Silent

  • Abel Ferrara – Nicky’s Film (1971)

    1971-1980Abel FerraraShort FilmSilentUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    “IMDb” wrote:

    A young woman is lying asleep on a bed. Her boyfriend, Nicky, gets up, looks out a window, and sees two men in black clothing standing outside by a car… waiting. Disturbed by this, Nicky makes a phone call and explains his predicament to someone on the other line.

    Nicky meets with a bearded man sitting at a desk outside in a snow-covered junkyard about his situation. Nicky looks around at the desolate snowy landscape.

    At Nicky’s house, Nicky sits at his kitchen table when a large man, accompanied by a woman who treats him deferentially, and another man. After an inaudible conversation, apparently about Nicky’s situation, the two men and woman leave. But the second man in the background says something to Nicky before leaving. Nicky looks out his window and again sees the two men waiting by a car. Nicky grabs a kitchen knife and places it under his belt. Nicky runs outside where he is apparently shot by the waiting men, and falls to the ground… dead. The final image shows Nicky’s girlfriend, still lying in bed asleep.Read More »

  • ? – The Opium Den (1935)

    ?1931-1940SilentUSA

    “The Opium Den, from 1935, follows. Three jacked-up junkies pretend to bugger each other with sausages, dildos, and bananas. Lucky for them a lady shows up to provide them a heterosexual outlet for their desires. Oddly, they spend an inordinate amount of time smoking, laughing, and fiddling with their disguises. Yes, these folks are wearing fake noses, heavy make-up, and glasses. Their disguises lay bear the reality of how taboo pornography must’ve been in the 1930’s, especially when one considers the setting for their sexcapades, an opium den. Only junkies and degenerates have illicit sex and take illicit drugs, right? Well, at least the conflation of drugs and sex probably made the “upstanding” middle-class consumers of this stuff feel superior to the bodies projected on their walls. Eventually everyone gets nude, two of the men leave, and a chunky fellow slides his long screwdriver into The Night Mare. The fucking is pretty hot, The Night Mare seems to have mysterious gripping powers inside of her vagina–she almost consumes and spits out the junkie’s cock with every thrust. The junkie pulls out and ejaculates all over himself.”Read More »

  • J. Stuart Blackton – The Enchanted Drawing (1900)

    1891-1900J. Stuart BlacktonShort FilmSilentThe Birth of CinemaUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The Enchanted Drawing is a short film made in 1900. It was directed by J. Stuart Blackton, an American film producer of early silent films, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and an early animator.

    Upon a large sheet of white paper a cartoonist is seen at work rapidly sketching the portrait of an elderly gentleman of most comical feature and expression. After completing the likeness the artist rapidly draws on the paper a clever sketch of a bottle of wine and a goblet, and then, to the surprise of all, actually removes them from the paper on which they were drawn and pours actual wine out of the bottle into a real glass. Surprising effects quickly follow after this; and the numerous changes of expression which flit over the face in the sketch cause a vast amount of amusement and at the same time give a splendid illustration of the caricaturist’s art.Read More »

  • Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince – Roundhay Garden Scene & Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888)

    1881-1890Louis Aimé Augustin Le PrinceSilentThe Birth of CinemaUnited Kingdom

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Roundhay Garden Scene is an 1888 short film directed by French inventor Louis Le Prince. It was recorded at 12 frames per second and is the earliest surviving film.

    According to Le Prince’s son, Adolphe, it was filmed at Oakwood Grange, the home of Joseph and Sarah Whitley, in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England on October 14, 1888.
    It features Adolphe Le Prince, Sarah Whitley, Joseph Whitley and Harriet Hartley in the garden, walking around and laughing. Note that Sarah is walking backwards and that Joseph’s coat tails are flying.Read More »

  • Vsevolod Pudovkin – Shakhmatnaya goryachka aka Chess Fever (1925)

