Silent Beauties

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.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Invaders - 1912

Country: United States

Language: English (intertitles)

Writer: C. Gardner Sullivan (scenario - uncredited)

Stars: Francis Ford (Colonel James Bryson), Ethel Grandin (Colonel Bryson's Daughter) and Ann Little (Sky Star)

Release Date: 29 November 1912 (USA)

Production Co: Kay-Bee Pictures

Runtime: 41 min (2004 National Film Preservation Foundation print)

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Genres: Western

The U.S. Army and the Indians sign a peace treaty. However, a group of surveyors trespass on the Indians' land and violate the treaty. The army refuses to listen to the Indians' complaints, and the surveyors are killed by the Indians. A vicious Indian war ensues, culminating in an Indian attack on an army fort.

Trivia

One of the films in the 3-disk boxed DVD set called "More Treasures from American Film Archives (2004)", compiled by the National Film Preservation Foundation from 5 American film archives. This film is preserved by the Library of Congress (from the AFI/Blackhawk collection), has a running time of 41 minutes and an added piano score.

Rapsodia Satanica - 1920

Country: Italy

Director: Nino Oxilia

Writers: Alberto Fassini (screenplay), Alberto Fassini (story), Fausto Maria Martini (poem)

Stars: Lyda Borelli (Contessa Alba d'Oltrevita), Andrea Habay (Tristano) and Ugo Bazzini (Mephisto)

Release Date: 1915 (Italy)

Also known as: Rapsódia Satânica (Portugal), Rapsodia satánica (Spain), Rhapsodie des Satans (Germany), Rhapsodie satanique (France), Satan's Rhapsody (USA)

Production Co: Società Italiana Cines

Runtime: 40 min | Germany: 45 min (restored)

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White | Color (hand-colored)

Plot Keywords: Aging | Color Tint | Deal With The Devil

Genres: Short | Drama | Fantasy | Mystery

Rapsodia Satanica (1915) was the last film directed by Nino Oxilia and is undoubtedly one of the finest achievements of the early Italian cinema. In it, Oxilia spins a variation on the Faust myth, embodied here by the diva Lyda Borelli. Typical of extravagant D'Annunzian aestheticism at its height, Rapsodia Satanica was one of the summits of what was later called the "tail coat film." Diametrically opposed to the "cinema of reality" practiced by Serena, Martoglio and others, "tail coat films" set their melodramatic stories in the salons and villas of the upper middle class and the aristocracy, deploying narrative structures contrived to showcase their actors and especially its actresses. This had the effect of accentuating their physical presence and turning them into stars - probably the first stars in movie history. The success of the "dive" contributed to the development of motion picture grammar in its special use of the close-up.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Thais - 1916

Country: Italy

Director: Anton Giulio Bragaglia

Writer: Riccardo Cassano

Stars: Augusto Bandini, Alberto Casanova and Thaïs Galitzky

Also known as: Les possédées (France)

Production Co: Novissima Film

Runtime: 35 min (18 fps) (2001 restoration)

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Plot Keywords: Futurism

Genres: Short

"Futurism" was an avant-garde artistic movement, created in 1909 ( as you can see your grandfathers were long haired and dangerous youngsters for a while ) that demands a rejection of tradition and the past while exalting technical innovations, especially the mechanical ones, present and future. This avant-garde artistic movement ( literature and music genres) found great acceptance in Italy where many artists developed the Futurism postulates.

Herr Anton Giulio Bragaglia was a notable Italian Futurist who began experimenting with photography and published an important manifesto as a theoretical basis for Futurist photography, "Fotodinamismo Futurista". In addition to his career as set designer Herr Bragaglia had a short but intense film career, "Thais" being his debut as a Futurist director.

In any case "Thais" is a film that combines in a strange way classicism and the ( Futurist ) modernism, a paradox since we know that the Futurists were people who rejected tradition and the"Thais" story is a very conventional one. It tells of a "femme fatale" who toys with and uses her admirers for her capricious purposes with the expected tragic ending. Classicism can be seen too in the beautiful images from evocative landscapes sequences as the ferry at the river or Bianca's race to the abyss ( "Naturalism" reminiscences?... ) or Herr Charles Baudelaire's poems ( "Impressionism" reminiscences? ) Only at the end of the film do we see the "Futurist" influences in the highly stylized and geometrical décors in which our heroine suffers her particular punishment, a sequence in which Herr Bragaglia's talent as a set designer is put to good effect.

For those reasons for this German Count "Thais" is a kind of interesting film catalogue of many artistic movements ( curious artistic duality ) strangely mixed, a display of the spirit of those innovative early years that grants the film an artistic and remarkable balance as a whole.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must retrieve his conservative Teutonic influences.

