The Cabinet of Dr Shhh! (silent movies thread)

[sally]

starting a separate thread to avoid the constant spamming of last watched with screenshots from century-old movies

here is a place for everyone to discuss, comment, update and generally (if you so wish) diva-scream about films that, given the average human life-span, are now full of ghosts

resources

view:
Danish https://www.stumfilm.dk/en/stumfilm search: https://letterboxd.com/ojf/list/films-on-stumfilmdk/
Finnish https://elonet.finna.fi/Search/Results? ... =AllFields
Swedish https://www.filmarkivet.se/ search: https://letterboxd.com/greennui/list/fi ... arkivetse/
Italian https://www.ilcinemamuto.it/betatest/ma ... eogallery/
Italian (mostly) https://vimeo.com/user23575894 search: https://letterboxd.com/arkheia/list/cin ... o-library/
Italian (mostly) (requires login) https://www.cinetecamilano.it/
French + others https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/
Spanish https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh2yy6 ... r7Sc34g7Kg
Belgian + others https://www.youtube.com/@CINEMATEKfilms/playlists
Chinese https://www.youtube.com/@ModernChineseCulturalStudies
Europe https://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/
Soviet: go to https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicFilmRVisionTV/playlists and select Немое кино playlist
Everywhere https://www.youtube.com/@eyefilmNL search: https://letterboxd.com/kahlua_john/list ... ection-on/
https://player.eyefilm.nl/en/home
Everywhere https://www.youtube.com/@peliculasmudassilentcinema5450
Everywhere https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCajd8 ... peW1jrkTJQ
Everywhere https://www.youtube.com/@FilmsbytheYear

blog:
https://moviessilently.com/
https://traumundexzess.com/
https://silentsplease.wordpress.com/
https://eltestamentodeldoctorcaligari.com/
https://emutofu.com/
https://sempreinpenombra.com/
http://annhardingstreasures.blogspot.com/
(in memoriam) https://www.thecinetourist.net/


lists:
Czech https://scfzforum.org/phpBB3/viewtopic. ... 994#p30994
Italian https://letterboxd.com/lightwisdom/list ... nt-cinema/
British https://letterboxd.com/laburnumgrove/li ... 1-to-1936/
Swedish https://letterboxd.com/lesfilmsnoirs/li ... ilent-era/
French https://letterboxd.com/louisjean2kz/lis ... y/release/


so............

remembered to check the eyefilm player and found a nice program of eng subbed:
https://player.eyefilm.nl/en/films/jean ... llection-1

main feature: des meeres und der liebe wellen - max obal (1912)

it's no joseph delmont (delirious eroticism) but there was plenty of flesh flashed, and some nice sea stuff for 1912

[Holdrüholoheuho]

♥

[wba]

A wonderful new thread!

[rischka]

lyda is here and she's excited about the new thread!

[sally]

lyda is here and she's excited about the new thread!

yay! this is a thread for all the divas!




have updated opening post with extra stuff and to make it more explicit that it's for everyone.

today watched a (i may be biased) lovely compilation film about the north of england made for yorkshire silent film festival. featuring as expected the grim satanic mills, the glorious countryside, insane old people, and near fatal accidents (and a VERY random chaplin impersonator) but it's very well put together and also it drove me insane trying to figure out where each clip was from (i'm okay with halifax, manchester, liverpool, york, scarborough etc but no clue about the north east newcastle way)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnloFHi ... ireSilents

edit: and haha! i knew i wasn't going mad, there was even a hebden bridge clip:
https://www.yfanefa.com/record/4566

full list of films featured: https://www.ysff.co.uk/echoes-of-the-no ... t-of-films

[sally]

take that, boring old english music halls!

below article discussing the personification of cinema in early british film:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 23.2160329

https://twitter.com/tofighian/status/16 ... 80321?s=20

[sally]

gorki - unknown dir. (1913)

streaming here:
https://www.stumfilm.dk/en/stumfilm/str ... film/gorki

no subs tho and the given description doesn't exactly match anything i could see on screen: the celebrated detective gorki is a complete buffoon and the only apparent villain is a kick-ass cross-dressing girl (what criminal thing she did, and for what reason, i've no idea) who is also, infuriatingly, dynamic and purposeful as a boy, but an utterly pathetic, fall for the first man you meet, moon-eyed idiot as a woman....anyway, i was still cheering for oda regardless

some lovely images save it from total nonsense, including the by now ubiquitous split-screen telephone shot, and those characteristic but always delicious desiring danish glances

