In another CS thread, Walloon said (referring to favorite film homages):
It’s a terrific video, new to me, but it stirred my curiosity: What other music videos explicitly reference, allude to, or evoke silent films?
Madonna’s Express Yourself may not emulate the silent movie style, but it is a direct spin-off of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
The J. Geils Band’s **Freeze Frame** is pretty terrible as videos go, but they use (presumably public domain) silent film material, including Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. and Lon Chaney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The original video for the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ song Put a Lid On It has the feel of a silent film plot. Not as much as “Tonight, Tonight” but you get the gist.
In the Smashing Pumpkins’ video, “Ava Adore” Billy Corgan is sporting quite the Nosferatu look. I think he did it in other videos.
Madonna’s “Express Yourself” referenced “Metropolis” greatly, even using the “moral” about “between the heads and the hands are the heart”.
Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Otherside” was greatly influenced by “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (even to the point that they wanted to avoid being TOO derivative of it) as well as German Expressionism, surrealism & cubism (I got this from the Wikipedia article).
Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl” was a direct homage to “Caligari”.
Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” used Chaney’s “Hunchback” to amusingly illustrate the line “Some boys take a beautiful girl/And hide her away from the rest of the world…”
