Tag Archives: Silent films

An excellent dumb discourse

May 5, 2009 By in Catalogues and databases, DVD and Blu-Ray, Literature, Publications, Theatre Tags: 2 Comments

ruggero

Ruggero Ruggeri as Hamlet in Amleto (1917)

It was the fervent belief of many in the early years of cinema that justification for the medium lay in how it interpeted stage drama. At a time when censorious authorities looked down upon the dubious cinema (with its low class audiences) and cinema was reaching out for respectability (and properties that were out of copyright), Pathé with its Film d’Art and Film d’Arte Italiana companies, and Adolph Zukor’s policy of ‘Famous Players in Famous Plays’ showed that there was financial good sense in bringing high-class drama to the cinema screen, however mutely.

The pinnacle of stage drama was, of course, William Shakespeare, and film companies in the silent film era took on the Bard with enthusiasm. The numbers are extraordinary. Some two hundred films, most of them one-reelers of the pre-war period, were produced that closely or loosely owed something to one or other of Shakespeare’s plays. Some film companies showed a particular interest: Vitagraph filmed Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet (all 1908), King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1909), Twelfth Night (1910) and As You Like It (1912). Thanhouser made A Winter’s Tale (1910), The Tempest (1911), The Merchant of Venice (1912), Cymbeline (1913) and King Lear (1916). Cines, Kalem, Biograph, Ambrosio, Gaumont, Eclair, Nordisk, Milano and several others filmed the plays.

This was more than enthusiasm for high culture; it was good business. Shakespeare films appealed to an audience which found costume dramas in general to be a treat, and which was accustomed to boiled-down Bard from school texts and stage productions which concentrated on the highlights from the plays (such as the Crummles’ hectic production of Romeo and Juliet portrayed in Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickelby). Of course, not everyone wanted to see high culture quite as much as the cinema sometimes wanted to be associated with such culture (see the cartoon at the end of this post), but more than enough were impressed, and entranced.

Once films became longer – ironically as the cinema became closer in form to the theatre – the number of Shakespeare films fell, because longer productions were more of a challenge to audiences. But even then there was a burst of activity in 1916 (the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death), with half-a-dozen or more productions in that year alone, and versions of the plays continued in silent form throughout the 1920s, with four key titles coming from Germany – Hamlet (1920, with Asta Nielsen as the Dane), Othello (1922, with Emil Jannings and Werner Krauss), Der Kaufman von Venedig (The Merchant of Venice) (1923, with Henny Porten) and Ein Sommernachtstraum (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) (1925, Werner Krauss again).

thetempest

Prospero in his cave, from The Tempest (Clarendon 1908)

So where is the literature to back up this self-evidently significant corner of silent film history? Sadly, until recently, there has been very little. The silent film enthusiasts and film scholars have shied away from Shakespeare as being falsely worthy and far too uncinematic, while the Shakespeareans looked down on cinema per se, while finding the very notion of silent Shakespeare an absurdity. Jack J. Jorgens, a noted scholar, went so far as to write these dreadful words in his Shakespeare on Film (1977):

First came scores of silent Shakespeare films,one- and two-reelers struggling to render great poetic drama in dumb-show. Mercifully, most of them are lost.

Oh dear, oh dear. However, there was one work which almost eccentrically fought against the tide. Robert Hamilton Ball’s Shakespeare on Silent Film: A Strange Eventual History (1968) is one of the most remarkable books ever produced on silent cinema. It is a passionately-pursued archaeological investigation into every kind of Shakespeare film made during the silent era, encomapssing parodies, allusions, plot borrowing as well as ‘conventional’ adaptations, with Ball diggedly tracking down every obscure reference, every hidden print, every list of intertitles, with abundant fervour and an infectious interest in the people involved. This magnum opus has been cherished by the dedicated few for four decades, and for most of that time its discoveries and assertions have been taken as gospel. Yet even Ball ended his investigations with these disappointing words:

Silent Shakespeare film could not be art, a new art. The aesthetic problem is how to make good film which is good Shakespeare. It could not be good Shakespeare because too much was missing.

