Devon. I’m in Devon. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.
This evening, at the Plymouth Arts Cinema I had the honours of introducing a screening of the modern silent that made a big noise, The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011). You remember? The one that won FIVE Oscars? With the dashing Jean Dujardin and the yet more dashing Uggie the Dog?
Raise one Gallic eyebrow if you know the film I mean.
Continue reading The Artist on stage at Theatre Royal Plymouth“Sixty years later I am still bringing people to see Napoléon, that’s quite true. And also bringing people back to the cinema because this is the age where they watch Lawrence of Arabia on their mobile phones, for God’s sake. The cinema was designed for sharing, and that is sharing the reactions to the film. It’s not just being in the same room as a lot of other people. It’s much more emotional than that.”
Kevin Brownlow on restoring Napoléon“Never forget, that this masterpiece is also a monsterpiece.” Georges Mourier on restoring Napoléon
The story of Napoléon will never end, I suspect. This mammoth film, made by Abel Gance at the height of the silent era, intended to be just the start of telling the emperor’s tale, has been through a lot already. This site has covered Kevin Brownlow’s exhaustive restoration of the film, and the late Carl Davis’s process of writing a new score. You may well have had the opportunity to see their lustrous five-and-a-half-hour version, either at one of the live screenings in London, California and elsewhere, or on the film’s release: in cinemas, on Blu-ray, and on BFI Player. It’s a phenomenal experience, even before the famous triptych finale, when the screen gets wider, and wider, and wider.
Alongside this story, there has always been the shorter, Francis Ford Coppola restoration, scored by his father Carmine and screened at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, running at about four hours.
And now there is another Napoléon version, clocking in at seven hours and five minutes, the product of a 16-year digital restoration project at the Cinématheque Française, with the support of the CNC, which will make its debut this year. And you will surely get a chance to see this one.
Continue reading Napoléon vu par Netflix: What next for Abel Gance’s 1927 epic?“It’s hell on earth to be heavenly.”
How to break the silent-movie internet? Get Taylor Swift to write about one of the greatest stars of the cinematic jazz age. Better yet, get her to tease the track title ahead of time so that the web can be filled with clickbait speculation and “Everything you need to know” filler articles for weeks in advance of the album’s arrival.
But now, The Tortured Poets Department, Swift’s 11th studio album, has been released, and we can all brew ourselves a coffee, relax and listen to ‘Clara Bow’.
I was looking for Yoda when I bumped into Eadweard Muybridge. These are the circles film history moves in. This year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the 27th, took place in the grandeur of the theatre of the Palace of Fine Arts, an elegant neo-classical folly of gigantic proportions, built as a temporary attraction for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and then rebuilt in more permanent form 50 years later. Here, time is a pretzel. Like the architecture, cinema becomes both ancient and the modern: live performances of century-old works.
Before the films began, I ventured just a few yards from the Palace for a guided tour of the LucasFilm building, home of some of the film industry’s most cutting-edge special effects and beloved animatronic characters. Case in point: our meeting point was at the Yoda Fountain, just in front of the of the offices, a thrilling rendez-vous for anyone’s inner child. That’s when my jet lag and a tendency to meander led me to take a wrong turn into the 19th century, and the statue of Muybridge, the photography pioneer who discovered the secrets of motion in a series of still frames – cinema in its simplest form. Born in Kingston, Surrey, Muybridge began his photography career in San Francisco, and the city is justifiably proud of his work and its legacy. Somehow, my sense of direction led me right back where I started from.
The fashionable set is always the first to name a trend. So if you know you know, but if you don’t know you need to know that 2024 is the year of Coquette Core, a prettified aesthetic that can be boiled down to: put a bow on it. That’s technically a beribboned bow with a lower-case b, not a Clara Capital-B-Bow, but the difference is only nominal. At this year’s Hippodrome Silent Film Festival we celebrated the age of the flapper, with all things frilly, feminine and flirtatious.
If you wanted to keep up with the new womenswear trends in the 1920s and 1930s, the cinemagazine Eve’s Film Review would have been your bible, and one of my favourite events at this year’s Hippfest was Jenny Hammerton’s presentation on these witty and inventive female-interest dispatches. Here, every cinemagoer could truly learn how to be “a modern”, and more specifically, how to save your stockings from mud-spatters, advice that all of us in Bo’ness could truly use.
Continue reading Hippfest 2024: seduced by silentsIf you truly love something, let he, she, they or it know. Now, in this instance, I am talking about silent film, and it is the season for wearing your heart on your sleeve, so here’s an opportunity to do just that. Coincidentally, if you are the sort of person who has considered giving up talkies for Lent this is also very much right up your avenue.
