Most expensive scene in silent film history
The above cinemagraph is from the 1926 silent film, THE GENERAL, starring and co-directed by Buster Keaton. And this climatic shot is believed to the single most expensive scene in silent film history, at a cost of $400,000. Considered “one of the greatest of all silent comedies (and Keaton’s own favorite) – and undoubtedly the best train film ever made,” this epic scene, filmed near the town of Cottage Grove, Oregon, used a real train (with a “dummy” conductor) and was shot in a single take.
Read More »Sarah Bernhardt: Hot Again
French performer and arguably the first international star Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) is the subject of the newly released “Sarah : The Life of Sarah Bernhardt,” written by Robert Gottlieb and published by Yale University Press. Hopefully this book will lead to renewed interest in her life. Although she’s been dead for almost 90 years, some [...]
Read More »SUNRISE: A Song of Two Humans
When F.W. Murnau and screenwriter Carl Mayer set out to make their very first Hollywood picture they were given an almost unlimited budget and complete artistic freedom. The result is SUNRISE (1927), one of only a handful of silent pictures without titles (or nearly without them). One of the wisest uses of that budget was hiring Janet Gaynor, one of the biggest names of the time and also one of the few actresses able to retain her star status even after she made the move from silent films to talkies. Her expressions say more than titles ever could have and transform the movie into something more like a visual poem.
Read More »Alice Guy Blaché: the first female director
Still from THE OCEAN WAIF (1916) Alice Guy, as she was known, was not only the first female director, but the first director of narrative films – period. At a time when films were being made mainly for scientific or commercial purposes, Alice Guy had the bright idea to tell a story instead. Her first [...]
Read More »Cruel and Unusual: the art of American slapstick
Starting tomorrow, for ten days only, the MoMA will screen a collection of uproarious, irreverent, silent, American slapstick comedies, all accompanied by live piano. First up are five short films united by a general cross-dressing theme with silent favorites Stan Laurel, Buster Keaton, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, and Wallace Beery.
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