It is has been the task of a few of us (and I’ve been involved) to prove those words wrong. Silent Shakespeare was good Shakespeare, not because of what was missing, but because of what was there to be seen – a new medium expressing itself imaginatively while asserting its social worthiness and cultural relevance. To study silent Shakespeare films is to see films discovering what they could do. Yes there are histrionics at times, and yes there is some aburdity involved when complex plots are crammed into a ten-minute reel, but equally there is artistry, feeling and subtlety of interpretation. Have you ever seen a ballet of Romeo and Juliet and complained that the words were missing? Of course not. Shakespeare without the words is not a lesser form, but simply a form that requires its own special understanding. It expresses the significance of its subject within its specific constraints – which is precisely what art is.

The tide started to turn with the release of the British Film Institute’s video compilation Silent Shakespeare (1999), a work that was a revelation to many. Even hardened theatricals could see the special virtues in the Clarendon Film Company’s delightful reworking of The Tempest (1908) or the elemental passion evident in Ermete Novelli’s stunning performance in Re Lear (1910). The DVD has found its way onto many a university library shelf, while a number of scholars have begun to take on the silent Shakespeare film with fresh eyes – among them Jon Burrows, Roberta Pearson, Anthony Guneratne and Kenneth Rothwell.

buchanan

The leading champion, however, has been Judith Buchanan, whose quite marvellous Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse is published this month by Cambridge University Press. This is the sympathetic, understanding account of a phenomenon that we have been waiting for. It is not a comprehensive history of the silent Shakespeare film – Buchanan defers to Ball in that respect – instead it concentrates on exemplary films and on uncovering the social, cultural and economic contexts. So it is that an opening chapter details a nineteenth-century legacy of performance, with particular attention to Shakespeare and the magic lantern, showing that the silent Shakespeare film was part of an established tradition. Chapters then follow on the first Shakespeare film, King John (1899), featuring Herbert Beerbohm Tree (also on the BFI DVD); Shakespeare films of the ‘transitional era’ between the early and late 1900s, with close, engrossing readings of Clarendon’s The Tempest and Film d’Arte Italiana’s Othello (1909); the ‘corporate authorship’ of Vitagraph’s productions; the contrasting interpretations of Hamlet by Hepworth (a renowned British 1913 production with theatrical great Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson) and Amleto, a 1917 Italian film starring Ruggero Ruggeri, little-known but perhaps the most accomplished extant realisation on Shakespeare on silent film (it’s crying out for the two Hamlets to be released jointly on DVD); the several films of the tercentary year, including the rival Romeo and Juliets starring Francis X. Bushman/Beverley Bayne and Theda Bara/Harry Hilliard, both films alas lost; the German productions of the 1920s; and wordless Shakespeare today (there are some stage productions experimenting with silence, notably Paata Tsikurishvili’s Synetic Theatre).

It’s written for a literary studies audience, but it is grounded in exemplary original research (Buchanan has toured the world to track down the relevant prints) and it is a pleasure to read. There is much here to detain anyone keen to extend their knowledge of film history. She knows her films as well as her plays – a rare and most welcome combination. Above all, Buchanan opens up the subject in all its richness of theme, inviting others to explore further, illuminating the films that we are so fortunate have survived. We will still turn to Robert Hamilton Ball for his extensive documentary evidence, but to Buchanan for her sophisticated understanding.


romeocartoon

A 1913 cartoon from London Opinion, speaking for anyone resistant to the cinema’s occasional urge to impress Shakespeare upon us. Taken from Stephen Bottomore, I Want to See this Annie Mattygraph: A Cartoon History of the Coming of the Movies

If you are keen to seek out silent Shakespeare films for yourself (and you should, you really should) this is what’s currently available on DVD:

  • Silent Shakespeare: includes King John (Biograph 1899), The Tempest (Clarendon 1908), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Vitagraph 1909), Re Lear (Film d’Arte Italiana 1910), Twelfth Night (Vitagraph 1910), Il Mercante di Venezia (Film d’Arte Italiana 1910), Richard III (Co-operative 1911) [BFI] [Milestone]
  • Thanhouser Presents Shakespeare [Thanhouser series vol.7]: includes The Winter’s Tale (1910), Cymbeline (1913), King Lear (1916) [Thanhouser]
  • Richard III (Shakespeare Film Company 1912) [Kino]
  • Othello (Wörner-Filmgesellschaft 1922): also includes Duel Scene from Macbeth (Biograph 1905), The Taming of the Shrew (Biograph 1908), Roméo se fait bandit (Pathé 1910), Desdemona (Nordisk 1911) [Kino]