[sally]

in addition, there was this shot, and leo som journalist is without doubt léonce fait du reportage (perret, 1913, lost?) but i've drawn a blank at the other two. one that may be related to manitus præstinde around that time is frank montgomery's owana, the devil woman (which mentions a good fairy manitou rather than a priestess) and for the last there was a character called bubi, played by joseph römer from 1914 according to imdb but if there was an earlier incarnation, i can't find it....

anyway i reckon i would have enjoyed the program...

[sally]

so there was an excruciating spanish charlie chaplin

las patatas fritas - domènec/domingo ceret (1916)

https://youtu.be/ZJPObbyCdoM



whereas the danes were much more successfully aping cartoons

the master hypnotist - lau lauritzen sr (1919)

streaming: https://www.stumfilm.dk/en/stumfilm/str ... pnotisoren

[sally]

oh and there's a portuguese chaplin as well! (i think, not a lot of info)

http://www.cinemateca.pt/Cinemateca-Dig ... type=Video

[sally]

finally got around to watching holger-madsen's a trip to mars (1918)

i've seen 7 of his films now and they're all totally constipated and creepily obsessed with innocence and purity to the point i wonder about his mental health, it's like he balances out every other single sensuous danish filmmaker of the time (although i also have my suspicions about urban gad). which is a shame because he can make films that look so good....

















this was the only redeeming shot in the whole movie, when he finally cracked and copped a feel

[wba]

they're all totally constipated and creepily obsessed with innocence and purity to the point i wonder about his mental health

That's the 2 main reasons why I stopped watching Holger-Madsen stuff some years ago.
Couldn't stand Trip to Mars either. Such a fascist film as well!
There was simply no fun at all in his films and they were so goddamn preachy.
Can't believe you managed to watch 7 of them.

And I love Danish cinema of that time!!! Urban Gad being one of my favorites (I have to admit...).

[sally]

Can't believe you managed to watch 7 of them.

And I love Danish cinema of that time!!! Urban Gad being one of my favorites (I have to admit...).

i love danish cinema of that time too, which is why i've still got two more holger-madsens i'm gonna suffer (due to unfortunate obsession with hot sexy valdemar psilander )

also realised i'm mildly obsessed with the early split-screen telephone call....gonna log it every time i see one now, to see how early i can go, and when it became a convention...

the count's double - holger rasmussen (1910)


http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/legacy/mi ... zocchi.pdf

Barry Salt describes even earlier films that used the split-screen to show both sides of a telephone conversation, a standard convention which has survived through Pillow Talk down to the television series 24. Hager argues that the depiction of the shared-but-separate telephonic space is one of three major technological influences that have motivated the exploration of cinematic split-screens..........The split-screen is some ways a throwback [to the cinema of attractions] - a hypermediated attraction that calls attention to itself, and therefore to the process of mediation. In doing so, the split-screen breaks the suspension of disbelief and the commitment to transparency and narrative

https://vimeo.com/23768767

[Roscoe]

Still, it's hard to entirely hate a film with a character named Professor Dubious.

[sally]

Still, it's hard to entirely hate a film with a character named Professor Dubious.

yes! the true tragic hero of the movie

[wba]

i love danish cinema of that time too, which is why i've still got two more holger-madsens i'm gonna suffer (due to unfortunate obsession with hot sexy valdemar psilander )

I can understand the Psilander obsession (though he's not my type) - I'm also trying to watch most of his stuff. That's probably how I came to Holger-Madsen in the first place...

[sally]

hungarian rhapsody - hanns schwarz (1928)

very genial UFA romance full of rural kitsch, a fairly restrained willy fritsch, great editing and a camera so mobile that at one point it looks totally detached as it unites the two poles of women (virgin/whore) in great fluid gestures of movements and gazes. all in the service of bursting the screen with sexual innuendo so that the final act of sacrifice seems sweeter as the patriarchal moral norms are (alas) restored (although it still ends on a plough shot lol). but the journey there was fun, all flapping fringes and jiggling, and i have never before seen a violin bow ejaculate white flower petals.....













also i don't know if i was hearing the original associated soundtrack or not, but there was an amusing use of frog ribbits, and although the print wasn't great, the damage led to some nice effects:

[levski4bums]

heyy loving this thread! rn im looking for some silents with 'lots of plants and landscapes," any ideas?

