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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.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Battle in the Clouds -1909
Country: United Kingdom
Director: Walter R. Booth
Writer: Walter R. Booth (screenplay)
Release Date: 29 December 1909 (USA)
Genres: Short | Fantasy | Sci-Fi
Also Known as: Der Luftkrieg der Zukunft Germany; The Aerial Torpedo UK (reissue title); The Battle in the Clouds USA; The Battle of the Clouds UK (alternative title)
Production Co: Urban Trading Company
Sound Mix: Silent
Color: Black and White
An inventor uses a wireless controlled flying torpedo to destroy enemy airships. This is a cracking little film from the pioneering days of cinema (just over a decade after the Lumiéres). It's not exactly science fiction, more a vision of what-might-be given the technology of the day. So we have fleets of airships bombing civilian targets, and an armoured car/tank firing ground-to-air missiles in an effort to destroy them.
Our hero has developed what we would now call a drone: a pilot-less aircraft capable of locking on to a target. He has proposed to the love of his life but her father turns him away. The girl's home is destroyed in the air-raid. Our hero rescues her and her father from the wreckage then returns to destroy the raiders with his new technology. He gets the girl, of course, but I'm not sure whether father was dead and out of the way or just willing to have a brilliant inventor for a son-in-law.
Of course the special effects are primitive but the shot of a burning church is still a distant ancestor of the destruction of the Empire State Building by Roland Emmerich. You can see the film at www.freemoviescinema.com. Have a look. It's worth a few minutes of your time.
Continuity: The burning fuse of one of the explosions near the armored car can be seen on the ground, before we see the streak that is supposed to be the aerial bomb hitting the ground.
An Interrupted Elopement - 1912
Country: USA
Language: English
Release Date: 15 August 1912 (USA)
Filming Locations: New York, USA
Production Co: Biograph Company
Director: Mack Sennett
Writer: S. Walter Bunting
Stars: Edward Dillon, Mabel Normand and William J. Butler
Genres: Short | Comedy
Runtime: 8 min (16 fps)
Sound Mix: Silent
Color: Black and White
Aspect Ratio: 1.33 : 1
Course à la saucisse - 1907
Country: France
Director: Alice Guy
Genres: Short
Also known as: The Race for the Sausage
Production Co: Société des Etablissements L. Gaumont
The film consists of some sort of poodle or poodle-mix stealing a long, long coil of sausages from the butcher shop (though it looks more like a rope). Suddenly, everyone in town is chasing the dog--almost like the people in "The Gingerbread Man" story from our youth. This makes the film unusual for an early Gaumont film, as the scenes change a lot during the course of the film. Not surprisingly for the era, the camera is totally stationary and inter-cutting is used extensively--not a roving camera lens.
It's all very slapstick and frantic. All in all, it's a bit overacted but quite fun--sort of like a French version of a Keystone comedy.
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