L'Odissea - 1911

Country: Italy

Language: Italian

Directors: Francesco Bertolini, Giuseppe de Liguoro, Adolfo Padovan

Writer: Homer

Stars: Giuseppe de Liguoro, Ubaldo Maria Del Colle and Eugenia Tettoni Fior

Release Date: February 1912 (USA)

Also known as: De dwaalwegen van Odysseus (Netherlands - informal literal title); Die Irrfahrten des Odysseus (Germany); Homer's Odyssey (USA); L'odissea di Omero (Italy - alternative title); L'odyssée (Switzerland - French title); L'odyssée d'Homère (France);

Odisea de Homero (Spain); Odyssee (Austria); Odysseian harharetket (Finland)

Production Co: Milano Film

Sound Mix: Silent

Taglines: Homer's Odissey appeals to every one. It's a story of love, death, passion and destruction. The greatest epic poem the world has ever had. It has lived for centuries, the film will too.

Color: Black and White

Genres: Drama | Adventure | Fantasy

One of hundreds of movies produced by Milano films, L'Odissea is good enough to let us know why Italy was one of the world's top film producers before WWI. At a time in which most films ran for about 10-12 minutes, this half an hour film (part of it is said to be missing, so its length could be even longer) is quite an accomplishment.

The Oddysey is told to every last detail: from the departure from Ithaca to the adventures involving the cyclops Polyphemus, the sirens, the monster Scylla, the nymph Calypso, Nausicaa and her father Alcinous, the return of Ulysses and his fight against the suitors disguised as a beggar. The style is a little old-fashioned (anything prior to The Birth of a Nation could be considered as such) but the intertitles guide us very well throughout the entire movie (contrary to others in which we can easily get lost, take L'assommoir (1909) as an example). The special effects are good enough: Polyphemus is huge compared to Ulysses and his crew, and Scylla is quite impressive for a 1910 monster.

Arizona Days - 1928

Country: USA

Language: English

Director: J.P. McGowan

Writers: Brysis Coleman (story), Mack V. Wright (adaptation)

Stars: Bob Custer, Peggy Montgomery and J.P. McGowan

Release Date: 1 August 1928 (USA)

Also known as: Kakourgoi kata liston (Greece - transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title)

Production Co: El Dorado Productions

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Genres: Action | Western

To stop the rustling of Hicks, Martin turns to the Cattlemen's Association. They send undercover agent Drexel who sets a trap for the gang. But Drexel's partner Van Wiley, posing as a dude, lets their identity become known putting them in jeopardy.

A Bird's a Bird - 1915

Country: USA

Director: Edwin Frazee

Writer: Edwin Frazee

Stars: Chester Conklin (Mr. Walrus) , Minta Durfee (Walrus' wife) and Hank Mann (A Foreigner), Al St. John (Pa), Slim Summerville (Mr. Spegle)

Release Date: 8 February 1915 (USA)

Production Co: Keystone Film Company

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Genres: Short | Comedy

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The False Faces - 1919

Country: USA

Director: Irvin Willat

Writers: Louis Joseph Vance (novel), Irvin Willat

Stars: Henry B. Walthall, Mary Anderson and Lon Chaney

Release Date: 16 February 1919 (USA)

Production Co: Paramount Pictures

Runtime: USA: 70 min | 76 min (DVD)

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Plot Keywords: Lone Wolf | Based On Novel

Genres: Drama

During World War I, a professional thief known as The Lone Wolf is assigned to steal a cylinder with important information from behind the German lines and bring it to Allied intelligence headquarters. However, German agents set out to stop him, headed by the man who was responsible for the death of the thief's sister.

The story for "The False Faces" is taken from a novel by Louis Joseph Vance based on a character he created called 'The Lone Wolf'. Films about WW1 made during WW1 are interesting. The opening stages of Irvin Willat's "The False Faces" hark forward six & eleven years to the battle sequences in "The Big Parade" & "All's Quiet on the Western Front" respectively. Indeed both King Vidor & Lewis Milestone must've viewed portions of this film. 1919 was a break out year for Lon Chaney with "The Wicked Darling", "Victory", and the hugely successful "The Miracle Man". "The False Faces" is Chaney's first film of 1919 so it was probably made while WW1 was still going on(before November 11 1918). The film actually stars Henry B. Walthall as a Sidney Reilly type spy, 'The Lone Wolf'. Quite possibly a double agent. The movie is a potpurri of a spy cheating officials and officials cheating the spy. Director Willat has scenes that occur on board a real passenger liner and later in a submarine. Amazing that Willat could obtain the use of a sub for his film. Chaney plays a man called Ekstrom in several disguises & whom 'The Lone Wolf' harbors a personal vengeance against. Ekstrom is a German w/spiked helmet, an officer on an ocean liner, a sub captain and a shaven adventurer in drawing room back on shore. An actress called Mary Anderson plays the sole female character in this film. A popular and pretty actress in the silents, she's all but forgotten today. Irving Willat's brother, Edwin Willat, is the cinematographer. The print of this film survives generally in good condition but some of the intertitles are so blacked out that they can't be read. Grapevine video actually replaced key titles so to hold the viewer to the story. The latter part of the film tends to get melodramatic. But the highlight scenes are on a real passenger liner(makes some think of the Titanic & Lusitania) and a real submarine with scenes that hark forward to 'Destination Tokyo' and 'Das Boot'. Most films about WW1 made during WW1 tend to be propaganda or over the top grotesque comedies aimed at Germans. This movie is a little bit of both but alas one of the more tamer films compared to others.