Category Archives: Blog

Blog

In memoriam: Carl Davis

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I wanted to write something about Carl Davis, but I didn’t really know where to begin. Other people can say far more intelligent things about his music. Other people were in the right time at the right place.

But for an accident of birth, my first introduction to the work of Carl Davis might have been his astonishing score for The World at War, or more aptly for my interests, his collaborations with Kevin Brownlow and David Gill on the Thames Silents, or on the landmark television series Hollywood. I was lucky however, to be exactly this age: I was a bookish teenager when the BBC broadcast Pride and Prejudice, adapted by Andrew Davies, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and with a soundtrack by Carl Davis. Formative.

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Blog, DVD, Pandora's book

Open Pandora’s Box on Eureka Blu-ray this year

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Blulu-ray? Brooks set?

No, I’ll start again.

Very welcome news from Eureka Entertainment! The good people of Eureka, who have brought us so many beautiful silent film Blu-rays, in the past are releasing Pandora’s Box (GW Pabst, 1929) on Blu-ray on 30 October this year. This is the film’s debut on Blu-ray in the UK.

Continue reading Open Pandora’s Box on Eureka Blu-ray this year →
Blog, Festival

Shhh… Chichester International Film Festival celebrates the silents

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This August, silent film fans in search of a summer holiday should take trip to sunny West Sussex, and the Chichester International Film Festival. The festival is now in its 31st year, and in 2023 Roger Gibson steps down as Artistic Director and Programmer of the festival, a post he has held for many years. It’s no coincidence that there are a few of his favourite films in the programme, including some of the silent classics.

In fact, there is an especially strong lineup of silent cinema with live music at the festival this year, which runs 4-27 August. The silent film programme comprises Neil Brand’s acclaimed Laurel and Hardy show, John Sweeney playing for Gibson’s choice The Italian Straw Hat, Ben Hall accompanying The Phantom of the Opera on the St John’s Chapel organ, and the Buster Plays Buster show featuring Steamboat Bill, Jr. There’s also a screening of Harold Lloyd’s jaw-dropping stunt comedy Safety Last!.

The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera

Here is the full silent lineup, and links for booking tickets, which will be on sale on Friday 21 July.

  • 13 & 26 August Safety Last!, New Park Cinema, Chichester – book here.
  • 15 August The Italian Straw Hat with John Sweeney, Guildhall, Priory Park, Chichester – book here.
  • 16 August Buster Plays Buster, Guildhall, Priory Park, Chichester – book here.
  • 22 August Neil Brand Presents Laurel and Hardy, New Park Cinema, Chichester – book here.
  • 25 August The Phantom of the Opera, St John’s Chapel, Chichester – book here.
Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923)
Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923)
  • Explore the full lineup of the 2023 Chichester International Film Festival here, and the Special Events in particular here.
  • I am also giving a talk at the festival, on the career of Cate Blanchett, who is the subject of a retrospective strand, and strikes permitting, Roger and I will be leading a Q&A with the actress after a screening of the fabulous Tár. Both of these events are on 21 August.
  • Silent London will always be free to all readers. If you enjoy checking in with the site, including reports from silent film festivals, features and reviews, please consider shouting me a coffee on my Ko-Fi page.
At the talkies, Blog

The mechanics of Mission: Impossible

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Spoiler alert: this post is mostly about the very end of the new Mission: Impossible film, Dead Reckoning: Part one. Don’t read on until you have seen that, or you will be very angry with me.

I have written here before about how the stunt movie and the art of silent slapstick intersect – the inspiration that time was John Wick, with its old-school fight choreography. New in the cinemas this week is the latest film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, starring Tom Cruise, a man who has long insisted that he does all his own stunts, just like a latterday silent star.

Continue reading The mechanics of Mission: Impossible →
Blog, Festival

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023: women who worry and men who don’t

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Someone just asked me if I were back from Bologna yet. Oops. I have been back home for over a week now, but I haven’t written anything about the festival. So here I am, to tell you what rocked my world at Il Cinema Ritrovato. This year I enjoyed a truly excellent programme, and some even more excellent company. Here are some of my highlights, of the silent variety.

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Blog, Book, Review

The Story of Victorian Film by Bryony Dixon: experiments that changed the world

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A quick note to tell you about a book you will want to read. The Story of Victorian Film by Bryony Dixon is published by BFI Bloomsbury on 7 September and it is available to pre-order now. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy earlier this year, and I can tell you that it this book is an absolute delight. It’s an excellent introduction to the concept of 19th-century British cinema, but there is plenty here to intrigue people who are already familiar with the topic.