[greennui]

Great thread sally

[sally]

Great thread sally

thanks greennui! glad you're still checking in

heyy loving this thread! rn im looking for some silents with 'lots of plants and landscapes," any ideas?

you mean within fiction films or just docs (plenty of travel ones to tropical places) my memory is terrible for recalling stuff like that but if i see anything in future i'll yell

[sally]

la glu - albert capellani (1913)

capellani (albert) was on top form in 1913/14...churning out the long form loveliness. this one...is activating my coastal kink so bear with the million delighted screenshots. mistinguett is fabulous, totally enjoying herself, and the audience with her, and there's enough of those famous legs for anyone who wants to slaver over them

anyway, the mythologizing, distancing, purifying, putting all the blame on the woman english title on letterboxd is 'the siren', but i prefer the more involving explanation for the french title:

(google translate: the sorceress is now called "the glue" and has chosen as her motto "who rubs it sticks there")

all staircases are signals of destiny - she's luring him to the depths! don't follow her, unsuspecting henry krauss!


since yesterday i am alert to fringes (and thus tassels etc) as synonymous with trembling labia and now i am going to see them as intended everywhere. and here i could even believe it, with those lines centring on him and her voluptuous net dominating most of the screen




stood at a literal turning point (the corner of two walls)






looooove the cinema of locked gazes. no escape paul, you're doomed!





yep, here come those legs!








yeah, whatever, misogynist pricks, why shouldn't a girl enjoy herself

[levski4bums]

you mean within fiction films or just docs (plenty of travel ones to tropical places) my memory is terrible for recalling stuff like that but if i see anything in future i'll yell

thank you, i don't have a preference over fiction or documentary. i recently started putting on 活弁-inspired narration performances, im looking for the next silent i'll do. i originally sent the musician i'm collaborating with the unknown but he says he wants one with "more plants and landscapes," so here i am

im thinking of looking in the direction of arnold fanck but i haven't seen any of his films besides the white stadium so that's more of a shot in the dark for me

[sally]

don quixote - lau lauritzen sr (1926)

great landscapes! carl schenstrøm is fab as the don, and harald madsen is a good sancho. a bit overlong and repetitive, but so is the book

[sally]

le passager - jacques de baroncelli (1928)

nice little moral-angst noir with everyone's faces sucked out permanently to sea - contemplative woman, tormented vanel. (he's a doctor that's killed! will he reveal his guilt by using his medical skills to save the world's most irritating brat?!)

& lovely night before christmas scene with everyone seeing their xmas dreams through the inky black waves...

[sally]

the queen of the season - eduard schnedler-sørensen (1912)

some 'comedy', but beach scenes! love the dunes in that danish grayscale

[sally]

aux feux de la rampe - victorin-hippolyte jasset (1912)

that light from the window straight through his heart, to meet her incoming diagonal

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

aux feux de la rampe - victorin-hippolyte jasset (1912)

The lighting in this one is incredible. Visually, Jasset is maybe my favourite director of the period.

[sally]

yeah it's such a shame so few of his films remain

[sally]

having one of those days so i watched

the bride of death - august blom (1912)

no intertitles so my understanding of the plot is that this is the consequences of all the lusty looks the danes were doing around this time, death by delirious gaze. couple are in love, he gives her the horny eye which is so effective she has to shield it with her hand at which point he has hysterics and later to relive the horniness goes with a prostitute. meanwhile the eye has worked its charm, she's now so horny she skips out in the middle of the night to go join him, but discovers him with the prostitute and tells him to go fuck himself. so instead of actually trying to win her back he just feels sorry for himself for half a year whilst she gets engaged to another sex pest. on their wedding day first boyfriend gallantly sends her a bouquet with a note threatening his suicide unless she goes to see him, so she does, she remembers her love (WHY?), they shag and then he guilt trips her into a double suicide. insane.

[sally]

sunshine valley - emanuel gregers (1925)

gorgeous rural comedy with the zany energy of czech silents (plus of course obligatory scandi river peril scene)