The International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Radio and Television, an online filmographic database not yet officially released but available in a test version, hopes to be comprehensive for the silent Shakespeare film. Buchanan herself provides a filmography (restricted to films mentioned in her text), including the location of archive prints. Around forty silent Shakespeare films survive today, mercifully.

The Stage

May 3, 2009 By in Digitised journals, Performers, Publications, Resources, Theatre Tags:

thestage

New (at least to me) among the digitised historical journals now available online by subscription is The Stage. This is well worth taking note of. The Stage Directory (A London and Provincial Theatrical Advertiser) was founded in February 1880 as a monthly newspaper, and continues (as a weekly) to this day. Its entire archive 1880-2007 has been digitised and put online, covering over 6,500 issues or above 170,000 individual pages reporting on the goings on of the British stage and beyond.

The importance for us is that The Stage has always kept an eye on the motion picture business, and for the silent era it was assiduous in recording the activities of this new strand of showbusiness. A series of articles from 1907 entitled “Cinematograph Notes” records new businesses, film releases, licensing issues and so forth, “Latest Films” is very handy in giving titles of new releases, and another series “Film Facts & Fancies” starting in 1919, written by ‘Figaro’, reports on the cinema world with a knowing eye.

The Stage documented the engagements of actors, and one can trace their travels across the British provincial theatres, seeing also where the variety shows were starting to introduce the cinematograph. Here one can spot names that were later to be famous: in a notice from 30 July 1903 of a performance of Sherlock Holmes at the London Pavilion, the writer notes:

A faithful portrait of Billy is given by Master Charles Chaplin, who shows considerable ability, and bids fair to develop into a clever and capable actor.

Once can follow Chaplin many performances as Billy, and then later with the Karno troupe, up and down the country, before he found his fortune on the screen.

The Stage Archive is available by subscription. There is a timed pass system, with twenty-four hours’ access costing £5, one week £15, one month £30, three months £60, six months £100 and one year £150. Once you have subscribed, you have options to browse by date, so you can scroll through an entire issue (I recommend this to start with, as it gives you an idea of layout and the contents of the regular sections), or you can search by word (or phrase in quotation marks) across all types of ‘clippings’ (i.e. sections), or by article, picture or advertisement. You can search by the time periods 1880-1900, 1901-1950 or 1914-1918 (and later periods, of course), and can order search results chronologically or by relevance.

Those familiar with digitised newspaper collections will soon recognise that The Stage Archive has been produced by Olive Software‘s ActivePaper system. Search results give you the date and page number of the issue and a snippet of the article itself (usually a headline), which you click on to open up the full article. This can be a little frustrating when you have many search results, as there is little way of telling one article from another (many of the Chaplin notices are simply titled ‘Provinces’, for instance), so it may be a little laborious investigating the more popular subjects. You get the full article in facsimile form, with your search term highlighted, and you can print these or file them away in a ‘My Collection’ facility, but there is no way to get at the underlying OCR text, unfortunately.

If you don’t subscribe, you can still use The Stage Archive to search material, you just won’t have access to the articles themselves. But there is more from The Stage that you can access without paying any subscription. The Stage produced an annual yearbook which for the silent era is another rich source of information, particularly for its directory listing of film associations, its advertisements, and especially its reports on legal cases, always fascinating for the realism they provide behind the tinsel of so much cinema reportage. The Internet Archive has the volumes for 1908-1919. The PDFs are a large size (30-50MB), but don’t forget that they are word-searchable. Look out in particular for Arthur Coles Armstrong’s long article in the 1914 volume, “My Lady Kinema – The Eleventh Muse”. And from the 1916 volume, this report on a court case caught my eye:

ELINOR GLYN v. WESTERN FEATURE FILM CO. AND G. BLACK.- ALLEGED CINEMATOGRAPHIC INFRINGEMENT OF NOVEL.