Continue reading The Story of Victorian Film by Bryony Dixon: experiments that changed the world →
Blog, Festival

Silent Cinema Rediscovered: Salomé, Together and more in Bristol

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Buongiorno! This sultry summer weather is doing its best to convince me that I am still in Bologna when I am closer to Bognor. But there is a cure for the post-Ritrovato comedown in the offing – and this medicine will be available out west, in Bristol, at the end of the month.

This year’s Cinema Rediscovered festival (26-30 July) has released its full lineup, and it is a many-splendoured jewel indeed. Especially if you are interested in the work of women directors: Bette Gordon, Kira Muratova, Chantal Akerman, Mai Zetterling, Sofia Coppola and many more are featured in the programme.

Let us pause, however, to consider the silents.

Continue reading Silent Cinema Rediscovered: Salomé, Together and more in Bristol →
Blog

The Dance of Cartesian Dualism

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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 visual forms that invite the eye to idle awhile at the brink of transcendence, rather than standing at a distance, remote and unyielding, daring to be comprehended, accepted, believed. Strange and barely recognizable wildlife appears on vellum leaves, creatures that wind and unwind in ceaseless whirlpools of bejeweled abstraction. Or they are, if you prefer, the spirited exoskeletons of snakes, dragons, waterbirds — Celtic and Germanic obsessions meeting the Apostles of Christendom. Emerging in the British Isles between 500–900 C.E., The Lindisfarne Gospels provide an arena, lapidary and starlit, where paganism devours Christianity while also birthing the religion anew into what can only be described, if you’re honest, as “motion pictures”.

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Blog

Silent dispatches Spring 2023: essays, films and festivals

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Film on Film Festival

Lots to enjoy at the BFI Film on Film festival this summer (8-10 June) but now the lineup is out we can confirm that there are silents to be savoured among the banquet. British silents in fact: The First Born (Miles Mander, 1928), and two Manning Haynes films: Sam’s Boy (1922) and The Boatswain’s Mate (1924). All three films with be screened on vintage prints with live piano accompaniment, naturally. And I am also intrigued by a programme of dialogue-free “visual documentaries” dating from 1947-71 with live musical accompaniment.

Stella Dallas (1925)
Stella Dallas (1925)

Stella Dallas

Register now at the Film Foundation Screening Room for access to a stream of Henry King’s sublime Stella Dallas (1925), starring Belle Bennett. This is the new, MOMA restoration of the film, and it will screen with a recording of Stephen Horne’s gorgeous score. Don’t miss out.

Weimar Cinema Spring 2023

Remember I told you about the fabulous resource that is WeimarCinema.org? This comprehensive website is also a journal, and the Spring 2023 edition has just been published. Contents include a dossier by Oksana Bulgakova on the difficult reception of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin in Berlin in 1926, as well as essays by Tom Gunning, So Mayer, Tatjana Hramova, Leonard Quaresima, Michael Cowan and Anton Kaes. Oh, and, um, me on Pabst. I especially enjoyed reading Mayer on Queer Weimar Cinema Across Borders, ahead of tomorrow’s Gender Rebels event in Bristol.

Continue reading Silent dispatches Spring 2023: essays, films and festivals →
Blog, Screening

Ossi, Marion and Julie: Gender Rebels in Bristol

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A quick note about an event I am taking part in, in Bristol this month. The Slapstick Festival is hosting a day devoted to “Gender Rebels”, with a triple-bill of films on the theme of early-20th-century cross-dressing, starring Ossi Oswalda, Marion Davies and Julie Andrews:

I Don’t Want to be A Man (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918)

Beverly of Graustark (Sidney Franklin, 1926)

Victor/Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982)

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Blog, Festival, Lecture, Screening

Bologna and beyond… Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023

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Ciao! Excellent news for fans of sunshine, young cinema and spritzesy. The first announcements for Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato have just been released. You can now read the first details of seasons devoted to such delights as 16mm films, 1903, 1923, Anna Magnani and to directors from Teinosuke Kinugasa to Rouben Mamoulian to Albert Samama Chikli. See you in the Piazza Maggiore!

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Blog, Festival

Hippfest 2023: the early days

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I don’t want you to get the idea I am wanted by the authorities, but I tend to move around a lot. So for the second year in a row, I was only in town for the first half of Hippfest – or the early, funny stuff, as I like to think of it.

I’ve said before that the programming at Hippfest, now in its 13th year, is impressively eclectic. I’d say that with extra emphasis during the midweek portion of the event. Actualities, fantasy, action, adventure, comedy, and a sheepdog smoking a pipe. What is not to love?

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Blog

1923 all over again

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So far, the 2020s may not be roaring, but they have given us a good excuse to look back at some films that have proved the meaning of the phrase, “standing the test of time”.

For the BFI website this week, I wrote this piece on 10 great films that were released in 1923, from Salomé to The Ten Commandments, A Woman of Paris to The Covered Wagon, Coeur Fidele to Warning Shadows. Lots of treats in here I promise. And yes, I was totally spoiled for choice.

