Your top 5 silent films available on DVD

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by shokhead, Jan 11, 2011.

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  1. shokhead

    shokhead Head shok and you still don't what it is. HA! Thread Starter

    Location:
    SoCal, Long Beach
    My daughter is into them so I thought I would buy some for her. She already has one of her favs, Ben Hur.
     
  2. deadbirdie

    deadbirdie Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    The Gold Rush
    The General (just got this on Blu-Ray!)
    Safety Last
    Intolerance
    It
     
  3. Greg1954

    Greg1954 New Member

    Location:
    .
    A Clara Bow movie might be a good choice for a young daughter. Even if there's a small danger of her growing up into being flapper.:eek:

    Weighty D.W. Griffith epics, maybe not so much?

    How about Mary Pickford films? Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm or something.
     
  4. SBurke

    SBurke Nostalgia Junkie

    Location:
    Philadelphia, PA
    I can't say I have a top five, but my clear no. 1 is "The Passion of Joan of Arc." Extremely powerful film.
     
  5. shokhead

    shokhead Head shok and you still don't what it is. HA! Thread Starter

    Location:
    SoCal, Long Beach
    She is 25 years young.
     
  6. Sherlock Jr.
    Sunrise
    Metropolis
    The Lodger
    The General
     
  7. DetroitDoomsayer

    DetroitDoomsayer Forum Middle Child

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Pandora's Box - Louise Brooks
    City Lights - Charlie Chaplin
    The Freshman - Harold Lloyd
    Sunrise - F.W. Murnau
    The Temptress - Greta Garbo
     
  8. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    Get her THE LAST LAUGH and CITY LIGHTS. Can't miss..
     
  9. apileocole

    apileocole Lush Life Gort

    Gasp! :laugh:
     
  10. BradOlson

    BradOlson Country/Christian Music Maven

    Anything Buster Keaton
    The Wizard of Oz silent movie from 1925
     
  11. Free_Hat

    Free_Hat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Van Isle
    Another vote for Buster Keaton, especially Seven Chances -- one of his funniest, and loaded with amazing stunts.
     
  12. Michelle66

    Michelle66 Senior Member

    I'd vote for the silent Our Gang comedies. They might be hard to track down, but they would more than likely hold her interest.

    Heck, anything out of the Hal Roach studio would be a good bet.
     
  13. htom

    htom Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    Don't forget the recent Criterion box set of three Josef Von Sternberg silent films (Underworld, The Last Command, Docks of New York). Each one is considered a masterpiece.

    Howard
     
  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I had to watch about 100 silent films in film school during the 1970s, and I hated 90% of them. Awful, boring, dull, pretentious, ugly, and weird. Not my kinda stuff.

    But I have to say, a lot of the comedies held up very well. I still laughed at Buster Keaton, most of the Chaplins, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, and Laurel & Hardy films. We always looked forward to those in class. And Sunrise is a beautiful, beautiful film, considered by many to be the best-photographed silent ever.

    The Walt Disney silent films are also pretty good. Did these ever come out legitimately? (That is, the early Laugh-O-Grams, Oswald the Rabbit, and all that stuff?)
     
  15. guppy270

    guppy270 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Levittown, NY
    :righton: I don't know how old the OP's daugher is, but as an example of the appeal of Buster Keaton, I watched "The General" a month or so ago with my daughter, and she was totally rapt and into it....and she's five~! (I read the subtitles to her)
     
  16. Greg1954

    Greg1954 New Member

    Location:
    .
    Especially if some of them were funky old prints, playing at the wrong speeds, minus music accompaniment. And being forced to sit through them.

    But properly restored and presented, it is startling sometimes how visually appealing they can be, some of those those camera operators and technicians were no slouches. It also helps to put oneself in an abstracted state of mind to be able to better understand/appreciate the acting and conveyances. I think silent film was just beginning to reach a new height, artistically, as a medium, when sound came along and wiped it all out.

    Some of them are just deadly dull. Silent westerns. especially, I can't sit through them.:unhunh:

    Some of the comedies (especially Chaplin) and the better dramas (especially of the 1920's) are what I gravitate to the most.
     
  17. wildroot indigo

    wildroot indigo Forum Resident

    A Little Princess (1917) -- directed by Marshall Neilan, starring Mary Pickford... it's also Zazu Pitts' first movie. I saw it in a theater with live music, thought it was one of the best films I'd ever seen. It's available as a bonus feature on the documentary 'Without Lying Down' DVD.

    Foolish Wives (1922) -- a necessary restoration resulted in some uneven editing; it's still great.

    Sherlock Jr. (1924)
    The Unknown (1927)
    City Lights (1931)

    I don't have 'City Lights' on DVD: is the Warner or Image version preferable...?
     
  18. Greg1954

    Greg1954 New Member

    Location:
    .
    I think the Warners MK2 edition looks swell.

    Though, IMO, Image did a better job with their version of Chaplin's Limelight than Warners.
     
  19. Stump

    Stump Forum Resident

    Location:
    Adelaide Australia
    Meet Marcel Marceau (1965-USA)
     
  20. Steve Litos

    Steve Litos Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago IL
    I really enjoyed Harold Lloyd's Speedy (1928). Some of it was shot on location at Coney Island & Yankee Stadium! Good movie.
     
  21. zobalob

    zobalob Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland.
    The Last Laugh (Murnau)
    Nosferatu (Murnau)
    Metropolis (Lang)
    Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler (Lang)
    Les Vampires (Feuillade)
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    No, we ran them at 18fps and the professor played piano for most of them. (Opinions are divided on playback speed; when I was briefly working on Entertainment Tonight in the early 1980s, Leonard Maltin asked me to transfer the silent clips at 20fps, because he felt they looked better at that speed rather than either the silent 18fps or the sound 24fps speeds. And by many accounts, they were actually shot at 16fps.)

    The dramas were the ones that didn't appeal to me. Even the horror flicks like Phantom of the Opera only have about 15 good minutes (out of 93); the rest were really, really dull to me, especially the really old stuff like Birth of a Nation -- almost impossible to watch. The westerns are worse. But the comedies were pretty good, and they were among the few highlights of the class to me.
     
  23. Greg1954

    Greg1954 New Member

    Location:
    .
    Okay. I've read accounts from other people who claim to have initially hated silents from early experiences in college film school, and having to watch them under less than ideal conditions was blamed as the culprit.

    I guess that's subjective.:) I saw Phantom in a restored version in a movie house, and I thought it was pretty absorbing all the way through.

    Especially with the Wurlitzer organ accompaniment provided. Lotsa fun.
     
  24. apileocole

    apileocole Lush Life Gort

    Certainly seems to involve variables and may never be defined. Here is a knowledgeable article by an expert on the subject for anyone interested:

    What Was the Right Speed?
    By Kevin Brownlow (1980)
    http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/18_kb_2.htm
     
  25. boyfromnowhere

    boyfromnowhere Senior Member

    Location:
    missouri, usa
    Laugh, Clown, Laugh starring Lon Chaney is one of my favorites, along with many others already mentioned.
     
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