Eve always added that little “extra” needed to explain whatever questions we posed regarding the “Silver Screen” (if you’ll forgive the cliche’ please?).
Eve’s one and only comment to one of my (many) posts was (IIRC): “Quasi, peel me a grape!”
I liked to have died that she answered me!
I would have done so and brought them all to her on a silver platter!
As for the other comments (and sorry I’m a newbie to silents), am I correct in my assumption that Harold and Buster did all their own stunts?
The FOX Theatre here in Atlanta also has one of those organs, and my GOD could that guy play! I remember he also had a Baby Grande sitting over to the side, which he played from the organ keyboard!
Used to just love watching him rise out of the depths of The Fox and entertain us!
Last time was just before the film Kelly’s Heroes!
I will never forget it!
Sorry! Sometimes the memories get the best of me!:rolleyes:
So what was with the hugely open eyes and overexaggerated expressions that, well, everyone seemed to use in the silents? Was that all vaudeville/burlesque stage stuff that they didn’t yet understand needed to be toned down for film?
Pretty much. The earliest silent films were simply a camera set up pointed at a stage. There was no thought of doing anything on the stage differently; just recording it.
It wasn’t until Pastrone and Griffith came along that filmmaking started to become “cinematic”–i.e., taking advantage of the possibilities offered by film, like camera movement, montage, depth of field, closeups, double exposure, etc. Once film became cinematic, as opposed to simply recorded theatre, acting style necessarily began to adapt to the new storytelling techniques.
They’re still changing. Today’s acting style is also just a style. If you were able to show a “realistic” performance from a modern film to someone who was used to the film styles of say the forties or fifties, it probably would not seem more “right,” it would probably just be jarring, because it would be outside of what they would expect to see in that context. Just like for someone who’s never seen a film more than 10 years old tends to be jarred by exposure to other styles of acting.
Film audiences of the Silent Era, even though they were surrounded, like you are, by “realistic” behavior in everyday life, would’ve seen nothing jarring in the acting styles of silent film. Film was film; life was life. In the context it did not stand out, just like today we don’t tend to disdain animated films, for example, for being “unrealistic,” we enjoy them for what they are.
No, Wakeman never did Metropolis, and I am sorry for my mistake!
Must have been the “Moroder” version I was thinking of, although I think Rick could have taken it and run with it quite nicely!
Gratifying that so many of you are also fans of the genre and I appreciate the clarifications! Those will serve to enhance my enjoyment watching them!
I love this: Thanks, lissener!
“They were like poems, like the renderings of dreams, like some intricate choreography of the spirit, and because they were dead, they probably spoke more deeply to us now than they had to the audiences of their time. We watched them across a great chasm of forgetfulness, and the very things that separated them from us were in fact what made them so arresting: their muteness, their absence of color, their fitful, speeded-up rhythms.”
Alas, I’m not going to be able to get there in time…though I assure you, I’ll be there in spirit.
And further alas, out of curiosity, I checked…and it turns out it was the Capri Theatre in El Paso where the “Manos” premiere took place, and it was demolished some years ago.