In the Chancery Division, before Mr. Justice Younger, Mrs. Elinor Glyn, the author of and owner of the copyright in “Three Weeks,” brought an action against the defendants for an injunction restraining the defendants from making or authorising the public exhibition of kinematograph films under the title of Pimple’s Three Weeks (without the option).

The defendants pleaded that their film Pimple’s Three Weeks (without the option) was an original dramatic work within the meaning of the Copyright Act, 1911, and that they were entitled to use their film.

The action against the defendant George Black was settled before the case came into Court.

And the reason it was settled is that the judge decided that Three Weeks was an immoral work, and so did not merit any copyright protection, irrespective of whether a parody could be seen as infringing in the first case.

Plenty to discover, whether paid for or free (and acknowledgments to Bioscope regular Penfold for bringing The Stage Archive to my attention).

Silent Screen Slots

May 2, 2009 By in General Tags: 2 Comments

http://www.onlinecasinoreports.com

So far in our investigations of the worlds of silent cinema past and present, somehow we have managed to avoid the online betting phenomenon. No more! For William Hill Casino have just announced the creation of Silent Screen Slots, a new video slot game based on silent cinema, “a tasteful and exciting window into the cinema of yesteryear”.

As you can see from the above preview, generic images of your favourite silent screen cliches are accompanied by the inevitably tinkly piano music. The full experience reportedly brings you “many big movie stars such as Charlie Chaplin” and, they promise, “fitting tributes to many classic films”. We could have a certain amount of fun imagining what such fitting tributes could have been (The Gold Rush, Pay Day), but the major features are an unidentifiable actress as the wild symbol (offering you the “top-line winning of 5,000 coins”) and “the Scatter symbols that also provide excitement, with 5 scattered cameras paying some 200 times a player’s bet, or 5,000 coins if 25 coins per line are wagered”. Finally there’s a “Movie Mayhem” jackpot feature, with golden movie tickets hidden in the concession stand (which looks decidely not from the silent era), with four “generous progressive jackpots” to aim for. “Overall, there’s excitement and top-class Silent Screen entertainment awaiting players at this video slots game”.

Exciting, entertaining and tasteful – what better way could there be for you to lose your money?

The balancing bluebottle

April 30, 2009 By in Filmmakers, Non-fiction, Science and medicine, Television and radio, Wildlife Tags: 1 Comment

bluebottle

The Balancing Bluebottle (1908)

A delightful programme was broadcast today on BBC Radio 4, The Balancing Bluebottle. It’s a 30-minute documentary on the life and work of Percy Smith, pioneering naturalist filmmaker. It’s presented by Tim Boon, curator at the Science Museum, whose recent book Films of Fact is a history of science documentary on film and television.

Normally I would pen you a paragraph or three on Smith’s career, but it’s been a long week (it’s been a long month) and I’m going to take a short cut by giving you this section from my Charles Urban site:

F. Percy Smith (1880-1945) was a modest but brilliant pioneer of scientific filmmaking. He was a clerk with the Board of Education whose hobby was photographing nature, notably magnified pictures of insects. One of these, a photograph of a bluebottle’s tongue, came to Urban’s attention, and in 1907 he invited Smith to do similar work with a motion picture camera. Failing to persuade his employers of the value of film as an educational tool, Smith joined Urban full-time in 1910. Smith’s films soon gained considerable attention, notably The Balancing Bluebottle and The Birth of a Flower, showing plant growth through stop-motion cinematography in Kinemacolor. Smith’s films were made at his Southgate home and involved meticulous preparation over many months. When war broke out in 1914 he made a series of animated war maps for Urban’s Kineto company before becoming a photographer with the Navy. After the war he did a little more work for Urban before he found greater fame with the Secrets of Nature series of nature films, made for British Instructional Films, which gained wide acclaim and were popular for two decades. He is one of the great names in scientific filmmaking.