The Covered Wagon (James Cruze, 1923)
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Blog, Festival

Hippfest hooray: the 2023 programme launches today

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Good news, Silent Londoners. Today is the day that Hippodrome Silent Film Festival announces the lineup for its 2023 edition!

As previously reported, the event runs 22-26 March 2023 and this year, there are festival passes available for the dedicated Hippfest die-hards. The best of people, in other words.

As I say, the full lineup goes live today, and you will be able to browse it at your leisure. Below: a few highlights from my little brain.

Continue reading Hippfest hooray: the 2023 programme launches today →
At the talkies, Blog

Three Minutes: A Lengthening – the heartbreaking archive documentary on BBC iPlayer now

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Last year, I wrote about a fascinating film that only had a short theatrical release, for my Long Take column in Sight and Sound – but now it will live for a year on iPlayer, and I think it is well worth your time. Three Minutes: A Lengthening is directed by Bianca Stigter and has a voiceover by Helena Bonham-Carter. You may recognise its subject from the book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film by Glenn Kurtz.

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Blog, Poll

The Silent London Poll of 2022: And the winners are …

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Well done everyone! The Silent London Poll of 2022 had a record-breaking number of votes, and the winners reflect a thriving, international silent film scene. Congratulations to all the people mentioned below, some of these categories were bursting with great nominations. Thank you for all your votes. And for making me blub a little when I was typing this up.

Without further ado, let me open this giant stack of golden envelopes. Here are your winners!

The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)

1. Best orchestral silent film screening of 2022

Your winner: The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929), with a score composed by Stephen Horne, orchestrated and conducted by Ben Palmer and played by Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone, with soloists Louise Hayter and Jeff Moore, at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.

I said: “Horne’s music is as deft as Hitch’s camera: always gorgeous, but sometimes delicate and other times thick with portents of doom… Needless to say, Hitch and Horne brought the Verdi to its feet once more.

Honorable mention: The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) with a score conducted and composed by José María Serralde Ruiz, performed by Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone, , at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.

La Dixième symphonie (Abel Gance, 1918)

2. Best silent film screening with a solo musician or small ensemble of 2022

Continue reading The Silent London Poll of 2022: And the winners are … →
At the talkies, Blog, Book

Book news: The Red Shoes

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“My memory goes back to the very first films. My ambition goes far ahead of today.”

Michael Powell, on the ballet sequence of The Red Shoes

Let me just tap this microphone a couple of times. Cough once. Thumbs up. We’re good to go? I have a little announcement to make and it is a wee bit off-topic.

You may remember that a few years back I wrote a book about Pandora’s Box (GW Pabst, 1929), in the BFI Film Classics series. That was fun. So much so that I wrote another one last year. But this one, full disclosure, is on a talkie.

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Blog

Season’s Greetings, Silent Londoners!

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Time to hang my stocking right next to my blogging shoes, I am signing off for the holidays now. I have annual traditions to attend to: exchanging gifts, cooking a large dinner for my family and writing a couple of essays on Weimar cinema.

This year hasn’t always been easy but the Silent London community has been full of enthusiasm and the spirit of exploration. It gladdens the heart. Thanks to everyone who interacted with these posts, either here or on social media and they many wonderful people I met at festivals. And an extra thank you to those of you who supported the Asta Nielsen season at BFI Southbank earlier this year – that meant a lot to me. All of you helped to make the year, and not just the season, bright!

Speaking of which – don’t forget to vote in the Silent London poll. Every vote really counts!

This is my Christmas card from me to you in 2022. I am wishing you a fabulous festive season and all the very best for 2023, with a little help from the wonderful Gloria Swanson!

Thanks for reading, take care, and I will see you n 2023!

  • Silent London will always be free to all readers. If you enjoy checking in with the site, including reports from silent film festivals, features and reviews, please consider shouting me a coffee on my Ko-Fi page.
Blog, Festival

Hippfest 2023: passes, podcasts and promises

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Save the date, Silent Londoners, The Scottish silent film festival with the warmest welcome in the world is back in 2023.

The Hippodrome Silent Film Festival at Scotland’s oldest purpose-built cinema, the Hippodrome in Bo’ness, will take place Wednesday 22 to Sunday 26 March 2023. The full programme and tickets will be released on Tuesday 7 February. Not too long to wait.

But there’s more news. A development many attendees have long been asking for – a festival pass!

Continue reading Hippfest 2023: passes, podcasts and promises →
Blog, Poll

The Greatest Silent Film Poll of 2022: vote for your winners now

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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 enjoy. New websites too! And honestly, silent cinema seems to be more popular than ever.

Continue reading The Greatest Silent Film Poll of 2022: vote for your winners now →