Silent Era

[Matt Deckard]

http://www.silentmovietheatre.com/

Missed out on their Buster Keaton weekend, but I will try to keep y'all informed for the next one.

I love this theatre... I went there to see Wings and it is amzingly powerful as long as you have a real pianist or organist their to acompany the film.

 

[MisterCairo]

It'd be great to be able to see more silent films as they were originally presented. There has been the odd event in Toronto, but wouldn't it be nice to have some of the best films, with original (or at least period-appropriate) music!

 

[Zombie_61]

I've been to Silent Movie Theater a number of times, and it is wonderful to see these vintage movies as they were meant to be seen--on a theater screen with live accompaniment. Unfortunately, silent movies weren't bringing in enough people to get the bills paid so they now show them only one night per week, but they often show silent movies that haven't been seen in decades.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Some of us used to see silent films theatrically all the time, back in the pre-home-video era when every good-sized city had revival theaters showing classic films. New York had SIX OR SEVEN of them open at one point!

And some of us also collected silent films ourselves, and staged our own screenings in living rooms and basements. I started doing this in 1972 with Super 8 Chaplin and Lauren and Hardy two-reelers from Blackhawk Films, and I never stopped. I just showed a bunch of 16mm cartoons when I threw my last party a couple of months ago. There's still potent magic in film projection (*) with any decent sized audience!

(* As I've pointed out here before, old-school FILM projection is a different animal than current high-res digital projection. Because the projector's shutter closes when each frame is pulled down, 24 times a second, you are actually looking at a black screen half the time, which is invisible due to persistence of vision... but is still somehow FELT. Digital projection is refreshed constantly, the screen is never black. This puts film projection closer to the primordial experience of listening to the shaman around the campfire with a small group, surrounded by scary blackness. I've got nothing against modern digital projection - it usually looks great, and scratches, dust, and reel-change marks are a thing of the past - but something is lost for each gain.)

 

[Zombie_61]

There are still some revival theaters in the Los Angeles area, but like Silent Movie Theater almost all of them have to show recent releases as well in order to pay the bills. The last remaining walk-in theater in my home town shows classic movies twice a month (and sometimes not so classic), but they project the Blu-Ray version of the movies they select and there often appears to be no real thought put into their selections or the scheduling.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Just last night TCM showed two hours of "fragments" from lost silent films - sequences running from a just a minute or two to a full reel (ten minutes). I only watched the first half, but there was some fascinating and beautiful stuff there!

And NYC still has one or two theaters (and museums) that show classics, but as you said, they also show current indies and foreign films, because pure revival houses can't survive anymore.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We do silent pictures occasionally, sometimes with a full orchestra accompaniment -- we've hosted the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, one of the top silent-picture-music groups in the country, on several occasions. Projecting for silents is a skill in itself -- you need a projector with variable speed to suit the film being shown, because there was no such thing as a standard "silent speed", and you have to study the film carefully before the show to ensure you're showing it correctly. If you're lucky there'll be projection-rate information printed on the film leader, but if there isn't you have to coordinate with the conductor of the orchestra to determine the rate to be used.

Archives are very fussy about who they allow to show their prints, especially nowadays when few new prints are being struck. A theatre must have well-maintained non-platter projectors in order to qualify, and the projectionists have to be more than just button-pushing booth monkeys. Most archives require you to fill out extensive paperwork documenting your ability to meet these qualifications before you'll ever be allowed to touch a print. All this is part of the reason why fewer and fewer theatres these days are able to show silent films the way they're supposed to be shown. If you see them at all these days, more often than not they'll come from a DVD, a Blu-Ray, or a DCP, because the art of silent projection is fast becoming a lost skill.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Projecting for silents is a skill in itself -- you need a projector with variable speed to suit the film being shown, because there was no such thing as a standard "silent speed", and you have to study the film carefully before the show to ensure you're showing it correctly. If you're lucky there'll be projection-rate information printed on the film leader, but if there isn't you have to coordinate with the conductor of the orchestra to determine the rate to be used...

On a semi-related note, several years ago I acquired a copy of Buster Keaton's feature-length film The General on DVD. The company that produced it either did a little restoration or had a good print of the film to convert, but what surprised me was that they had corrected the "frame rate" so that the movie would play at the proper speed. It turns out "The Great Stone Face" wasn't so stone-faced after all--his facial expressions are nuanced, to be sure, but viewed at the proper speed they're more noticeable, and it added a new dimension to the movie for me. So while the average moviegoer probably couldn't care less, for us film fanatics the proper projection speed does make a difference.

 

[Formeruser012523]

Went to a screening of some silent comedy's here in Tx on August 29th. Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, some Our Gang, & Laurel & Hardy. Complete with original scores by local musicians on piano & a "Mighty Wurlitzer" that was said to have taken 10 years to restore. Was a good night & hope they do it again. Was the first time for me getting to see silents on the big screen.

 

[rocketeer]

I wish they would release a few more silents on DVD/Blue Ray. Those Cecil B DeMille classics such as Ten Commandments and Joan the Woman etc. Lon Chaney's Horror classics could do with an outing and of course Chaplin's The Immigrant and Gold Rush rather than all the comedy shorts.
A few years back I saw Birth of a Nation with its original musical score, though this is now deemed 'Politically incorrect' with whites playing the black leads and the Ku Klux Klan being hailed as the saviours of the south. Not seen it since video tape days but I believe it did have a centenary outing a few years back, but even that caused controversy.