Anyone looking to get into silent film, I'd strongly recommend comedies (including, and perhaps especially, Chaplin and Keaton) as a good starting point. I've gotten to the point that I can truly enjoy a lot of silent dramas, but IMO the comedies are far more approachable for a modern audience. Good gateway drug.
Just off the more famous films (The Great Dictator and Modern Times and maybe City Lights for Chaplin, or The General for Keaton, say) I'd recommend The Kid for Chaplin, and Sherlock, Jr. for Keaton. And of course both made numerous short films, in addition to their features. Though the very-famous ones are all great, too—I especially love City Lights, personally.
Been meaning to check out Harold Lloyd (responsible for one of the most enduring and imitated images in Hollowood, the guy hanging on the clock on the side of a building, featured in Safety Last) but haven't made it to him yet. I bet he "reads" pretty well to a modern viewer, too.
[EDIT] Some beginner drama recommendations, for those who feel ready:
Metropolis (duh... though it's a bit on the long side, maybe skip if you can't tolerate longer movies, and it's maybe a bit belabored for modern sensibilities)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (just... damn. This is a perfect movie.)
L'Âge D'or (The Golden Age—but, uh, maybe just if you appreciate things a bit more art house)
Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon—it's short, and, if one plays with various accompanying soundtrack options, including some more modern ones, one may find it transcendently good)
M (yes Fritz Lang made this very short list twice, because fuck you this movie is amazing, this is maybe the most modern-feeling of this whole bunch)
Metropolis, though overlong and a bit hammy, pulled me through with the music and the visuals. Even when the effects aren't believable the design is stunning.
In fact, it's pronably not until the 80s with skmething like Blade Runner or Brazil that you get a film so thuroughly designed and detailed from a visual perspective.
All of Tati's films have to be viewed multiple times to be fully appreciated as he pays exquisite attention to details, many of which are small and seemingly insignificant and often missed at first viewing. PlayTime is a visual masterpiece especially for this reason.
In many ways Tati was a silent filmmaker in an era of sound; he neverthelsss embraces sound in a remarkably intuitive way that makes him one of its great film interpreters.
For instance, the buzz of the neon light transformer in PlayTime — an annoying sound we've all experienced. It's a seemingly trivial inclusion in an otherwise complex and 'active' scene. But it's not really trivial, for often when one's experiencing or recalling some real life drama it's often the trivial that one remembers—the main event cannot be recalled without the 'trivial' coming to mind as it's contextually important memory.
Another excellent example is from Mon Oncle, the scene where Monsieur Hulot's 'competence' is being questioned, but one cannot forget the seemingly trivial sound of the secretary's short click-clack high-heel steps† as she briefly enters and leaves the scene—yet her presence is only incidental to the scene's transpiring events. Not only was Tati a master at using sound this way he was also a genius at observing human nature in action.
The other ingredient that makes Tati's films so delightfully memorable is their simple humanity. Decades ago, I first saw Mon Oncle as a kid of about ten—about the same age as Gérard (Hulot's nephew). That was well before I'd learned any French and the version I saw had no English subtitles yet I enjoyed the film enormously and understood what was going on without language—and I still do, I never tire of seeing it. That's part of Tati's genius, he has the remarkable ability to appeal to all ages and new generations.
_
† Edit: this is not the scene I described above (that occurs about 1h 31m in the film) but it's the same secretary walking and sounding the same: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YdCSijdyI6E.
Metropolis is a front-runner for most-influential-movie-ever (assuredly not at the top, but—it's a contender), and it's largely the visual design that does it. It is, indeed, captivating throughout, carrying one through the film's... less-endearing qualities. Blade Runner is absolutely one of the most important films to owe it a huge debt, and it's no accident that Blade Runner went on, itself, to influence the visuals of so many later films. It's (Metropolis) the kind of film "visionary" ought to be reserved for. There are a few very-famous bits that even people who've not seen it might know about, but the whole movie's full of that kind of thing.
Metropolis is a remarkable film whether it's a frontrunner or not. And I agree with the general consensus that the film is of great historical importance.
