Tripped the lights fantastic

[austin_dern]

While I haven't found the Georges Méliès films, I did watch Landmarks of Early Film, which runs from serial photographs through Edison Kinetoscopes and Lumière films -- things like workers leaving a factory, or guys pushing over a wall -- to A Trip To The Moon, The Girl and Her Trust, Winsor McCay, and the Keystone Cops.

The greatest surprise of these silent films? Not that they weren't silent; everybody has been told by now silent movies had musical accompaniment. My surprise was finding New York: Broadway at Union Square (1895-97) and Skyscrapers of New York City from North River (1903)'s accompaniment by ``Sidewalks of New York'' was not an anachronism. The song was written in 1894. I'd thought it was later. This is another irrationality of mine; if I recognize the music as something written after the film's release, it feels wrong. Yet if it's a completely new composition that's fine, even though a brand-new composition is by definition more anachronistic. Doesn't make a lick of sense.

Another wonder most have heard about is that black-and-whites were not always black-and-white. Many scenes are on tinted film, for art or variety's sake. And hand-painted frames add color that flickers, not quite fitting a shape or holding a steady hue. Colored clouds of smoke or the trails of color following women's dresses in The Great Train Robbery are pure magic, in a way I don't think could be done anymore.

Trivia: Making the first detailed topographic map of France took over a century, and four generations of Jean-Dominique Cassini's family worked on it. Source: Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, Norman J.W. Thrower.

Currently Reading: The Clicking of Cuthbert, P.G. Wodehouse.

Comments

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

*grin* Even more so... some silent movies came with scripts, for local actors to speak along with the characters. Others were intended to be "Rocky Horror"'d by the audience.

In short, silent films were FUN!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

A good point. This DVD's print of A Trip To The Moon includes the narration (in English, delivered with just enough of a French accent to be unclear).

Another point for those who haven't seen silent films -- everyone knows how many have title cards. Those usually describe some, but not nearly all, of the dialogue; the characters talk even while we have to guess roughly what they say. It all makes for a wonderful surreal effect.

I really like silent films (live and cartoons), but it is hard to find time to just pay attention to a big block of them. Roger Ebert praises the dreamlike quality a good silent movie gets, and there's something to that.