Smith’s films entrance and instruct to this day. The Balancing Bluebottle itself featured bluebottles performing seemingly extraordinary feats of strength. Tied down with silk (and released unharmed afterwards) the bluebottles juggle a cork, a ball and a stick. The film caused a sensation at the time and can still leave an audience open-mouthed today.

  • A 1910 re-edited and reissued version of the film, under the title The Acrobatic Fly, is available on YouTube, courtesy of the BFI
  • A further retitled and reissued version from 1911, under the title The Strength and Agility of Insects, is available on WildFilmHistory
  • Smith’s 1910 film The Birth of a Flower is available to view at WildFilmHistory

The programme features Sir David Attenborough, Bryony Dixon from the BFI, Jenny Hammerton from AP Archive, and (recorded in a windy side alley off Leicester Square), one Luke McKernan. It’s available for the next seven days on BBC iPlayer, and is warmly recommended for its charm and insight.

The Fotoplayer

April 27, 2009 By in Music Tags: 10 Comments

Thanks are due to the Bioscope’s continental Europe correspondent, Frank Kessler, for this delightful YouTube clip. It features Maud Nelissen, regular accompanist for silent films at the Nederlands Filmmuseum, playing a Fotoplayer organ at the Utrecht musical museum Van Speelklok tot Pierement. Her explanation is in Dutch, part of which is to announce an upcoming screening in Utrecht, which was on 18 April, so apologies for being a bit late with that, but the Fotoplayer itself plays on.

The photoplayer (the Fotoplayer itself was one make, produced by the American Photoplayer Company) was a form of player piano, electrically-driven, with augmented orchestral effects, including organ pipes, percussion instruments and assorted sound effects (whistles, bird song, thunder etc.). The organ could be played manually, as shown above, but it also took piano rolls as with a conventional player piano, each of which would be designed for particular genres and scenes. An operator (often an usherette, it is said) would therefore have to switch from one roll to another as the action changed.

Photoplayers were first introduced around 1910, and were produced in their thousands in the United States. Generally they were installed in smaller cinemas throughout the silent era, as the amplification was not good enough to larger theatres. Their peak years were the late teens, and production tailed off after 1925. Only a hundred or so exist today. In part they were dumped once the talkies arrived, in part they suffered greatly from the wear-and-tear of all-day operation.

There is more information on the Fotoplayer at The Musical Museum and The Encyclopedia of Australian Theatre Organs.

Now would one of those be fun to have at Pordenone? Possibly a little tricky to transport, but even so…

Update (December 2009):
Maud Nelissen has kindly sent me four photographs of the Fotoplayer in action, with these notes on its performance:

First we explained how this great Photoplayer was used in the earlier days. Then we started our programme:

1) First we showed a film with the musicrolls in the piano and the effects (made by us, by pulling, pushing ropes, buttons etc).

2) Then we showed a Chaplin programme: The Cure, The Rink and Easy Street.

The Photoplayer’s piano was played by me, and I had a very valuable assistant (Daphne, musician of my band The Sprockets) who did marvelously all the effects and was running around me like a madwoman to get everything totally synchronised with the Chaplins. It was incredibly funny and the audience loved the films even more through it!

Although it looked very loose and vibrant at the time … we had numerous rehearsals and Daphne practiced the effects at home (she made a “practice” installation, pulling ropes without sound + running around … can you imagine …?)

Our next aim now is to visit all the remaining photoplayers in the world, We have a great show to put on and we adore the photoplayer!! Daphne is thinking about a career switch, leaving The Sprockets to become a fulltime photoplayer-player. Who knows … Luckily there will always be Utrecht!

Tuff stuff

April 22, 2009 By in Festivals, Modern silents Tags:

Smile by Christos Tsirbas, first place award winner at the 2008 Toronto Urban Film Festival

TUFF is the Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF), which has the admirable mission to show silent films to the commuters of Toronto. The festival, which takes place 11-20 September 2009, comprises an urban-themed programme of new one-minute silent films, which run repeatedly on the ONESTOP digital network of over 270 platform screens on fifty subway platforms of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) for seven days. The top three films of the festival are chosen by a Guest Judge; this year writer/director/actor Don McKellar. The program for the final Saturday of the festival is determined by audience votes as is the winner of the TUFF Choice Award.