Rather than dwell on that I think it important that we consider the future of early silent movies and how we can revitalize them for modern audiences who have become accustomed to—even jaded by—the visual 'pyrotechnics' of modern high definition video technology. By comparison, silent movies are deficient on multiple fronts, they're not only missing sound but also their visuals are in B&W and generally of low quality (low resolution).
These technological limitations present a high barrier for modern audiences to jump over, so they're often dismissed (many of today's audience have never seen classics from the silent era). How we should go about overcoming the barrier is an important and huge topic and cannot be covered in depth here but I'll mention a few ideas that I think are relevant.
1. Much of the footage that's currently in circulation from the silent era is of terrible quality, it consists of copies that are multiple generations away from the original camera stock. So often what we see today is footage with crushed blacks and washed out highlights to the extent that most of the detail in those areas of the image is lost.
This is unfortunate as the quality of the original camera negatives/masters are often surprising good—much, much better than one would expect. So why aren't modern copies made from the original negatives? Is it because they no longer exist, or if they do then they've deteriorated, or is it that for some reason the originals remain inaccessible?
I've limited knowledge of the reasons but all three are implicated—depending on the film of course. This came to my attention several decades ago when the actor James Mason presented a multi-part TV series on Chaplin's films wherein he compared some original film stock with the more widely circulated poor copies and the difference in quality was dramatic—the original stock being quite excellent.
2. Mason pointed out that accessibility was often a problem as Chaplin usually immediately destroyed footage he wasn't happy with, and second, he kept extremely tight control over master footage. Even though Chaplin died in 1977, the current copyright holders are keeping to this tradition by stressing that any Chaplin footage from 1918 onward is still in copyright (as I mentioned in my earlier post, it's likely Chaplin's works won't come out of copyright until 2067). Clearly, this is a disincentive for those wishing to gain access to the films with the view of reconstructing them. Moreover, it also seems the current copyright holders aren't doing much to either make these films readily accessible or doing much by way of reconstructing them. In essence, ridiculously long copyright law is standing in the way.
3. Even after copyright expires, it doesn't necessarily mean that owners of the physical masters/negatives/media will make them available. We've seen this nasty ploy used by many art galleries whose artworks are long out of copyright but who have refused third partly access to them for copying (high quality copies are thus restricted from entering the public domain). Copyright laws ought to be amended to remedy this anachronistic anomaly.
That said, some copyright holders have made reasonably good copies available on DVD such as Buster Keaton's The General. (the Kino release). Unfortunstely, whilst this release is certainly much better than the low quality versions that once circulated on TV decades ago, it's not a proper high quality digital reconstruction of same as dust, scratches and other artifacts are still visible. It's better than nothing but still not good enough.
4. As mentioned, unfortunately modern audiences aren't accustomed to viewing old B&W silent movies. Unlike when I was a kid, TV stations no longer broadcast these movies, so kids no longer grow up appreciating them for what they are. It's similar to when 78 sound recordings became passé when vinyl became available. Retraining audiences is possible but I've little idea how one would go about it. (Incidentally, I've worked in radio and TV broadcasting and I'm experienced with modern digital recording techniques but I have no difficulty in viewing old films or listening to 78 recordings. (Listening to, say, the great Caruso on a 100-year old recording still brings me pleasure because I've learned to
mentally tune out surface noise and distortions, but I'm realistic enough to realize that this will never become a widespread practice.)
5. Thus, the only practical option left is to upgrade these films using the best technology available. It's clear that in the near future that both AI and other techniques such as cleaver Fourier analysis and reconstruction will be able to improve these films out of sight—much better than any version currently available. It would happen all the sooner if copyright holders were more cooperative and or if archaic and unreasonable copyright laws were dragged screaming into the Twenty-first Century.
Yeah. For anyone who appreciates really, really good cinema and hasn't seen Passion—I dunno, drop everything and go watch it, I guess. It's one of a handful of silent films that truly, today, "historical importance" entirely put aside, stands with the rest of the greats—and might even shoulder past more than a few of them.
