Not according to Mary Pickford. She once said that filming in sound and color would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo*.
You’re kidding, right? How many silent films have you seen? I LOVE silent films, and think that most of them convey great range and subtlety. Or, like Norma Desmond said, back then they didn’t need voices, because they had faces.
That’s a ridiculous comparison. A Trip to the Moon was made long before any kind of extra-atmospheric travel, let alone to the moon. Apollo 13 was a documentary about an actual, real event. You’d be better off comparing A Trip to the Moon to Star Wars. Also, remember that A Trip to the Moon is REALLY old. It was made in 1902. It doesn’t represent silent films as a whole. Look, for example, at the finesse, the mise en scene, and the special effects of Metropolis.
*I am aware of the irony here, in that there is lots of evidence that Classical statues were painted, but this was unknown until very recently. No one knew it in Pickford’s time, and no one knew it during the Renaissance, when people made white marble statues in imitation of the Classical ones.
And when sound movies became commercially possible, Howard Hughes reshot most of the originally silent Hells Angels with sound. Plus he shot some in color.
I don’t know what Pickford’s quote really adds to the discussion, because she’s wrong. Unless you are arguing that every sound film, and ever color film ever made in the history of cinema, not to mention (color and sound, being live action and all) theater, is crap.
Thank you ever so much for posting your list of favorites. I was hoping someone would do that because when I started this thread, I had hoped that I could get some ideas for some new films that I hadn’t seen before.
I’d like to add that one B&W film I couldn’t list (because I have been unable to find a working version as of yet) was
Force of Evil (1948) starring John Garfield.
When I was younger, I kept confusing John Garfield with Paul Muni. To a 10 year-old, they both look very similar and they both made some wonderful B&W films - especially in the “Film Noir” genre.
Two different directors can tell the same story but the results could be wildly different.
A great director can transport me with their film. By that, I mean that when I watch that film, I forget where I am and what time it is. I get transported to the time and place where the film takes place and everything else just falls away.
There are many other reasons why a great film is so much more than just the story it tells.
A ten year-old child who has never before made a movie can make one that tells the same story that a great director would tell. But the difference would be extreme.
I remember visiting a film museum in Brussels 30 years ago. They screened the silent film Romance of the Underworld (1928), starring Mary Astor, and a piano player in the the theater played the musical score throughout.
It most certainly would. It would be unrecognizable.
Actually, a much better comparison is to Fritz Lang’s * Frau im Mond* (“Woman in the Moon”, 1929). This film depicts the first flight to the moon. Rocket expert Hermann Oberth was the technical advisor, and it shows. The special effects are extremely good. And I won’t even say “for the period”. It looks as if they got together the crew to build a moon rocket and simply filmed it.
It features the use of a multi-stage rocket, and the first count-down in history, which has been credited with giving us the use of counting down to zero for a launch. (But not the idea for the count. jules Verne used a count to launch in From the Earth to the Moon, but his was a count UP to ten, rather than a count-down to zero)
In the early-'80s I saw a screening of The Phantom Of The Opera (1925) at a revival house in Sherman Oaks. (They ran a month of science fiction and horror shows every year.) It was accompanied live by Gaylord Carter.
What does that even mean? A film is just a film, a sound is just a sound…
That’s like saying Gone With the Wind would be unrecognizable in B&W. But it wasn’t - the first several times I saw it was on a B&W TV, and it was still the same movie when I finally saw it in color. Just prettier. I never thought the color cheapened the film, or gussied up the horrors of the time period.
2001 would be closer to being unrecognizable in B&W, mostly for losing the trippiness of the star gate sequence, but otherwise it’s the same movie. (Heck, just drop some acid and the colors probably come back!)
Barb Wire could be described as a color remake of Casablanca, but the color film isn’t what makes it bad!
That’s an excellent point, and Woman in the Moon makes a better comparison to Apollo 13. My point in bringing up Star Wars was the A Trip to the Moon isn’t meant to predict anything about what actual space travel might be like in the future, just as Star Wars may have been dressed up as Sci Fi, but it’s really a fantasy film.
Also, add both A Trip to the Moon, and Woman in the Moon to my list.
If your seemingly-profound but really empty philosophy is an attempt to make me think I am a simpleton, unable to grasp complex ideas, it ain’t working. Am I supposed to marvel at your quote, go “oooh! so deep! What if we had spoons for hands?”
In other words, put up or shut up. No more Deep Thought fake Zen quotes. WHY would Casablanca be “unrecognizable” if it had been originally shot in color? I am eager to consider your position.
