First time I notice this little text to a prosuct om Amazon:
This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media.
Guess Warner’s has moved ahead with its plans to make its library of silent films available on demand. Very nice (if a bit pricey at 28.99 a pop).
Archive for June, 2009
Shipping Warner silent films on demand from Amazon
In 1920s on June 29, 2009 at 10:49 amGlyn meets Chaplin and acts perverse
In 1920s on June 27, 2009 at 2:38 pmSam Goldwyn tells the tale:
Glyn: “Dear, dear, so this is Charlie Chaplin ! Do you know you don’t look nearly so funny as I thought you would ?”
Chaplin: “Neither do you.”
In his Behind the Screen (1923), Goldwyn has very few nice things to say about Glyn: conceited, busy-body, self-righteous, and as Sam hints it, English (Goldwyn is very proud of having signed American authors in his ill-fated Eminent Authors company, as opposed to the more upscale efforts of rival Famous Players-Lasky with their import of foreign names such as Glyn).
My favorite is the following anecdote, after a dinner with the Fairbanks, at the Fairbanks’:
Pictures were turned on, and in this case the selection happened to be Mrs. Glyn’s story, “Her Husband’s Trademark,” in which Gloria Swanson took the leading rôle. I can truthfully say that never in my life have I enjoyed any film so heartily. This was due, not to the character of the performance, but to the remarks which garnished its entire unfoldment.
“See that frock,” whispered the author eagerly as, sitting beside me, she pointed to one of Gloria’s creations; “I designed that gown.”
Another second and she was calling attention to the finish of a certain setting. “Do you see that? An exact copy of my rooms in London. Do you suppose they would have known how to arrange a gentlewoman’s rooms if it hadn’t been for me?”
But there were other times when this robust major of self-congratulation shifted to a minor chord. “Ah, how terrible, how shocking!” I heaerd her moan several times. “All wrong, all wrong–they’ve ruined that scene. I might have know it. I was away that day, you see.”
Verily that evening the “silent drama” renounced its salient characteristic ! (p.238)
I like it because this is a clear example of a perverse spectator who refuses to sit rapt in silence absorbing images in her chair: this is a very active audience indeed ! The last line seems to imply that this is hardly the norm — though it could be read as more of a pun than a statement on silent film spectatorship.
That Marvel – The Movie
In 1920s on June 16, 2009 at 4:05 pmEdward van Zile’s 1923 thoughtful and gently pedantic pamphlet, That Marvel The Movie: A Glance At Its Reckless Past, Its Promising Present, And Its Significant Future, is the classic locus of the concept (traced back at least to Griffith’s Intolerance pamphlet by Miriam Hansen) so prominent in 1920s discourse on cinema of movies as the new Esperanto, the Esperanto of the Eye. Consider the following:
The race has found at last its universal language, its Esperanto not of the ear and tongue of but of the eye. The evolution of the motion picture, developing in a few years from a toy kinetoscope to a Griffith wonder-worker, has made possible, for the first time in the history of humanity, an appeal to the heart and mind and sould of man that overcomes the ancient handicap of the confusion of tongues. After many centuries the check to human progress given at the Tower of Babel has come to an end at the enctrance to the motion-picture palace. It has made possible at last for history to reveal its secrets, and vouchsafe its warnings, not to the comparatively few who read scholarly books but to the millions who, as democracy conquers the earth, have become masters of the destiny of nations.
Clearly, this soaring rhetoric will come crashing with the introduction of sound back into films at the end of the 1920s. But for a while they’ll ride this trope quite actively. Both their despair over the carnage of World War I, and their uneasy perception of the miracle of film, part fancy, part reality, will find expression through it. For if you think Zile only has “educational” films in mind, think again: The Covered Wagon is more his idea of a candidate for that “Lighthouse of the Past”, that “university of universities” that the movies promise to mankind:
To-day I find the screen achieving wonders in conserving, for the sake of posterity, the memory of epic, epoch-making deeds of derring-do that not only glorify our past but inspire us with hope and courage and ambition for the future. (p. 196)
Passive spectator, you who now only has to sit to learn, since “seeing is believing”, beware ! The joys of post-modern simultaneity of heterogeneous points of view still lie in the distant, post World War 2 world…
On a related subject (thank you to the Bioscope Library for the links!):
- Knowlton, Daniel C. and J. Warren Tilton, Motion Pictures in History Teaching: A Study of the Chronicles of America Photoplays as a Aid in Seventh Grade Instruction deals with the Chronicles of America series of lavish short subjects produced 1923-1929 by Yale University Press, and how useful they might have been in terms of education (the assumption being that the photography was historically correct, that “seeing is believing”, again).
- Ellis, Don Carlos and Laura Thornborough, Motion Pictures in Education: A Practical Handbook for Users of Visual Aids, 1923, also looks at the intersection of films and education. I haven’t looked at it but I’m betting they define “educational” film as a pretty broad category…
The Three D’s
In 1920s on June 7, 2009 at 12:22 pmCulled from browsing through GOLDNER Orville, et TURNER George E. The Making of King Kong: The story behind a film classic. New York : Ballantine Books, 1975, the motto of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack Productions:
Keep it Distant, Difficult and Dangerous.
