Fuck your friends.



(this is not a command)

Metropolis works beautifully without sound.

I have that to watch this weekend!

yay! I really enjoyed it when we saw it in my Cinema class :)

well it's either that or calamari wrestler ;)

Its an essay I'm supposed to be writing, its a bit of a stupid question because almost non of the readings relate to it and I'm inclined to think that silent films and sound films are completly seperate beasts. Good silent film is about invoking emotional responeses where as sound film is about story.



I mean silent films stories are usually weaker than sound films.

It was a different era, I don't think you can really compare the two. A more innocent time.

High drama or slapstick (or both). You can't beat it.

yup well as the question says I have to defend it, the problem is I dont exactly agree with it, there are way more powerful sound films, like schindlers list or the shawshank redemption (is it bad I've yet to watch it?).

Yes! How can you not have seen these films? I've read the books too. Do I get brownie points?

well, wouldn't the other problem be that film is a vastly more prominent medium now than it was in the narrow window of time where silent films were being made? I mean, there are just way more sound films, making it hard to do a comparison.

There were a hell of alot of silent films, the problem is most were made for nickelodeans which meant they were short films only a couple of minutes long.



It took a while to get big productions, and alot of these films are lost.

I guess you have to look at silent movies as pioneers for todays guff.

chaplan is a great example of silent film art. I know you have another blog with that title but I havnt read that one yet.

Oh according to estimates there were about 150,000 silent films made.

my grandmother used to play piano at the theatre when they screened silent films

no sound just meant they had to get creative with what they had to work with. Chaplin in Modern Times was awesome

This is the problem I'm having with arguing that silent film is better than sound film, because from its very inception they were aiming towards sound.



Charlie chaplin is one of the few individuals who activly avoided it.

use him as an example then. they learnt to be economic with their printed on screen words and the acting had to tell the story not the sound. There is a gauge ( i suppose you could call it that) with cartoons. If you turn the sound off and you dont get whats going on then its not a decently crafted cartoon. It relies too heavily on the sound to succeed not the actions of the characters. I guess this applies to the slapstick style of humour within(which comes directly from silent film) that probably does not help you, but keep fishing you will turn something up for your argument

Defend the films as artforms. I look at art as a deliberate and premeditated work. A piece that has been planned to the tiniest possible detail to reflect the concept of the artist. In that sense you can look at the restrictions of silent film to be a more pure sense of expression. That is to say that there are fewer variables to mask the films inadequacies such that a truly great silent film has a minimal elegance. You could say that the intent of the artist is more clear.



A few films I liked:

•Unknown with Lon Chaney. Chaney is incredible in it, but the ending really seals it for me.



•Blood & Sand by Rudolph Valentino. Great movie about a bullfighter that destroys himself and his family for a woman.



•Greed by Von Stroheim. Truly an epic project, if I remember, this movie was intended to be almost seven hours long. It's been edited several times over the years but it still has a lot of power. I don't know if editing improved or detracted from the movie.

By the way I don't agree that silents are better or worse. The medium is nothing compared to the people involved in creating it.

The Shawshank Redemption is the most over-rated film I've ever seen.

Have you seen The Aviator? Maybe look into Howard Hughes. He was a contemporary of the silent era. Surely there'd be a lot of info out there about why he chose to redo his film for sound, even though he'd spent three years and millions of dollars making it. I don't know if either version of the film survives, but perhaps a comparative study?