    1921-1930Short FilmSilentUSSRVsevolod Pudovkin

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    PLOT SUMMARY
    Chess Fever is a comedy about a man who, though soon to be married, already has a mistress – chess. His bride-to-be, knowing nothing of the game but seeing that his heart resides on the sixty-four squares of the chessboard, freaks out and storms onto the snow-covered streets in hysteria.Read More »

  • André Antoine – L’Hirondelle et la mésange (1920)

    1911-1920André AntoineDramaFranceSilent


    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    André Antoine and the Realist Tradition

    After its humiliating defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, France went through a social revolution. Over the next twenty years, many of its long-standing artistic traditions, such as the classical style of Academy painting, would be cast off in favor of new approaches, such as Impressionism. Live theater was one of the few holdovers from the pre-war era — formulaic pieces spoken by actors in dull declamatory style. But change was coming, voiced by the prophet of naturalism, novelist Emile Zola. “A work must be based in the real . . . on nature,” Zola wrote in Naturalism in the Theater. Zola explained that a playwright must observe facts, with no abstract characters or invented fantasies. Rising to meet this challenge, actor, and theater director André Antoine (1858-1943) founded the Theatre Libre, essentially a community theater, dedicated to showing new work by innovative writers. Antoine also staged works by controversial playwrights from outside of France, such as Ibsen and Chekhov. Under Antoine’s guidance, French theater became serious and legitimate. What is less known about Antoine is that he was also a film director, and a vital link in the development of the ‘realist tradition’ that has so enriched world cinema(…)Read More »

  • Teppei Yamaguchi – Kurama Tengu [+Extras] (1928)

    Japan1921-1930SilentTeppei Yamaguchi

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    In the past, screenings of silent films in Japan were extremely lively events that featured various sounds. Katsudo benshi, or motion picture narrators delivered passionate and eloquent narrations. Live music accompanied their performance. The period drama films in particular featured a new performance format that combined music played on Western and Japanese instruments, a collaboration impossible in a normal concert. The music of trumpets and violins blended with the sounds of shamisen and Japanese drums. In the climax scene, when our hero, the righteous samurai Kurama Tengu, rushed in on his horse to fight the Shinsengumi, the audience erupted in applause. Between sets, children selling rice crackers and other delicacies crisscrossed the theater shouting “Senbei, caramels” at the top of their lungs. In the Kurama Tengu series, the plot revolved around the adventures of the brave samurai Kurama Tengu and his loyal friend, the boy Sugisaku, so crowds of enthusiastic children loudly applauded the feats of their heroes.Read More »

  • Various – The Movies Begin – Disc 5 – Comedy, Spectacle, and New Horizons (1893 – 1913)

    1891-19001901-19101911-1920ExperimentalSilentThe Birth of CinemaUSAVarious

    This edition explores the establishment of cinematic genres in the first years of the 20th Century, offering rare glimpses of the innovative visual comedy of Max Linder, the pioneering Italian epic NERO – or THE BURNING OF ROME, the phenomenal animation of Windsor McCoy, the social realism of Alice Guy Blaché’s MAKING OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, D. W. Griffith’s early melodrama A GIRL AND HER TRUST, and more!

    By 1907 the cinema’s initial growing pains had subsided and fairly distinct generic categories of production were established. This volume of The Movies Begin examines some of these integral works that begin to reflect the modern day cinema — punctuated with authentic hand-tinted lantern slides used during early theatrical exhibition.Read More »

  • Yakov Protazanov – Pikovaya dama AKA The Queen of Spades (1916)

    1911-1920DramaSilentUSSRYakov Protazanov

    Already in the early years of Russian cinema Protazanov’s name was a hallmark of artistic excellence. “The Queen of Spades” is a brilliant example of his extraordinary talent. The film has not only a first-rate story and ingenious Mozzhukhin’s performance, but also all the tricks that were available to filmmakers in 1916. The use of crosscutting in the film is quite sophisticated for the time; superimposition is yet another important device; and the use of flashbacks here is very effective. Unlike most pictures of that time “The Queen of Spades” made a genuine contribution to the evolution of Russian film art. I think it would be great if more people see one of the best pre-revolutionary Russian films.Read More »

Back to top button