Better Off Where Words Fail ...
Never Mind Voices When We Had Such Interesting Faces
Has home viewing become a laziest of recreations? I choose flatness that lets Ann and I kibitz through Murder, She Wrote where a driverless car chases Stuart Whitman, Van Johnson and June Allyson, spam rather than red meat that is King of Kings just in from Flicker Alley, last Blu-Ray word for DeMille’s voiceless epic. Why Murder, She Wrote rather than a roadshow Passion Play? Hint lies in K of K’s silence, meaning you work at reading faces that convey everything short of words, paying close enough attention to know how un-essential speaking is. We divine what characters feel short of being told like in talkies, a concept alien to spoon-fed culture, but don’t we understand each other best from looks and body language? Speech is for most a least reliable gauge of everyday interaction. They say first impressions come in an instant, often before either party talks, so why not silent movies as most sophisticated indicator of human behavior we have? No one need “adjust” to voiceless film. We already have it in us to comprehend just fine. I blame baby food served over all our present lifetimes. Not that I underestimate babies. They take cues largely from sight and look how quick they learn to manipulate grown-ups. If a child was shown nothing but silent films for its first five years of life, we’d have a society fueling talkless disc releases. To screen silents seems a gone art for other stuff we do while “watching,” which really is every activity but what’s on a screen, Law and Order episodes as backdrop to clacking keyboards, replying to texts on inaptly named Smartphones, OK because we’ve seen most L&O’s three/four times (helps that most are easy to forget).
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Blanche Sweet Tells It All Sans Talk |
What became of dark rooms in which to watch? Such were called theatres. You ate in them, talked at risk of being shushed. They say in nickel days folks were entranced, nay hypnotized, by vital visuals. No lower of heads, looking at each other, or juggle of popcorn lest you miss something, and yes, there was much to miss where frames were filled and everybody acted at once. I see shorts at You Tube and come away wrung by interaction with a 1912 Vitagraph, a 1908 Nordisk, folk emoting, reacting, conflicting all over places, cameras not yet fixed on what we’re supposed to see. With multiples engaged at business of life, you choose which to follow, hefty load with priorities differing what with one crowd studying another crowd on a crowded screen, this before installation of a star system where eyes were naturally directed at the personality we’ve paid to see. Stars went a long way toward making films predictable, formulas then applied to seal the deal. Nickel drama found its level according to who looked. Like with plays, which earliest films mostly were, each from an audience could exit with his/her own impression of what they just saw, and I wonder if any two were alike. Single-reel fables offer alternatives as to who we’ll observe closest, not a little like video games where eyes fasten to one or other corner before sudden, maybe urgent shift back, early squared frames a busy landscape. I tire of moderns always directing me where to look. And by modern, I mean everything for the last hundred years. A good Edison, Thanhauser, or Biograph leaves it all to yours and my judgment, knowing conclusions can, likely will, differ. I’ll hone on Henry Walthall while a next seat focuses on Blanche Sweet, neither of us right or wrong for doing so. Others roaming onto or out of the frame keeps it busy always.
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They Came, They Saw, and Silent Movies Conquered |
There was no place for popcorn in such charged environment, part reason for not offering it, nor Goobers, let alone nachos or hot dogs, in movies’ maiden years. Was patronage really a lot of unwashed imports? I claim they were more alert than films would play to again, engaged far beyond latter-day insta-watchers never more than seconds from changing screen partners, barely comprehending any the while, let alone retaining what they see. Say early viewers were stopped by titles in English because they couldn’t read the language or read at all? Some one or several amidst a crowd could translate aloud, or have a narrator up front to shout needed words. Imagine mosaic of languages to meet nickelodeon ears. Here’s where depth of melting pots was measured for viewership quickly learning because they wanted to learn, in fact had paid their ways in to do just that. How many such sits were needed to get them past a nickelodeon’s comprehension curve? I bet not many. You could call at-a-start watchers “illiterate” in terms of our language and habits, but movies taught quick, your neighbor in a crowd often able and generally willing to fill gaps where needed. Imagine the community movies engendered, crowd generated barn raisings all day or night. Remember also song slides where everyone joined in. What faster or friendlier path to varied and useful knowledge, a popular culture buffet for single coin admission. Present cinema serves all senses save smell and touch. Are these next to be overcome, or have they been already and I’m not aware of it? Possibly I don’t have the right software yet. Who today could enjoy, even comprehend, radio drama? Plenty did, millions in fact, once upon a distant time. There they had the hearing, but not the sight. Again, as with silent movies, imagination was summoned to fill gaps. Are none of us today able to apply our imaginations? If we won’t abide silents, or radio drama, well ... there's your answer. Will future generations look back and wonder why we accepted such obsolete format as feature-length films? Judging by what’s happened to theatre attendance of late, we could ask how far off such future actually is.
