" Roger Ebert, writing decades later, and looking back over several eras of film, notes on the other hand that Keaton's General is "one of the supreme masterpieces of silent filmmaking" (Ebert), a point which should be carefully considered. After all, if silent film was meant to stimulate the minds and emotions of the audience, Buster Keaton is noted today as being a master of silent filmmaking -- and yet the General bombed at the box office and Keaton was compelled to give up his independence by signing on to do studio talkies -- a move that is now credited with destroying his career, which was founded on his creative abilities (Dardis 196)
As Hall slightingly observes in his 1927 review of Keaton's silent film magnum opus, "The production itself is singularly well mounted, but the fun is not exactly plentiful." Roger Ebert, writing decades later, and looking back over several eras of film, notes on the other hand that Keaton's General is "one of the supreme masterpieces of silent filmmaking" (Ebert), a point which should be carefully considered
The General debuted in 1927, again, the same year as the first talkie, and served as a kind of farewell to the marvelous world of the silent film era. Described as a "Civil War farce" by New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall, Buster Keaton's portrayal of Johnnie Gray is viewed as "hardly the person who would be trusted with a locomotive" (Hall)
On the contrary, the experience was felt. In fact, the Lumieres provoked panic in their theater upon showing the train pulling into station: "the audience is said to have shrieked and ducked when it saw the train" (Mast 33)
At least, that is what Hollywood appeared to think: in fact, Hollywood, just like the rest of the nation, wanted to put on a veneer of purity and keep its sins in the closet. Not long after Arbuckle's trial and fall from grace, the Hays Code was rolled out to protect the integrity of showbiz (Sann) and the production of silent films
"The great silent clowns -- Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd -- didn't seem as funny with dialogue as they had without." (Basinger 469)
Others thought that talkies might coexist with the silents, the one appealing to the rubes who like the yackety novelty, the other for the more sensitive and intelligent." (Ellis 123)
This generated a level of indifference from the public, who had become well accustomed to silent film and generally preferred it due to a high level of familiarity. Second, the industry, similarly, had become ensconced in the business of silent film and, "The twenty thousand or so movie theaters in the United States produced a gross revenue of about 360 million dollars," by the mid-1920's (Eyman 74)
Reynaud's 'Rantomimes Luminseuses,' for example, had been accompanied by scores specially composed by Gaston Paulin." (Parkinson 83)
The powerful appeal of audible dialogue was made manifest by the success of the first 'all talking' feature, 'Lights of New York' (1928)." (Sklar 172)
"He's a sickly creature and his victims seem to have no will of their own," Maddrey concluded. Further, as to the turbulent times in which this movie originally appeared, in Germany: the movie Nosferatu "unabashedly sought the approbation of the postwar intelligentsia" (Skal, 51); and the "pestilential images" portrayed in the film, Skal continues, "were widely considered to be a reflection of the war (WWI) and its wrenching aftermath
Nanook was chosen because he was the most famed of the hunters in the district, but the two women playing his wives were not his wives and the children were not his children. Flaherty's first footage was of a walrus hunt, and he revealed that Nanook and his fellow hunters performed the hunt for the camera" (Ebert, 2005)
The film, in all, about 30,000 feet, was brought out safely, at the conclusion of the explorations, to Toronto, where, while editing the material, I had the misfortune of losing it all by fire. Though it seemed to be a tragedy at the time, I am not sure but what it was a bit of fortune that it did burn, for it was amateurish enough (Flaherty, 1922)
What is interesting is that even modern critics seem to overlook that fact. For example, when Alain Silver defends Flaherty's reconstruction of scenes inside the igloo, he takes the position that the actual igloo was too small and dark for filming, which required the building of a larger igloo for the purposes of filming (Silver, 1996)
However, Flaherty's work predates those notions. As a result, "in recent times Flaherty's oeuvre has been unfairly caught up in the ongoing debates about the ethnographic worth of his early pre-modern films Nanook of the North (1921), Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926) and Man of Aran (1934)" (Williams, 2002)
The melodramatic format allows the character(s) to work through their difficulties or surmount the problems with resolute endurance, sacrificial acts, and steadfast bravery." (Dirks, 2004) But melodrama's valorization of such suffering both renders the suffering interesting to outside audiences as well as 'pathetic,' or pathos inducing
From the start he makes a distinction between 'those directors who put their faith in the image and those who put their faith in reality'." (Blakeney
Caligari." (Chehelnabi ) European expressionism is reported to have began before the First World War began and originated as a "visual arts movement
At the end, it turns out that Francis is an inmate in an insane asylum, and the doctor in charge is none other than Caligari himself." (Ebiri, 2002, p
Porter's 1903 film The Great Train Robbery. In fact, the film is still considered to be the "mother of all American film narratives" (Auerbach 122)