Ask HN: Recommend me some silent movies I would love silent movies which are very well detailed |
Ask HN: Recommend me some silent movies I would love silent movies which are very well detailed |
More - https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?num_votes=10000,&sound_mi...
Also I quite liked "All Is Lost" (2013) and of course "Hundreds of Beavers" (2022) for contemporary films
You’ll be well served by anything by Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton
The Passion of St Joan of Arc (1928)
Babies movie (1 hour documentary) is about 4 newborns in different locations of the world, again colored, beautiful shots and without any narrative.
I'll also recommend "Nosferatu" (1922). And "Metropolis" (1927) — but note that "Metropolis" is, or has been, kind of a "semi-lost" film: they're still turning up bits and pieces of it from time to time. I saw what-was-then-called "Metropolis" in the 2000s, and then again in 2024, and I felt that it had radically changed for the better and more-comprehensible. After checking Wikipedia: presumably the first version I saw was the 2001 release (124 minutes) and the second was the 2010 release (148 minutes). But also note that I was 15 or 20 years older, which might have helped.
If (and, presumably, only if) you have read Dante's Inferno, then you might enjoy the film adaptation "L'Inferno" (1911). Wikipedia calls it "the first full-length Italian feature film." The full 62-minute film is available on Wikipedia [1]. Unlike all of the above films, I do not recommend "L'Inferno" as a popcorn movie, but I found it really impressive as a sort of "living tableau" shot-for-shot reenactment of Gustave Doré's famous illustrations.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dante%27s_Inferno_(1911)....
The Man Who Laughs
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
The Lodger
Shootin’ For Love
Little Neddy Grab Your Gun
Those Darn Amigos!
Little Neddy Goes to War
Amigos! Amigos! Amigos!
- Faithful Heart / Cœur fidèle
- The Fall of the House of Usher / La chute de la maison Usher
Early dramas by Ernst Lubitsch. Very distinct and sophisticated style, ahead of its time. You may start with any film starring proto-femme-fatale actress Pola Negri:
- Madame DuBarry / Passion
- Carmen / Gipsy Blood
- Die Flamme / The Flame
The Niles Canyon section of Fremont was an early nucleus of the film industry in the USA, before Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin's "The Tramp" was filmed there. During WW1 the film industry shifted to Hollywood.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niles_Essanay_Silent_Film_Muse...
I also enjoyed People On Sunday, if only to see what Berlin was like in the 20s. It was Billy Wilder’s early works, before he made some waves in Hollywood.
I wanted to mention a silent film I watched recently, Lonesome (1928) https://letterboxd.com/film/lonesome/ Although it includes added dialogue (and color!) for a few scenes, it is still considered a silent black-and-white movie. You get a wonderful view of life in a big American city almost a century ago. It is amazing what still remains the same...
Abel Gance - Napoleon (1927) 562 Minute epos
Buster Keaton - The General (1926) as many have already pointed out
Robert Siodmak - People on Sunday (1930) Captivating images of Berlin pre war
The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902) - Collection of Mutograph (68mm non perforated) films https://player.eyefilm.nl/nl/films/the-brilliant-biograph
Some directors/movies that can be worth checking out are:
Victor Sjöström – The Phantom Carriage
Mauritz Stiller – The Saga of Gösta Berling
Charlie Chaplin – The Kid
Fritz Lang – The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
(Warning: Intolerance was Griffith's response to the widespread criticism of his earlier work, The Birth of a Nation (1915), considered "the most controversial film ever made in the United States" and "the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history" - so we're stepping into controversial territory here).
https://www.tcm.com/articles/Programming%20Article/020683/si...
Here are the featured films for November and December: 11/3 - The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) 11/10 - The Dragon Painter (1919) 11/10 - The Tong Man (1919) 11/17 - Three Women (1924) 11/17 - The Doll (1919) 11/24 - The Scarlet Letter (1927) 12/1 - Scar of Shame (1927) 12/8 - The Life of the Party (1920) 12/8 - Fatty's Tintype Tangle (1915) 12/15 - Little Old New York (1923) 12/29 - The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
1 o’clock in the morning with Charlie Chaplin. Also his: the Gold Rush, the Kid, the Great Dictator.
It's quite long (I think 7h in it's restored version) but it's a masterpiece with many innovative techniques and huge budget for the time.
I don't know how you can watch it legally unfortunately but it was aired in France on TV at the end of summer early september iirc and released in some theather (in 2 parts) this summer.
is a brilliantly crafted stand alone episode from a British anthology series.
Written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, it stars the writers as a pair of hapless burglars attempting to break into the large, modernist house of a couple—played by Denis Lawson and Oona Chaplin—to steal a painting. Once the burglars make it into the house, they encounter obstacle after obstacle, while the lovers, unaware of the burglars' presence, argue. The episode progresses almost entirely without dialogue, relying instead on physical comedy and slapstick, though more sinister elements are present in the plot.
Both journalists and those involved with the episode's production commented on the casting of Chaplin, a grandchild of the silent film star Charlie Chaplin, ... though her casting was not a deliberate homage.
[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0770802/ [2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11564468/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc
For Baraka at least, Roger Ebert summed it up nicely: "If man sends another Voyager to the distant stars and it can carry only one film on board, that film might be Baraka."
Can be watched on Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang:_A_Drama_of_the_Wilder...
Very much a comedy of the 70s rather than an earnest silent film from the 20s/30s. It's a silent movie about making a silent movie -- in my opinion, peak Mel Brooks.