Sunrise is great and important—sure, yes, it's good, even, kinda. Metropolis looms large—yeah, true, and I enjoyed it, but it's clunky as hell, if we're being honest. A dozen other greats—yes, they're good, but I can name a hundred ways they could have been better. A bunch of others are more-or-less flawless but are also weird and niche. Passion? No notes. Perfect movie.
the Criterion release of The Passion of Joan of Arc has two great scores, too. Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light for the first and Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) for the second.
I agree with your choices (I've been working through "1001 Films to See Before you Die" and your choices are also represented in the list).
Nice that most (all?) of these are free on YouTube.
I confess though that films got a lot more interesting to me around 1932. Gotta love that when sound came along they went deep-dive into musicals, ha ha. (I was actually surprised at how many of the 30's films were entertaining to me — "Love Me Tonight", "Trouble in Paradise", "42nd Street"...)
I've been picking from a different list (the huge meta-list project from They Shoot Pictures Don't They, which I think does factor in the 1001-films book as one of a whole bunch of things they feed to their Algorithm) but yeah, a lot of the pre-1930 films were a real slog, at least in part. I only bounced off a very few but I was pretty damn bored for long stretches of some others, I think justifiably so.
Big misses for me were anything horror (Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari—hell, maybe I just don't like German Expressionism?).
Surprise hits were some of the more arthouse films. A Propos de Nice and Man with a Movie Camera were two I loved and are both definitely not conventionally-entertaining. They don't even feature narratives, in any normal sense (but they kinda do?). I also dug some of the Big Damn Movies like Intolerance and Gance's Napoléon—but that wasn't universal, because I found Birth of a Nation unwatchable (I gave it like 90 minutes then bounced—I'd enjoyed none of it, and not just because of the terrible message). Nanook of the North was another surprise hit for me—OK, it's kinda faked or whatever, but they fucking hunted a walrus, for-real, using traditional methods. That they were doing it when they did might have been "fake" because they didn't really do it anymore, but they did it, for-actual-real, which was just nuts to watch, among other things that were "fake" but more-real than a lot of what you might be able to see today.
Nineteen-fucking-forty release year. About a year earlier (mind, production leads release by quite a bit) we had, infamously, turned away almost a thousand Jews on the St Louis seeking asylum—of whom, about a quarter would ultimately die in the holocaust, after re-settling in countries that Nazi Germany eventually conquered.
It's hard not to see the relevance of Communism to the speech, too, that being the one of a couple things that loomed (much) larger in the average German mind than the "Jewish question", in the rise of Nazism. No accident that Chaplin would find himself on the wrong side of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), I guess.
It's maybe the great pre-war (from the American perspective, of course—'39 was the start for Europe, and earlier still for China and other places like Ethiopia) WWII movie.
"did then die" is understating it. The Great Dictator was filmed in 1939, long before most of the world knew the true horrors that had and would take place. Chaplin wasn't alone in calling out the dangers, but he was in the minority.
> Chaplin wasn't alone in calling out the dangers,
A very honourable mention to Alexander Korda.
Particularly 'Things To Come', his 1936 film warning of the rise of fascism in Europe, global war and the dangers of air bombardment (thereby bringing mechanised warfare to civilian populations for the first time).
Watching a live screening of Voices of Light[1] by Anonymous Four with Passion of Joan of Arc in college was one of the best cinematic experiences of my life. Absolute perfection.
That's a good point—it has synchronized sound, not just a vaguely-connected soundtrack, though it's not properly a "talkie", either. I was thinking more of the form, pacing, and presentation, though (I did, shamefully, get The Great Dictator entirely wrong by classing it as a silent, as another poster pointed out)
They reran Harold Lloyd shorts on kids' TV in the UK perhaps in the 1980s - growing up in the sticks I'd watch anything and found his silent short films a good way of killing time.
Both will read that way sometimes to a modern audience, though Chaplin's definitely better in that department. However, a large set of Keaton's oeuvre treats of that not at all. Avoid The General and stuff with names like "The Pale Face" (gee, I wonder if that will be problematic?) and you'll mostly be fine.
On the other hand, Chaplin was apparently terrible to women off-screen, so... there's that.