Walter Kerr called silent cinema as dead a language as Latin. So far I’ve met no one who speaks Latin, but will keep looking, just as I will for those who’d enjoy mute movies outside Greenbriar’s community. Let’s assume the number is few, but consider vastness of You Tube, thousands of silents hosted there, and wonder how much of that bulk is watched. Positive comments for YT entries, plus recorded number of views, are a help. Back in “Classic Film Collector” days, Blackhawk on 8mm, the rest, we had nothing like numbers recorded daily online. Fact it's all free is pertinent. Hundreds of pre-talk shorts are seeable at You Tube, Vimeo, elsewhere. I sift for nuggets often. Others are doing the same or there wouldn’t be so much treasure spread about. I’ll go on a limb and say the number of silent appreciators is many times what it was when I discovered and championed the format in pre-digital day. Trouble some of us had was not getting presentations right. I played The General to an art guild gathering in 1972 and set projection speed wrong, eighteen torturous frames per second where 24 should have been the minimum. I felt ice form round seating. Lessons learned in those days came always the hard way, or was it just me so continually inept? We now are at a place where silent film need not beg on any account. Where The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse looks and sounds at it does, and on home systems yet, why not see normies as potential converts? At least I don’t have to worry about fouling up The General again. Was my generation better for coming up the “hard way”? I’d swap that for being forty years younger now, gold fields of film stretched infinite before me and not a care about splices, scratches, or bungling my show. For plentiful education along this line, there is a new book by music accompanist Ben Model, The Silent Film Universe, where he analyzes the “immersive, dreamlike experience” that is watching pre-talk. To his mind, no talk is an asset rather than liability, his explanations plenty to attract and acquaint viewer flocks, along with (much) further education for those many who thought we understood a universe wider than I ever imagined it to be, The Silent Film Universe opening doors to greater knowledge, in fact showing me doors I never knew were there. In short, a splendid book from someone who has made a life’s work on understanding vanished time, and through his efforts, making it live again to the joy of audiences everywhere. Safe to say Ben Model has brought more disciples to his silent universe than most who toil on behalf of the art (order The Silent Film Universe here).
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Doug Spoke to Us All, But Wished He Didn't Have To |
Fun of silents was formerly in the getting. I’ve talked to Columbus collectors and each point out how “they” (moderns) need not drive/fly to preserves when click on a bid button will win or lose whatever it is you want. We feel superior for having long ago earned bounty our searches yielded, to which latters might answer, who cares how you get it so long as you got it. There used to be collector meets all over the map. New York had paper shows most weekends. Meadowland Sundays were plane in, frenzy buy, then wing out. Syracuse had its March blowout, plus there was “Cinecon” at a different Labor Day location until finally settling in Hollywood, now minus a dealer’s room. These ran rarities to a gathered audience, being an only place one could see The Bat Whispers for instance. Now we can saunter into dens and drop it on a Blu-Ray tray, a sinfully simple option you’d not imagine before. Silent days lasted (thirty years plus) till 1929 saw moving farewell, even if tempered by great-to-have-known-you but don’t come back (note ad above for Douglas Fairbanks in a "sound hit"). Elegiac end for The Iron Mask sent a differing message, not what merchandising intended but playing as such now and maybe did in '29 to sensitive enough viewers. Doug and his musketeers die in a third act, necessary conclusion to this story, but what they really do is usher out voiceless times by literally ascending from prospect of sound to Heaven that is forever silence, paradise for them if not for a public that must embrace talker ways or loosen embrace of movies altogether. It is one of the loveliest wraps in all of film and good arguing beyond its immediate effect for reality of an afterlife.