Cinema’s First Nasty Women: A Demographic Survey is a research, curation, and outreach project led by Laura Horak (Carleton University), Maggie Hennefeld (University of Minnesota), and Russell Zych (UCLA Film & Television Archive). And this Valentine season, the Nasty Women want you to let them know how you really feel about silent movies. If you fill in this survey, you will be helping them to gain a deeper understanding of silent film audiences today – who’s watching, how frequently, in what spaces and formats, and toward what ends? What are people’s (mis)impressions of silent-era cinema?
The Nasty Women plan to use the data collected in this survey to develop a better understanding of present-day audiences for silent film programming and physical media releases. Insights from this study will help silent film organisations build their audiences and raise audience engagement. In other words, it is in your interests to let them know how you truly feel.
How deep is your love? Let the Nasty Women know by filling in this survey. And remember, just as with a Valentine, all responses to the survey are totally anonymous – plus, completing the form is voluntary and doesn’t commit you to anything.
I may be a humble blogger typing at my desk, but just imagine I am a glamorous celebrity cracking first-rate jokes while wearing a designer ballgown. I have counted the votes, and I am ready to announce the winners of the Silent London Poll of 2023!
Congratulations to all the people mentioned below – as ever, these categories were bursting with great nominations. Thank you for all your votes, and your comments, which remind us all of the passion for silent film out there.
Without further ado, let me open this giant stack of golden envelopes. Here are your winners.
Your winner: Stella Dallas (Henry King, 1925), with a score composed by Stephen Horne, orchestrated by Ben Palmer and performed by Orchestra del Teatro Comunale directed by Timothy Brock, in the Piazza Maggiore Bologna, as part of Il Cinema Ritrovato
I said: “Before Monday night’s screening of the original 1925 adaptation of Olive Higgins Prouty’s weepie, some people in Bologna were still dropping the names of Barbara Stanwyck and King Vidor. After Monday, the talk of the town was only Belle Bennett, Henry King and Stephen Horne, whose marvellous score, alongside Bennett’s impeccable performance, left the piazza awash with tears. Horne has long championed this film, as have I, and the new restoration from MOMA is a very welcome, and beautiful thing. I really hope more people get to see this wonderful film now. Silent melodrama really can be the very finest melodrama.”
Honourable mention: Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, 1925), at the same festival, with Timothy Brock’s new orchestral score.
Hippfest approaches! But before the IRL festival in Bo’ness, 20-24 March, the Hippfest at Home programme promises online treats for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home. And the first event is coming up very soon indeed!
Next Friday evening, 26 January, I will be delivering a lecture called Frances Marion: Hollywood’s Favourite Storyteller, with clips accompanied by the brilliant Mike Nolan. Find out more about the Oscar-winning genius who wrote the best films for stars such as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Marie Dressler and more.You can book your ticket here (it’s free or just £3 if you can spare the change).
See you there I hope!
EDIT: Here is the lecture on YouTube
I am just about to sign off for the year, so I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading, and supporting, this blog in 2023. This year has been another very challenging one, on the world stage, and in the arts, but I continue to be impressed by the resilience, energy and imagination of people in the silent film world. So much work going on, so many opportunities to share great films and music with each other.
Continue reading Season’s greetings, Silent LondonersSeason’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.
2023 was a busy year. We had in-person and online film festivals, seasons, screenings and conferences, some fabulous new restorations, discs and some big anniversaries. We had new books and DVDs to enjoy. I was a little distracted, but the silent film scene was booming.
Continue reading The Silent London Poll of 2023: vote for your winners nowVelvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema, Vito Adriaensens, Edniburgh University Press 2023
This is a guest post by Alex Barrett for Silent London. Alex Barrett is an award-winning independent filmmaker based in London.
All too often over the years, the term “theatrical” has been thrown at films as an insult, as if showing an influence from the stage is something to be deplored. Such a notion stems, perhaps, from the idea that if cinema is to be considered a true art form, it must distinguish itself through uniqueness, shedding any influence from the other arts.
The notion of medium-specificity is discussed early on in Vito Adriaensens’ refreshing take on film history, which argues for a different tack: in this engaging study of early European film, Adriaensens seeks to show how heavily the roots of Euro cinema were, in fact, entangled in other art forms and how, by associating itself with the established arts, the fledgling medium sought to legitimise itself in the eyes of its audience.
Continue reading Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: a refreshing take on the history of film, theatre and artDanish and German Silent Cinema: Towards a Common Film Culture, Edited by: Lars-Martin Sørensen and Casper Tybjerg, Edinburgh University Press, 2023
This is a guest post by Alex Barrett for Silent London. Alex Barrett is an award-winning independent filmmaker based in London.
At its simplest, the history of silent film in Denmark and Germany can be seen as a story of two halves, divided by World War I: first, there was the rise of the Danish Nordisk Film Company, a major player in production and distribution throughout Europe whose success was ultimately stymied by the war; and then there was Germany’s UFA, a government-funded consolidation of private film companies ready to capitalise on the creative boom born from the county’s post-war malaise.