TUFF is open to local, national and international submissions by video artists, filmmakers – trained and untrained – animators and urbanites with cameras or video capable mobile devices. Filmmakers are asked to submit one-minute silent videos addressing one of seven themes: Urban Encounters; Urban Diversity; Urban Journeys; Urban Imaginary; Urban Natural; Urban Secrets; and Urban Ideas. Deadline for submissions is 15 July 2009. It is free to submit; filmmakers retain their rights, and have a chance to win prizes, including a trip for two to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic courtesy of BelAir Travel. Films must be 60 seconds (exactly); 720 x 480, square pixels if possible; 30 fps, deinterlaced if possible; no audio. And you don’t have come from Toronto to take part.

For more information, visit the TUFF Website at www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com and follow TUFF activities through its social media pages: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The Bioscope twitters

April 21, 2009 By in Bioscope Tags:

twitter

Well, it may be a spurious trend, but if it’s the way the world is speaking (at least a part of it), then the Bioscope is going to follow. So this is to announce the creation of the Bioscope’s very own Twitter presence. If you don’t know what Twitter is, it’s a micro-blogging service in which you are restricted to messages of no more than 140 characters (called tweets).

The way I’ve set it up is that every post made on the main blog will now also appear on the Twitter feed (i.e. the first few words followed by a hyperlink), while I’ll be using the feed to add short news items and musings on early and silent cinema, as the mood takes me. The most recent of these you can see on the Twitter RSS feed on the column to your right. It’s an experiment – it may augment the service, or it may not, in which case I’ll dump it. We’ll just have to see.

To follow the feed, go to www.twitter.com/thebioscope.

Bienvenue au Festival d’Anères

April 20, 2009 By in Festivals Tags:

festivaldaneres

http://festival.aneres.free.fr

The Festival d’Anères, the festival of silent film held annually in Anères, Hautes-Pyrénées in southwestern France, takes place 27-31 May. There is an enticing programme on offer, as follows (excluding some music concerts):

27 May

La Femme en gris (A Woman in Grey)
de James Vincent
with Arline Pretty, Henry G. Sell, Fred C. Jones
1920 / Etats-Unis / vidéo / vostf
Copie: Lobster Films
Episodes 1, 2, 3

La Charrette fantôme (Körkarlen)
de Victor Sjöström
avec Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg, Astrid Holm
1921 / Suède / 1h48 / 35mm / vostf
Copie : Svenska Filminstitutet (Suède)

28 May

La Femme en gris (A Woman in Grey)
de James Vincent
avec Arline Pretty, Henry G. Sell, Fred C. Jones
1920 / Etats-Unis / vidéo / vostf
Copie: Lobster Films
Episodes 4, 5, 6

Hommage à Charley Bowers:

  • Non tu exagères! (Now You Tell One)
    de et avec Charley Bowers
    1926 / Etats-Unis / 22 min. / vidéo / vf
  • Un drôle de locataire (A Wild Roomer)
    de et avec Charley Bowers
    1926 / Etats-Unis / 24 min. / vidéo / vf
  • Le Roi du Charleston (Fatal Footsteps)
    de et avec Charley Bowers
    1926 / Etats-Unis / 22 min. / vidéo / vf

Chœur de Tokyo (Tokyo no kôrasu)
de Yazujiro Ozu
avec Tokihito Okada, Emiko Yagumo, Hideo Sugawara, Hidako Takamine
1931 / Japon / 1h30 / 35mm / vostf
Copie: Carlotta Films

Les Temps modernes (Modern Times)
de Charlie Chaplin
avec Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard
1936 / Etats-Unis / 1h29 / 35mm / vostf
Copie: MK2

29 May

La Femme en gris (A Woman in Grey)
de James Vincent
avec Arline Pretty, Henry G. Sell, Fred C. Jones
1920 / Etats-Unis / vidéo / vostf
Copie: Lobster Films
Episodes 7, 8, 9

Hommage à Segundo de Chomón:

