The Silver Screen Oasis

Recently I watched an Argentinean ‘silent film’, La Antena, made about three or four years ago, I think. It was a kind of allegorical fantasy, set in a city whose population has been deprived of the power of speech and is tyrannized over by the man who runs the local television station. It was filmed in black and white and there were occasional visual echoes of Metropolis and Georges Melies. I have to say it was more of a visual treat than a narrative one (the owner of the TV station was hellbent on extracting energy from the few inhabitants who still had voices, why, I’m not quite sure) but it was certainly interesting as an attempt to do something... I was going to say ‘new’, but perhaps ‘different’ would be more accurate. There were no title cards: the words appeared on-screen, around the characters as they mouthed them.

Anyway, it got me thinking. Does anyone know of any other modern silents? By modern, I mean, say, post 1950. I know there is a Ray Milland thriller from 1952 called The Thief, which shows from time to time on Film Four in Britain - I haven’t yet caught it. And the experimental Canadian director Guy Maddin sometimes makes silent films or films which incorporate technical devices from the beginning of cinema. I’ve just added The Saddest Music in the World to my rental list, which isn’t silent, but is done in a deliberately archaic style, I believe.

Can anyone think of any other examples?

I'm such a fan of silents yet I don't know of any modern silents, I'm glad you've found a couple, I'll look for them myself. Yet there must be more somewhere. It doesn't surprise me that there's no Hollywood silents but there's so many countries in the world hopefully there are more to discover out there.

Remember when Schindler's List was made, there was such a fuss made about it being in black and white. Imagine the uproar if a modern silent were produced in Hollywood. Yet I live in hope that they joy that we find in watching one of the great silents will become infectious and one day someone will produce another classic silent or at least a film with great sections of unspoken narrative.

Guy Madden's Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) is essentially silent and I thought really good. Somewhat avant-garde, like many of his films, but very visual and thought provoking.
Just watched Alejandro Jodorowsky's La Cravate (1957), a short film done entirely in pantomime.
Of course there's also Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976), where Marcel Marceau has his famous line.

MichiganJ wrote:Of course there's also Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976), where Marcel Marceau has his famous line.

'Non'?

I've just remembered another: not a whole silent film; but in Pedro Almodovar's fanatastic Talk to Her, one of the main characters is a silent movie buff, and at one point in the film, he has a flashback confession, which is staged as a surrealist silent film: Penelope Cruz is in that section, I believe, but not in the rest of the film. Silent sequence or not, Talk to Her is a wonderful film...

I'll look out for Talk to Her and when I start renting movies again I'll look out for all these. Thanks guys.

Isn't Peter Sellars' The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez mostly silent? I haven't seen it though.

The first section of Wall-E is mostly silent except for various beeps and boops and sound effect type noises. Silent comedy, especially Buster Keaton, was the inspiration for this.

Many of the Pixar shorts are silent as well. Amazing the characterization and performance, let alone comedy, they get from a lamp.

I often enjoy the silent shorts more than the features. I'm sure that used to happen in the golden days of cinema too.

It's kind of uncanny that Phil created this thread recently, because yesterday I came across a modern silent in a DVD store and bought it. I watched it yesterday and I found it very interesting and well done.

It's a 47 minutes feature called "The Call of Cthulhu" (2005), based upon H.P. Lovecraft's tale of the same title, written in 1926. It was lovingly and carefully transferred to the screen in the style of a 1920s Silent movie by members of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. I was completely enthralled and immersed in the absorbing and mysterious plot. No CGI, no big budgets here, but love, care and respect for the subject matter. The film has intertitles in 24 languages! Refreshing and recommended.

My son is a big Lovecraft fan, so I'll have to tell him about this one. Sounds so interesting.Thanks, feaito!

If he's a Lovecraft fan I think he'll enjoy it Christy. It also includes some interesting extra features.