Hello all, and welcome to this first annual, and most likely last annual, SIlent Film Month, which as you may have noticed, has started about two and a half weeks into the month. It was a last-minute idea, but I think some interesting things will come of it. I was spurred on by a film I saw at the Film Forum last week, Broken Blossoms (1919). I enjoyed the experience of watching it, on a big screen and with live piano accompaniment, but I found I wasn't really engaged by the film itself; I found it interesting more from an historical perspective. Likewise, a few weeks prior, I had happened to tune in to Turner Classic Movies when they were about to show one of the earliest narrative films, The Great Train Robbery, from way back in 1903, and while I thought it wa interesting, it wasn't a whole lot of fun. Now I know from having watched a lot of silent comedies, Chaplin in particular, that silent movies can be a lot of fun to watch, but I think comedy is pretty universal and pretty easy to enjoy in any form. Drama, for me, on the other hand, can be a little harder to get into. This all got me thinking about what, exactly, I've been missing. I decided to catch up on a few of the silents I've missed over the years (missed not exactly being the right word since I'm still pretty young and most people my age don't care a whiff about silents so it's not like my friends are coming up to me and going "Mike, I can't believe you haven't seen Eisenstein's Octyabr!"). So I've picked a very random selection of silents, pretty much whatever I could download and some other ones I've wanted to see for a while on Netflix, and the next week and a half or so I'll be watching a few silents and hopefully blogging about it (If I don't, you have permission to kick me). I'll be starting off tonight with a lotsa yuks dubble feeture of The Circus (Chaplin, 1928) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Keaton, 1928). I've seen a lot by Chaplin and a few by Keaton, but never at the same time, so hopefully that crafty juxtaposition will give me some blog fuel. And we're off! Come back later tonight or tomorrow for my full report.
