WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[charliechaplinfan]

Stella Marais is one of my favourite Mary Pickford movies, she is one of my favourite silent leading ladies, more for the women she played than the children. When she plays Unity she really goes all out to look icky. She's such a consummate actress and with the exception of Chaplin I don't think there was another performer who understood their audience as well as Mary did. Hopefully with it being a Mary Pickford movie they will show it again. Do they not have silent Sundays anymore? I know a few years back TCM used to have a Sunday dedicated to silents every month. I know because most of the bootlegs that show up on our shores were from these silents recorded from TCM.

[JackFavell]

They do, but it seems lately they are rerunning foreign silents, Harold Lloyd, and the occasional Lon Chaney. I haven't actually recorded anything new for a while, they are repeating that much. I used to record every Sunday. And of course, now we have Oscar month, which pre-empts Silent Sunday.

[charliechaplinfan]

Oscar month, already? Nearly as much bulid up as a Presidential election or a Diamond Jubilee.

I do find silents addictive, it's the era, the fashions, the photography. I love the era, when I watch Joan Crawford charlestoning or Clara Bow on Coney Island or Greta Garbo sharing a light for a cigarette with John Gilbert, I wish I could have that much fun but I don't ever really wish I lived in the 1920s, not unless I was landed gentry or born into money. Not for me laying fires on the bitter cold mornings and spending my whole day and night doing housework and mending. But the style of the films I do love. I do prefer the films that are set in the time they are made, they're truly reflective of the style of the times and when you get a movie like The Crowd, it really feels like a slice of life. Films do loose some of their mystique when talkies come in but theydo gain in snappiness and more rounded characters.

[JackFavell]

Of course if you were going to go back in time you would have be born to landed gentry! Golly, no sense going back to be a farm girl or something. You simply have to be Julia in Brideshead, or Lydia in Love for Lydia, or Daisy Buchanan (maybe not), OK, Jordan Baker from The Great Gatsby. No one wants to be Myrtle Wilson. A slender flapper with a smashing wardrobe, young and artistic and bored.

[charliechaplinfan]

Oh yes, definetly, I don't want to have been a drudge. I do love Hindle Wakes which is about the workforce in the English North West in the 1920s, it's not the story but the location shooting. I love location shooting in these silent movies, that's something the early talkies really missed out on. That glimpse of real life.

[JackFavell]

I've never even heard of Hindle Wakes! it sounds like my cup of tea.

You know, I really liked South Riding (the movie from 1939, I think it was) but I was actually disappointed that it turned toward the squire and his problems rather than sticking with the country folk and their situations. I wonder if the book is like that? As fond as I am of Ralph Richardson, I was surprised that such a modern socialist story would end with the rich guy becoming the hero.

[charliechaplinfan]

The book is meant to be really good, I'm sure it's been serialised recently on British TV. It's one I've meant to read for a quite a while. I like seeing the common folks lifestyle, I've started watching A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but as there's still people off sick it's not going to watched all in one go.

[intothenitrate]

I watched the Von Sternberg film, An American Tragedy (1931), and am still not sure what to make of it. It's a Paramount pre-code with a cast that includes many favorites of mine. Phillip Holmes plays a young man with few prospects but a great many social aspirations. By chance he gets a foreman job at his rich uncle's factory. One of the factory girls, played by Sylvia Sidney, catches his eye and they begin a clandestine affair. Holmes later meets a society girl (Frances Dee), but by this time Sidney is pregnant. He's torn between accepting his obligation to "do right" by Sidney and realizing his golden chance to crash into the upper class (with the wonderful Frances Dee!).

A newspaper story reports a boating accident where the body of a female victim is found, but only a man's hat is recovered. The incident provides Holmes with a blueprint for a solution to his dilemma. The rest of the film shows us "the deed," the investigation, arrest and trial.

The story is based on a popular novel by Theodore Dreisser about an actual incident that happened in the Teens, so the story should have been familiar to contemporary audiences. Though talked about in delicate euphemism, we know that Sidney became pregnant out of wedlock, and that she had an abortion -- facts that would have made the story unfilmable after the enforcement of the Production Code.

**************** Sorry, I have to go and get ready for work. I'll have to finish this later.

[charliechaplinfan]

I think it's one instance were I prefer the later movie but the former does have it's merits, it feels grittier, whereas the later version is beautiful the former is more what life is really like. It's not got as many Von Sternberg touches as I thought it would have but I enjoyed it when I watched it.

I'm glad it's not just me who's life gets in the way of posting here.

[Gagman 66]

Ooh, I'd love to see Stella Maris, Fer! You are so lucky. I've only seen photos from it.

Thanks for writing back about Smouldering Fires, you two. I agree this film needs a restoration, but I've long given up on any silents that don't have the four or five major stars getting restored. Fer, that's just what I thought was special about the picture, the relationship between the two sisters never seemed forced or phony. In so many pictures, one leaves wondering why they cast two actresses as sisters when they had no spark or chemistry together. I thought La Plante and Frederick were excellent at portraying the pair, without hokum or self pity. And I really like Clarence Brown as a director, he's just great at framing, his films are quite beautiful to look at and have a certain inward spiritual quality that I like a lot.

Wendy,

SMOULDERING FIRES (1924) was restored in 2008-2009 by UCLA from two tinted and toned 35 Millimeter Nitrate prints. So was BUTTERFLY of the same year, also directed by Clarence Brown, which Starred Laura La Plante, Norman Kerry, and Margaret Livingston. I would like to know if THE MIDNIGHT SUN (1926) exists? This was a major hit for Universal, because it is one of the few studio titles that got a re-issue in 1929 with an added musical scoring track.

[JackFavell]

Hey Jeff! Thanks for the info on Smouldering Fires! I'm glad they actually restored it, it seems like fewer and fewer silents are getting the love.

Is that Norman Kerry, in Butterfly?

[Gagman 66]

Wendy,

I will be posting a bunch of new photos on the TCM boards. I don't post them here, because of the size restrictions on graphics. I was disappointed when TCM ran the wrong version of THE PENALTY this past week. Chuck Tabesh told me some months ago that it would be the new Restoration with a Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra score. The one released on DVD by Kino last October That wasn't the case. Will hope for better with WINGS on the 3rd. They still having not aired the new restoration. I'm disappointed that Carl Davis is performing his score live for the screening of IT at the TCM Classic Film Festival instead of THE BIG PARADE. But at least both films are being run. New book on John Gilbert by Eve Golden is being published in March.

Wow! Have you seen this? Incredible both interior and exterior photos of what was once the Valencia Silent Movie Theater in New York. Today it is a church, but almost perfectly preserved. Magnificent architecture! Take a look!


http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=6288

[JackFavell]

Oh my gosh, Jeff, that theatre is AMAZING!

[CineMaven]

I just looked at the photos of the old Loew's Valencia. My jaw dropped. I have got to get my friend to drive me over to Queens. Magnificent! Thank you for sharing, Gagman.

[JackFavell]

Maven, I was hoping you'd make a road trip there and to the other one mentioned, the King, was it? in Brooklyn.