Things to Look at on Silent Movie Day

“What silent movies should I watch?” someone asked the other day, and it’s a perfectly valid question. It’s much preferable to the indifference (and worse, scorn) most people evince when it comes to silent cinema! I’ve actually been ruminating on the question for today (Silent Movie Day) because this year marks the centennial of a very good year for silent movies. Here are five silent features that came out in 1925 that I would heartily to recommend to anyone, because they happen to be among my personal favorites. Please follow the links for much more about the films:

The Gold Rush

Charlie Chaplin’s Frozen North masterpiece will always hold a hallowed place in my estimation both because it’s so funny and beautiful and because it’s the first silent movie I ever saw screened. But be sure to watch the 1925 original and not the narrated version Chaplin repackaged in 1942! Read my fill appreciation here.

The Phantom of the Opera

Just in time for Halloween! Loved this one since I was a kid, too. Horror star Lon Chaney‘s most iconic role, and one of the greatest silent movies of all time. As they often do, the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York is showing it as the keystone of their Halloween Extravaganza this year, but unfortunately it’s sold out. But it’s wonderful no matter where you watch it. More on the the film here.

Sally of the Sawdust

W.C. Fields’ first feature film, based on his hit Broadway starring vehicle, directed by none other than D. W. Griffith, and set in a circus. You get to see Fields juggle, his original vaudeville specialty! More on Sally of the Sawdusthere.

The Wizard of Oz

14 years before the MGM classic, silent comedian Larry Semon made this much maligned anomaly, which is much more of a Larry Semon comedy than it is a proper Oz picture. definitely not canonical to Baum purists! I love to share it because it is so off-puttingly weird. Learn more about it here.

The Unholy Three

Another of Lon Chaney’s great thriller turns; here he is a ventriloquist and also goes in drag as an old lady, all while committing crimes in cahoots with a Little Person and strong man from the circus. The first of director Tod Browning’s films to TRULY lay down his highly distinctive voice. Read all about it here.

*****

These are in the order I would recommend this quintet, with The Gold Rush ranking highest. I kept the list to five because I have personal attachments to the first four, and added a fifth because ya gotta round up! I will admit that the latter two on the list might be be too strange for some. As alternates, two others I might recommend which would surely make my top ten for 1925, are Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman, and the seminal sci fi/horror extravaganza The Lost World.

You’ll note that my selections are all within the comedy and horror genres. That’s because they seem to wear best with modern audiences. By contrast, most silent dramas are excruciatingly boring. But if you prefer a serious direction, I can offer the highest of recommendations for Sergei Eisenstein’sBattleship Potemkin, ostensibly a historical film, but not incidentally a work of Soviet propaganda. Don’t let that stop you — many critics around the world have included it among their ten favorite films from that day to this. You will only find it boring if you’re okay with unattended babies rolling down stone staircases in prams during gun massacres. (In which case, I can’t help you. Please check yourself in at the nearest psychiatric hospital).

While we’re on the subject of silent movies, we wanted to share with you a terrific and well deserved profile of our friend the graphic designer Marlene Weisman. You have seen a gazillion of Marlene’s designs on Travalanche, for she’s the in-house designer for most of Ben Model and Steve Massa’s silent movie projects (books, DVDs, screenings etc), and she has designed for other friends too. Marlene also used to design and fabricate funny props for Saturday Night Live — I interviewed her in that context for my upcoming book Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety. That’s her Louise Brooks collage above, which hangs in our living room. The article about Marlene is on The Daily Heller; read it here.

But of course the best way to appreciate Silent Movie Day is to acquire your own copy of my book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.