  • Le Sorcier arabe 1906 / France / 2’52 / vidéo / vf
  • Le Voyage sur Jupiter 1909 / France / 5’51 / vidéo / vf
  • Kiriki, acrobates japonais 1907 / France / 2’37 / vidéo / vf
  • Le Voleur invisible 1909 / France / 4’37 / vidéo / vf
  • Métamorphoses 1912 / France / 5’22 / vidéo / vf
  • L’Épée du spirite 1910 / France / 5’22 / vidéo / vf
  • Les Roses magiques 1906 / France / 2’59 / vidéo / vf
  • Le Rêve des marmitons 1908 / France / 6’54 / vidéo / vf
  • Le Spectre rouge 1907 / France / 8’30 / vidéo / vf
  • Le Scarabée d’or 1907 / France / 1’39 / vidéo / vf
  • Pickpock ne craint pas les entraves 1909 / France / 8’32 / vidéo / vf
  • Copies: Lobster Films

Prapancha Pash (A Throw of Dice)
de Franz Osten
avec Seeta Devi, Himansu Rai, Charu Roy
1929 / Inde / 1h14 / vidéo / vo trad. sim.
Copie: British Film Institute / Eye 4 films (Angleterre)

Le Journal d’une fille perdue (Diary of a Lost Girl)
de Georg Wilhelm Pabst
avec Louise Brooks, Joseph Rovensky, Fritz Rasp
1929 / Allemagne / 1h45 / vidéo / vo trad. sim.
Copie: Carlotta Films (avec l’autorisation de Tamasa Distribution)

30 May

La Femme en gris (A Woman in Grey)
de James Vincent
avec Arline Pretty, Henry G. Sell, Fred C. Jones
1920 / Etats-Unis / vidéo / vostf
Copie: Lobster Films
Episodes 10, 11, 12

Variétés (Variety)
de Ewald André Dupont
avec Emil Jannings, Lya De Putti, Warwick Ward
1925 / Allemagne / 1h29 / 35mm / vostf
Copie: Murnau Stiftung / Transit Films (Allemagne)

Charlot chef de rayon (The Floorwalker)
de Charlie Chaplin
avec Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell
1916 / Etats-Unis / 24 min. / vidéo / vostf

Ménilmontant
de Dimitri Kirsanoff
avec Nadia Sibirskaïa, Yolande Beaulieu, Guy Belmont
1926 / France / 37 min. / vidéo / vf

Les Quatre cavaliers de l’apocalypse (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse)
de Rex Ingram
avec Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry, Wallace Beery
1921 / Etats-Unis / 2h13 / 35mm / vostf
Copie: Photoplay Productions Ltd (Angleterre)

31 May

La Femme en Gris (A Woman in Grey)
de James Vincent
avec Arline Pretty, Henry G. Sell, Fred C. Jones
1920 / Etats-Unis / vidéo / vostf
Copie : Lobster Films
Episodes 13, 14, 15

L’Argent
de Marcel L’Herbier
avec Pierre Alcover, Brigitte Helm, Marie Glory
1928 / France / 2h44 / vidéo / vf
Copie: Carlotta Films (avec l’autorisation de Marie-Ange L’Herbier)

La Vendeuse de cigarettes du Mosselprom (Papirosnitsa ot Mosselproma)
de Iouri Jeliaboujski
avec Ioulia Solntseva, Igor Ilinski, Anna Smokhovskaia
1924 / Russie / 1h42 / vidéo / vostf
Copie: Cinémathèque de Toulouse

Charlot machiniste (Behind the Screen)
de Charlie Chaplin
1916 / Etats-Unis / 24 min. / vidéo / vostf

Crainquebille
de Jacques Feyder
avec Maurice de Féraudy, Jean Forest, Félix Oudart
1922 / France / 1h16 / vidéo / vf
Copie: Lobster Films

A fine programme indeed, albeit heavy on the vidéo. There are full details on the festival site, though wholly in French, please note.

