel and Hardy come close, later on, but they were directly inspired by both Keaton and Chaplin, and came out of silent into talkies, so there's that. But even beyond that, the actual story of the film, the Great Locomotive Chase, is enthralling. You come for the comedy, stay for the drama. *grins* Doesn't hurt that it's set in the Civil War, with pretty damn decent period costume, or that Keaton himself was a surprisingly handsome man. It's bascially just ... kind of awesome.
Those are the main three silent films/series I've seen. A few clips of others, nothing really whole. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but unless you know what to look for, silent films can be kinda hard to get a hold of. Heh. But it's actually not a bad cross-section, really. We've German expressionism and early SF, French crime thrillers and pulpy goodness, and America comedy/drama/period piece. We've got Rotwang to balance against Fantomas, and Johnny Gray to balance against Freder, and Maria to balance against Annabelle. We've got Metropolis' grand concept to balance against the lurid anarchy of Fantomas, and the stirring-yet-comedic adventures of Johnny Gray. *smiles faintly*
And I just ... love the form. I love the range of it, and the examples of it, and the echoes of stage and literature through it. I love the theatricality, the make-up, the physical acting. I love the variance in scores/music (technically speaking, the contested Moroder 1980s version of Metropolis, with the 80s pop score, wasn't really unfaithful to the original ethos, in a way - your musical experience of the film depended on the performer you got at that showing - though probably it's way, waaay more trippy than most). I just ... love the experience of it, really. I think I probably will have to see The Artist. Just because. Heh.
And, while we're at it, if anyone has any recs for silent films I haven't seen, but should, I'll be happy to accept them. *grins*
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