This site is dedicated to the preservation of memory of silent films. Although they were quite important in the evolution of cinema, they remain virtually forgotten nowadays. Since the best way to understand the present is taking an attentive look at the past, here you have some movies, pictures, interviews, etc. on silent cinema. Some occasional material on sound films will also be presented. I hope you enjoy getting to know a bit more about the beauty and sheer fun of these golden oldies.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Cruel Cruel Love - 1914
Chaplin's 8th Film released March 26 1914
This early Chaplin film has him playing a character quite different from the Tramp for which he would become famous. He is a rich, upper-class gentleman whose romance is endangered when his girlfriend oversees him being embraced by a maid. Chaplin's romantic interest in this film, Minta Durfee, was the wife of fellow Keystone actor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.
The Fatal Mallet - 1914
Charlie Chaplin's 15th Film Released June 1914.
Three man will fight for the love of a charming girl. Charlie will play dirty, throwing bricks to his contender, and using a huge hammer to hurt one of them. But a precocious kid will be the fourth suitor in discord.
Charlie throws a brick at a man and woman and gets it thrown back at him. The rivals fight. The lady leaves with a third suitor. Charlie finds a wooden mallet with which he subdues both rivals, locking them in a barn. He kicks the lady who instantly falls for him.
Kids Auto Races In Venice - 1914
Country: United States
Charlie, dressed as a tramp for the first time, goes to a baby-cart race in Venice, California. He causes a great deal of trouble and confusion, both on off the track (getting in the way of the cameraman) and on (interfering with the race). He succeeds in irritating both the participants and the public.
Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004189/
Police -1916
Charlie Chaplin's 49th Film Released May 27 1916
Police was Charlie Chaplin's 14th released film from Essanay. It was made at the Majestic Studio in Los Angeles. Charlie playing an ex-convict finds life on the outside not to his liking and leads him to breaking into a home with another thief (Wesley Ruggles). Edna Purviance plays the girl living in the home who tries to change him.
The New Janitor - 1914
Charlie Chaplin's 27th Film released Sept. 14 1914
The New Janitor was the 27th comedy from Keystone Studios to feature Charlie Chaplin. The film is arguably one of his best for the studio, and a precursor to a key Essanay short, The Bank. The film also demonstrates the differences that Chaplin had with Keystone comedy --- this film is a coherent whole in which the stock characters actually fill some emotional center. Chaplin brings a certain complexity to his janitor, unusual to the comedy factory of Mack Sennett. The film, which stars among Sennett's bit players Jess Dandy, Al St. John, John Francis Dillon, and Minta Durfee, is far more centered and clear in direction. Comedy flows from within the story rather than as a by-product of story. After all this is a typical bank robbery storyline
The Fugitive - 1910
Country: United States
Language:
English
Director: D.W.
Griffith
Writer: J.
McDonagh
Stars: Kate
Bruce, Edward Dillon and Clara T. Bracy
Release Date: 7
November 1910 (USA)
Filming
Locations: Fishkill, New York, USA
Production Co:
Biograph Company
Runtime: 17 min
(16 fps)
Sound Mix:
Silent
Color: Black and
White
Plot Keywords:
American Civil War | Melodrama
Genres: Short |
Drama | War
In the sting of
the Civil War, mothers and sweethearts must wait and worry as their sons and
lovers go off to the front. Forthwith, a Southerner named John (Edwin August)
goes off to fight for the Confederacy. Meanwhile, a Northerner named John
(Edward Dillon) goes off to fight for the Union. Naturally, the two opposing
soldiers named John have a mother (Kate Bruce or Clara T. Bracey) and a
sweetheart (Dorothy West or Lucy Cotton) waiting for their safe return. As fate
would have it, the Johns meet on the battlefield, and one shoots the other.
Later, Mr. August (of the Union) finds himself alone and pursued; the only
refuge is the home belonging to Ms. Bruce, mother of the Confederate officer he
shot. Thinking first as a mother, she hides "The Fugitive". Then, her
wounded son is brought home! A nice idea, but rather slightly told, from
director D.W. Griffith.
