OT: What's your favorite silent film?
I think you mean intensive purposes!
These first few replies were all I expected OP would get with this OT...
The fact some people actually posted real answers is impressive - very Mgoblog!
Anyhoo - get some Chaplin silents, "Gold Rush", "Modern Times" are 2 in particular, and there're also collections of shorts. You will pee in your pants, he's still that funny almost a century later!
it SHOULD have been
It should OF been.
FTFY
My favorite silent films are youtube videos of Michigan football games with the volume off because I'm at work.
A short French film called "A Trip to the Moon". Known for being the first science fiction film ever made. Give it a watch - it's only 15 minutes long!
Its on Netflix in color.
Tried it. So bad. Charlie Chaplin stuff is way better.
I get it was 1902 so what they were doing was impressive but I am not giving free points for it being over a century old. Not a good film.
"Not a good film"?
Yeah, no.
There's a pair of box sets with all of Georges Melies' early film experiments, including A Trip to the Moon. Worth a perusal.
https://www.amazon.com/Georges-Melies-Wizard-Cinema-1896-1913/dp/B0013K…
https://www.amazon.com/Melies-Encore-George/dp/B0032Y6XCU/
I'd also recommend the final episode of the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, which is framed around Melies making A Trip to the Moon. Really fun--as is the rest of the series.
Nosferatu (1922) by default. It is the only silent movie I've ever watched start to finish. And let me add, that experience made me glad movies have sound.
Don't Speak by No Doubt
I watched that as a student at UofM in my apartment. It was one of those weekends where the premium movie channels were shown for free in order to entice you to purchase the premium movie channel package. I got home and noticed that SotL was on. I didn't want to start watching mid-way, so I checked the listings and saw it was being re-run at 1am. I didn't have a VCR at the time, so I stayed up to watch it. My roommate had already gone home for the summer, so it was just me, watching all by myself, in a creaky, old, typical Ann Arbor student apartment. I was never so scared in my life.
I don't think I've ever watched a silent movie, but I recently discussed another movie I watched in Ann Arbor 25 years ago - The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Turns out my son's music instructor is a big fan of that movie's sound guy. I watched the original unrated version at the old State Theater (in lieu of getting an X, they chose to be unrated.)
The reason it came up was I was wearing a GPS shirt with "Spica" on it, which is the name of the 8th GPSII-F satellite, and Spica is the name of the gangster in the film. I only bought the shirt as a lark because my 8th grade teacher was named Mr. Spica, and he was a real oddball.
Metropolis is incredible, but it's loooong. My favorite is probably City Lights. Honorable mentions to the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Mel Brooks' Silent Movie. The 2005 film The Call of Cthulhu was well done, too.
+1 for the Cabinet of Dr Caligari
I thought it was really good.
have never seen a silent film.
They started making talkies before I was born.
I couldn't figure out why they made it a silent film, until I realized the types of farts involved. Great documentary for it's time.....
The Smell-O-Vision edition was incredible.
I'll take "Topics you'll never see on an RCMB message board" for $500 Alex.
not much genuine participation here either
I mean, given the general divide here between liberal arts types and those who worship at the font of Harbaugh's manliness manhood, getting 50% participation in a fine arts thread is par for this course.
Yes, but many threads on RCMB start out with, "How do you think (fill in the blank) will plead?"
Those threads eventually get red-locked.
Anything in gif format
Odessa steps, man. What a film.
on mute is #1.
#2 is the 1996 hockey national title game on mute.
#3 is the 1989 basketball national title game on mute.
#4 is the 1998 hockey national title game on mute.
Metropolis -- the shift change scene is pretty cool
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari -- CRAZY ENDING OMG
I got to see Cabinet of Dr. Caligari at the Michigan Theater with a live Orchestra back in the 90s. Was fantastic. That movie is creepy.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924)
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
I too am a huge Harold Lloyd fan. Speedy gets my vote over The Freshman, but they both pale in comparison to Safety Last!
I'm also a huge fan of Dziga Vertov, the experimental Soviet filmmaker most famous for Man With A Movie Camera, as well as for the Kino-Eye films. Really, all of those early Soviet films are fantastic, though I often find myself enjoying Eisenstein's sound films more than his silent work.
The General
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
- partly because it has one of the most dangerous stunts ever;
- partly because The General is already mentioned, a wonderful film;
- mostly because it's Buster Keaton, who I think is the best silent film comedian. Less sentimental than Chaplin, better stories & more humanity than Lloyd.
Also, Keaton played baseball with his crew when filming on location.
Chaplin was good, but Buster Keaton was great. What he did in his movies are still being used today. This is a great video on what he did, and how it is still used today.
If I failed at the embedding (which is more likely then not) then here is the link: https://youtu.be/UWEjxkkB8Xs
edit: fixed the video
but here you go:
The Artist (2011): swept the Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, etc.
Safety Last (1923): the quintesstial Harold Lloyd pic, the scene with the clock is one of the most famous scenes in any movie of any genre (specifically strarts around 3:40 of vid below):
City Lights (1931): Even if you don't know any silent movies, you probably know this one without knowing you know it. The meme of blind flower girl being helped by Chaplin's tramp has been oft-adapted into commercials, satire, etc. If the last scene of the movie doesn't get to you, you're dead inside, man.
I don't have a ton of experience with silent film, but growing up my family had a VHS tape with The Mark of Zorro from 1920 starring Douglass Fairbanks on it. I loved this film. It was pretty awesome seeing how an action movie was made back in the day. I'm pretty sure Fairbanks is doing all his own stunts, and there were some decent ones. I haven't seen it in forever though, so I don't know how much my memory is colored by my childhood fondness.
If I had to choose, then probably "Metropolis". I always considered that to be extremely well done.
Of course, "Silent Movie" - which Mel Brooks did in 1976, nearly 50 years after the demise of the silent film - is an excellent sendup of the genre, up to and including the only word being spoken by Marcel Marceau.