Anyone living in the Bay Area ought to pop over to little, hidden, Niles. A fun little day trip my family and I enjoyed when I still lived in the area. They had their brush with fame and Chaplin 100 years ago when little Niles might just have become Hollywood.
I've actually worked on a movie shoot there. Terrible film, terrible shoot, but we did get an impressive visitor one day in the form of a rattlesnake that decided to come into the set to cool off.
In my movie Meetup, we were having DVD night, and once after the main feature, I showed The General. Everyone loved it.
Speaking of The Battleship Potemkin: I really, really tried to get hold of the musical score for it, with the idea of having the Google Orchestra (yes, there was such a thing) play along with the movie when we showed it. No luck.
Apart from his success in film I believe there was a not so nice side to his character. He impregnated, married and dumped really young women, and was know to sexually harass women on the set.
This website fails to mention his failings. I dont know if that's okay, feels a bit like white washing to me.
Now, don't take this as legal advice, but if the company re-scans/makes alterations to the image for display on the web, I think that counts as a new work
But I'm a bit hazy about how derivative works are actually defined.
You're correct, they count as new works. But that's not what's stated here, it's referring to all works whether reworked or not.
Chaplin died in 1977, so depending on a country's copyright laws his films are likely to remain in copyright until 2067. That means a 1918 Chaplin film will remain in copyright for 149 years. As I said, this is an outrageous abuse of copyright.
With such unreasonable copyright laws in place it's no wonder that so many just ignore them.
Perhaps so, and I think that's a good thing. Nevertheless, I can see cases where there will be arguments over where clean-up and restoration end and new original art begins.
For instance, say a film's master negative has been affected by patches of mold and detail lost. As the original information has been actually lost at these points, any reconstruction 'originates' with the reconstruction 'artist'. In some instances the reconstruction involves no art as it's obvious what's missing—say an image of a quarter coin with a section missing out of it, whereas reconstructing the missing expression on a person's face may require interpretation and thus deemed new original art. Given the longstanding and heated debate over copyright, it seems to me these gray areas will be hotly contested.
Obviously, where new material is added there is no contest, new copyright is invoked. For example, some years back someone posted a medium resolution (720px) copy of Kino's rework of Buster Keaton's The General to the Internet Archive and it was eventually withdrawn.
I'm not conversant with any special copyright arrangements surrounding Keaton's works but presumably the takedown wasn't based on the cleaned up footage (given Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp) but rather on the new soundtrack which accompanies the original silent footage.
Collaborative evidence of this is that other versions of The General weren't subject of the takedown. I vaguely recall that Keaton lost copyright over financial problems, if he'd been the copyright holder then we'd expect all copies to have been taken down (Keaton died in 1966 so if he'd still held the copyright at the time of his death then it would have been valid until 2056).
No, see my posts. Depending on what country one's in Chaplin's copyright could last until 2067 (Chaplin died in 1977, now add 90 years after the author's death).
Is there more information on how the website was developed? I can't find out with which content management system or framework the website was implemented. I am interested in that now.
Just off the more famous films (The Great Dictator and Modern Times and maybe City Lights for Chaplin, or The General for Keaton, say) I'd recommend The Kid for Chaplin, and Sherlock, Jr. for Keaton. And of course both made numerous short films, in addition to their features. Though the very-famous ones are all great, too—I especially love City Lights, personally.
Been meaning to check out Harold Lloyd (responsible for one of the most enduring and imitated images in Hollowood, the guy hanging on the clock on the side of a building, featured in Safety Last) but haven't made it to him yet. I bet he "reads" pretty well to a modern viewer, too.
[EDIT] Some beginner drama recommendations, for those who feel ready:
Metropolis (duh... though it's a bit on the long side, maybe skip if you can't tolerate longer movies, and it's maybe a bit belabored for modern sensibilities)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (just... damn. This is a perfect movie.)
L'Âge D'or (The Golden Age—but, uh, maybe just if you appreciate things a bit more art house)
Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon—it's short, and, if one plays with various accompanying soundtrack options, including some more modern ones, one may find it transcendently good)
M (yes Fritz Lang made this very short list twice, because fuck you this movie is amazing, this is maybe the most modern-feeling of this whole bunch)