The Adventures of Dollie - 1908
Country: USA
Language: English (intertitles)
Director: D.W. Griffith, and G.W. Bitzer (uncredited)
Writer: Stanner E.V. Taylor
Stars: Arthur V. Johnson, Linda Arvidson and Gladys Egan
Release Date: 14 July 1908 (USA)
Also known as: Dollie kalandjai (Hungary), Dollys Abenteuer (Germany), Les aventures de Dollie (France)
Production Co: American Mutoscope & Biograph
Runtime: 12 min
Sound Mix: Silent
Color: Black and White
Plot Keywords: Gypsy | Barrel | Waterfall | Lost Child | Melodrama | Revenge | Kidnapping | One Reeler | Character Name In Title
Genres: Action | Short
On a warm and sunny summer's day, a mother and father take their young daughter Dollie on a riverside outing. A gypsy basket peddler happens along, and is angered when the mother refuses to buy his wares. He attacks mother and daughter but is driven off by the father. Later the gypsy sneaks back and kidnaps the girl. A rescue party is organized but the gypsy conceals the child in a 30 gallon barrel which he precariously places on the tail of the wagon. He and his gypsy-wife make their getaway by fording the river with the wagon. The barrel, with Dollie still inside, breaks free, tumbling into into the river; it starts floating toward the peril of a nearby waterfall . . .
Frankenstein - 1910
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: J. Searle Dawley
Writers: Mary Shelley (novel), J.
Searle Dawley
Stars: Mary Fuller, Charles Ogle
and Augustus Phillips
Release Date: 18 March 1910 (USA)
Production Co: Edison
Manufacturing Company
Sound Mix: Silent
Color: Black and White (tinted)
Plot Keywords: Frankenstein |
Mirror | Alchemy | Frankenstein's Monster | Experiment Gone Wrong | Gothic
Horror | Horror Movie Remade | One Word Title | Doctor Frankenstein | Reverse
Footage | Remade | Based On Novel | Character Name In Title
Genres: Short | Horror
Frankenstein, a young medical
students, trying to create the perfect human being, instead creates a misshapen
monster. Made ill by what he has done, Frankenstein is comforted by his fiancée
but on his wedding night he is visited by the monster. A fight ensues but the
monster, seeing himself in a mirror, is horrified and runs away. He later
returns, entering the new bride's room, and finds her alone.
Trivia
Since its original release, the
Thomas Edison "Frankenstein" had been listed as missing; no copies of
the film existed. An original nitrate print finally turned up in Wisconsin in
the mid-1970s.
Prior to the film's rediscovery,
only a few images of Charles Ogle as The Monster were known to exist. Interestingly,
Ogle looks a lot younger in the film than he does in the photographs.
This is one of the only
Frankenstein films where the monster is truly created. All Frankenstein films
that followed assembled body parts from various corpses to make the monster. In
this film, Frankenstein uses chemicals and "potions" to create the
monster. The "creation" scene was made by filming a monster-dummy
burning, and then playing the footage backwards.
First filmed version of the story
of Frankenstein's monster.
The Haunted Curiosity Shop (1901)
By 1901, director-illusionist W.R. Booth and producer-inventor R.W. Paul had so much confidence in the special effects techniques they had demonstrated in such earlier films as Upside Down, or The Human Flies (1899) and Railway Collision (1900) - each of which revolves around a single trick effect - that they started making films featuring more elaborate and ambitious techniques, of which The Haunted Curiosity Shop is a good example.
Despite the increased sophistication (since the film gives the appearance of a single shot, it clearly required a great deal of planning to put together), it is otherwise not much of an advance. Its story of a curiosity shop owner discovering that the various pieces of bric-a-brac on his shelves have a life of their own is primitive, and was clearly devised purely as a showcase for Booth and Paul's bag of tricks.
With these limitations in mind, though, it's an effective and engrossing experience, as the poor shop owner is beset by all manner of apparitions: floating heads, disembodied women, Egyptian mummies and an animated skeleton that predates Ray Harryhausen's rather more famous efforts in such films as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (US, d. Nathan Juran, 1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (d. Don Chaffey, 1963) by some six decades. The effects where, respectively, a woman's two halves rejoin themselves and a man in armour is systematically dismembered, are particularly impressive.
The same year, Booth and Paul would make The Magic Sword, a similarly elaborate special effects showcase but which also had a rather more involving multiple-shot narrative.
Michael Brooke
Link: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1016010/
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