Continue reading Danish and German Silent Cinema review: the rich entanglements of transnational filmmakingThis is an expanded version of an essay I wrote for Sight and Sound in 2020. The First Year (Frank Borzage, 1926) screens this week at MoMA on the opening night of the After Alice, Beyond Lois programme, curated by Kate Saccone and Dave Kehr to commemorate 10 years of the Women Film Pioneers Project.
Frank Borzage was one of the greatest Hollywood directors of young love. When we remember his silent work in particular, a very distinctive kind of romantic melodrama come to the fore: a passionate tale in which two youthful lovers confront unbearable adversity and yet are finally saved by the redemptive, mystical power of true love. Most famously, this path from darkness into light was trod by Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell in a trio of celebrated Borzage films from the end of the silent era: 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928) and Lucky Star (1929).
Continue reading The First Year (1926): The cure for matrimonial measlesSome news is too good not to share, even if the Atlantic Ocean makes this a little inconvenient for me, personally. If you can be in New York later this month and next, I urge you to attend a particularly excellent birthday party.
The Women Film Pioneers Project, an impeccable resource for early and silent film history, has reached its 10th birthday. The brainchild of Jane Gaines, and managed by Kate Saccone, the WFPP has been doing the good work of balancing the gender books of film history for 10 years now, and this calls for a celebration. One that takes the form of a film season, curated by Saccone with Dave Kehr at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Continue reading After Alice, Beyond Lois: Celebrating the Women Film Pioneers Project at MoMAMichael Powell made films in the south of France. Before that one. His first job in the film industry was working at the Victorine studios of Rex Ingram, just outside Nice, in the mid-1920s. He was 19 and he took on pretty much any job he could on set, trying to learn the business from the ground up. It worked, didn’t it? He even appeared in front of the camera a few times, often playing a sappy creation called Cicero Simp in the Riviera Revels comic shorts.
Continue reading The Magician (1926): Rex Ingram, Michael Powell and the French RivieraI 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 excellent friends at Evolution of Horror, who leave no stone in scary cinema unturned, are hosting a screening of Häxan with live organ accompaniment at one of London’s most historic film venues, the Regent Street Cinema.
There’s more. The screening, which takes place this Thursday, 19 October, will be followed by a panel discussion hosted by EOH’s own Mike Muncer, with peerless horror expert Kim Newman, terrifyingly knowledgeable actor James Swanton – and myself, the world’s most squeamish woman, and something of a silent film aficionado, it has been said.
The Evolution of Horror events are always good fun – I have been part of panels for Nosferatu and The Birds in the past, so I know what I am talking about. And to get a sense of EOH’s insightful yet irreverent style, you can explore their treasure trove of podcasts here. Just don’t have nightmares. Well not unless they look as stunning as the work of Johan Ankerstjerne. In which case, be my guest.
As they say here in France: je vous souhaite une bonne séance!
Excuse me while I push at an open door. Who here would like to see one of the world’s finest silent film experts and accompanists host a show dedicated to the comic brilliance of Laurel and Hardy? Ah, that’s all of you. Well good news, friends, as Neil Brand is taking his An Evening with Laurel and Hardy show on the road across Britain. And I mean across Britain.
Brand, his piano, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of Stan and Ollie, will set you up for a side-splitting dive into Hollywood’s golden age of slapstick. You may just learn something, but laughs are guaranteed.
“Join Neil Brand, composer, writer, broadcaster, musician who is a world expert on silent film & silent comedy with his all-new show about the immortal comedy duo. Fully illustrated with stills, clips & Neil’s superlative piano accompaniment, this show promises gales of laughter throughout. “
Check out the tour dates here. There is bound to be a show somewere near you, so treat yourself. And keep up to date with more of Brand’s work here.
The final day of the Giornate, for indeed this was the final day of the Giornate, was a lot like the Ryder Cup. Confused? Well bear with me as I unpack this extremely rare sporting analogy. It was a case of Europe vs the United States, with the home continent playing the first half of the day and Hollywood taking over just as the sun was about to set.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 8You don’t have to be superstitious to notice when the date is Friday the 13th, and conduct yourself cautiously as a result. And of course I am not superstitious – unless you count the fact that I am convinced I willed this evening’s gala into existence by the power of my mind. But that’s a story for later on…
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 7Good vibes only at the Giornate on this sunny Thursday. All of us who made it to the extra-early morning serial knew that we had got out of bed on the right side as soon as we realised that this episode of Le P’tit Parigot might have been called La P’tite Parisienne. Yes, it was young Bouboule’s time to shine, as she raced to the rescue of Biscot in a very fetching Delaunay pinafore, and explained her actions in a nifty flashback while the two of them filed through his prison bars. The episode took a turn for the torrid towards the end, but otherwise oh what a joy.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 6
Silent London 