Charlie in the Heartland

April 18, 2009 By in Conferences Tags: 2 Comments

charlies

The 120-year-old Charlie Chaplin (as of two days ago) is the subject of a conference taking place 28-30 October 2010 at Ohio University Zanesville, Zanesville, Ohio. Charlie in the Heartland: An International Charlie Chaplin Conference is inevitably at the early planning stage, but confirmed speakers include keynote speaker and honoree Charles J. Maland, professor and head of the University of Tennessee English Department and author of Chaplin and American Culture: The Evolution of a Star Image; David Robinson, author of Chaplin: His Life and Art; Kate Guyonvarch, director of Roy Export S.A.S. and the Association Chaplin office, Paris; Cecilia Cenciarelli, archivist and head of Progetto Chaplin, Cineteca di Bologna, Bologna, Italy; and Frank Scheide, Professor of Communications at the University of Arkansas and co-editor of The Chaplin Review.

The call for papers reads as follows:

In keeping with the theme of the conference, “Charlie in the Heartland,” which was chosen to commemorate Chaplin’s first trip to the United States with Fred Karno’s comedians in October, 1910, we are seeking papers in a wide range of areas, all to do with Chaplin, his relationship with, influence on, or evocation of America, either during or after his long residence here.

The following topics are meant to generate ideas for presentations, not limit creativity or exclude participation:

  • Maland’s Chaplin and American Culture 30 Years later
  • Reconsidering “Chaplinitis”
  • From Karno to Keystone: eliding the music hall stage and the silent screen
  • American vaudeville audiences of the 1910s – a herald of silent film popularity?
  • Chaplin’s company: who were Charlie’s character actors and what were their influences?
  • Vulgar film comedy as high art
  • Chaplin and public appearance: a reconsideration of the Liberty Bond tour
  • The Chaplin imitator phenomenon
  • Film audience reception in the Heartland
  • The Heartland rebels: Chaplin and the American Legion
  • Brother Sydney Chaplin: what was the magnitude of his impact?
  • The representation of America or Americans in the films of Charlie Chaplin
  • Chaplin’s little tramp and the Beat Generation in America

Individual papers or full panels are welcome to submit proposals.

Please send a 500-word abstract, a short bio and your contact information to Lisa Stein, Assistant Professor of English, OU-Zanesville, 1425 Newark Road, Zanesville, OH 43701 or via email by February 1, 2010. Graduate and undergraduate students are welcome to submit.

N.B. We have tried to make this an accessible conference for young scholars by offering several low-cost housing options, as well as a reduced registration rate. We will also have a student travel grant available for applicants. Check back in early 2010.

Attendees are also promised a Chaplin feature film plus shorts, outtakes and oddities; a Chaplin film parody competition; a Chaplin lookalike contest (is it to held among the attendees? This sounds to be a highly promising development for academic conferences); and a ‘juried art show: “America in 1910”.

More details are promised on the conference website in due course.

And the winner is…

April 17, 2009 By in Awards and contests, Modern silents Tags: 5 Comments

As promised, we bring you the winner of the Vimeo Weekend Project to produce a silent film. Vimeo, the video-hosting site, has these regular weekend competitions inviting new videos to be uploaded on a particular theme, and this time chose silents. The process seems to be a bit confusing, as many just submitted any kind of video in the hope of getting noticed, while others submitted silent but old videos – not surprising, giving the rapid turnaround demanded by the competition.

The winner, above, is Two Knives One Motive by Tyler Capeheart, who says it was written, shot and edited within four hours. It lasts 3mins 19secs. See what you think.

The standard of some of the silents, both those newly produced and some of the older titles submitted, was higher than I’d expected. The video below would probably have got my vote – Guard Duty, by Andrew C, which makes a droll silent comedy pastiche out of the Call of Duty video game (being ignorant of these things I’ve no idea how one makes a new film out of video game software, but clearly this is second nature to some):

And then among the older titles, I was quite struck with Fleeting by Robin Brown, from 2008. It’s longer than usual, just over 15 minutes, and features black-and-white cinematography of a high order. There is engaging use of intertitles early on and some good performances, though I feel the film doesn’t quite know where to go with its theme, and the music is distracting. But it looks so good (the filmmaker says that his influences included F.W. Murnau):

You can find other titles in the Weekend Project section of Vimeo, though there doesn’t seem to be a link I can give you that will only have those films submitted for the competition. Anyway, good to see the several ways in which the art of the silent film continues to inspire.