Another quick blogpost from me to note that it is 100 years to the day since the wonderful vampire film and (bootleg) Dracula adaptation Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror premiered! You don’t often get to celebrate a full century of a deathless classic – well you do if you’re a silent film fan, but you … Continue reading A century of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror – and it’s back in cinemas
Name: Nosferatu. Age: 93 years young. Remind me which one that is? Oh come on. Nosferatu is a classic – FW Murnau’s free-floating Dracula adaptation is one of scariest films of all time, and one of the most beautiful too. Is that the one with hunchbacked shadow lurching up the stairs? Bingo. Surely it’s not … Continue reading Nosferatu: back on Blu-ray
Fresh from a theatrical release and a flurry of Halloween shows, Nosferatu springs into life on Blu-Ray, courtesy of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label. This new release is an update of the label’s previous DVD, but features the Symphony of Horror in gleaming 1080p glory, with a handful of new features as a bonus prize. This is a precious object then, … Continue reading Nosferatu (1922): Blu-Ray & DVD review
This is a guest post for Silent London by Neil Brand In 1925, Bram Stoker’s widow, Florence, won a plagiarism case against film producer Albin Grau over the latter’s 1922 chiller, Nosferatu. To be frank, Grau didn’t have a leg to stand on – he had applied for a licence to film Dracula, been refused … Continue reading Nosferatu: the love story
The outdoor silent film screenings at the East End film festival are always a highlight of the year. Held in the centre of Spitalfields market, the screenings are accompanied by live music from Minima – guaranteed to send a shiver down the spine. But this year Minima, and the festival, have come up with something … Continue reading Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror at the East End film festival, 7 July 2012
Murnau’s acclaimed Dracula adaptation, Nosferatu (1922) is still one of the most chilling horror movies ever made – and probably the most influential. So if you’re looking for a cool halloween night out, you can’t beat watching Max Schreck’s shadow creeping up those stairs with Minima’s heavy rock soundtrack. Luckily, then, there will be a few … Continue reading Nosferatu with Minima and organ, Halloween 2011
Twilight, this is not. We could argue for hours about which is the greatest vampire film ever made, but Nosferatu is probably the most visually distinctive of the lot, definitely one of the scariest and a fairly faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to boot. If you haven’t seen Nosferatu before, no doubt you will … Continue reading Nosferatu at the Ritzy Cinema, 29 April 2011
I am almost home from my festival jaunts, and it seems the weather has turned chilly since I left home. The nights are drawing in, the candles are flickering… it must be spooky season. Why not kick off your annual creepathon with a screening of a silent classic: Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 demonic drama-documentary Häxan? My … Continue reading Phantom Pipes: Häxan at Regent Street Cinema
This is a guest post for Silent London by Daniel Riccuito, David Cairns and Tom Sutpen. If you like this, you will love The Chiseler. It is the custom of illuminated manuscripts to transform sacred words into shimmering icons which break, easily, beyond the sensory limitations of simple text, rendering ordinary letters into evocative, animate … Continue reading The Dance of Cartesian Dualism
Season’s greetings Silent Londoners. It’s that time of year when we like to look back at the year, and especially at all the great silent movies we watched. Who knows what normal is any more? But this year we had in-person film festivals, seasons, screenings and conferences a-plenty. We had new books and DVDs to … Continue reading The Greatest Silent Film Poll of 2022: vote for your winners now
This is a guest post for Silent London by Henry K. Miller. Here, Miller introduces Hitch-22, his “alternative chronology of 1922”, the first part of which is published today. A typical day in Kevin Jackson’s Constellation of Genius, his engrossing chronology of 1922, much in the air in 2022, a year on from his untimely … Continue reading Introducing Hitch-22
Three little words of Italian you need to learn if you attend Il Cinema Ritrovato: Cento Anni Fa. This must-see strand of the festival, curated by Bologna’s silent cinema supremos Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko, dials back the programming clock by a century. The name means simply: a hundred years ago. So it was that … Continue reading Il Cinema Ritrovato: a week in 1922
Yes, I have been hiding it very well, but I am actually a big fan of the Cinema’s First Nasty Women project. Who knew? Co-curated by Laura Horak, Maggie Hennefeld and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, the Nasty Women project has trawled the archives for trailblazing examples of female energy, anger, transgression, rebellions and explosive hilarity in early … Continue reading Take Cinema’s First Nasty Women home this summer
All silent film festivals are not the same. Tromsø Stumfilmdager in northern Norway is full of surprises. For one thing, it was the first time I have ever been offered, and gratefully accepted, earplugs before a silent movie screening. But first of all, as we’re (mostly) Brits here, you’ll want to know about the weather. … Continue reading Tromsø Stumfilmdager 2022: An Arctic adventure in film and music
This blogpost is based on the introduction I gave to a screening of this film in the BFI Southbank season that I curated, In the Eyes of a Silent Star: The Films of Asta Nielsen. The season continues until 16 March. This irresistibly grotesque German silent is an adaptation of a play that was hugely popular … Continue reading Earth Spirit (1923): Asta Nielsen as Leopold Jessner’s Expressionist ‘man-eater’ Lulu
I said something a little flippant in a Q&A once. OK, more than once, but let’s just talk about this one time. The occasion was a screening of A Page of Madness (1926) as part of the Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival, and I was responding to a comment about experimental silent film, and … Continue reading Toute la Mémoire du Monde: the experiment of silent cinema
This is an extended version of the screening notes I wrote for the screening of The Parson’s Widow at the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival 2019. That screening was accompanied brilliantly by John Sweeney – who will be playing live for the film in Bristol soon. See details below. Don’t let the forbidding reputation of Carl … Continue reading The Parson’s Widow (1920): Dreyer’s humanism and humour
Two just-teenage runaways arrive in New York City, one in monochrome 1927 and the other in the notorious, sultry summer of 1977. That’s the simple premise of Todd Haynes’s latest, Wonderstruck, a film that is as rich as it is gentle. The film is based, as Martin Scorsese’s Hugo was, on a graphic novel by … Continue reading Wonderstruck review: a storm of sorrow, nostalgia and silence
There are a handful of silent films that most cinephiles see first. Battleship Potemkin, Metropolis, Sunrise, The General and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari perhaps, give or take Nosferatu, a Hitchcock and a couple more Hollywood favourites. There is nothing dismaying about the establishment of these films as classics of the silent era, widely available … Continue reading Silent Cinema: Before the Pictures Got Small review – revisiting the canon
It was auteur day at Pordenone, with works by three silent master-directors scattered nonchalantly through the programme: Ozu, Murnau and Dreyer. But auteurism is anachronistic to silent cinema and anathema to many early film aficionados, so fittingly some of my favourite screenings today fell far from the canon. One of the best things I saw … Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2017: Pordenone post No 6
Silent London 