BIG SCREEN

Silent movies (sometimes called “flickers” or “flicks”) are so much more than the stereotype of the Keystone Cops running after crooks and falling all over each other at a speeded-up projection rate. Yes, there were a lot of comedies because action is the vocabulary of a silent film, but every genre of entertainment was represented before sound was introduced. And they were produced in many different countries and distributed worldwide because there was no language barrier except for title cards, and they could be easily translated.

 

Nowadays silent films in the San Francisco Bay Area can be seen at the annual Silent Film Festival, at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) or YouTube. The Jazz Age Junkie is no expert, but she does have some favorites:

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• The Boat (1921) 

Directed by Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline. Starring Buster Keaton and Sybil Seely. Ingenious stunts and big laughs.

Buster Keaton – The Boat (1921) Silent film

 

• Three Ages (1923) 

Directed by and starring Buster Keaton. The little fellow can win the girl if he never gives up!

 

• The General (1926) 

Directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Again, he’s the little fellow who somehow manages to save his sweetheart and his locomotive against all odds.

 

• Safety Last (1923) 

Breathtaking stunts by Harold Lloyd as a small town boy who just wants to make enough money to marry his sweetie.

Safety Last! Harold Lloyd (1923) Full Silent Movie

 

• Flesh and the Devil (1927)

Greta Garbo and John Gilbert heat up the screen. 

 

• The Last Command (1928) 

Josef von Sternberg directs Emil Jannings in the story of a former Russian commander eking out a living as a Hollywood extra.

 

• The Crowd (1928) 

A beautifully told story of the realities of life as opposed to hopes and dreams in a modern impersonal metropolis. Directed by King Vidor.

 

• The Docks of New York (1928) 

Directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Betty Compson and George Bancroft as two lost souls who find each other in the brutal world of the docks. Betty Compson breaks my heart every time!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tOSuRbubwE

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In the first decade of the Jazz Age, silent movies were becoming increasingly more sophisticated and popular. Actors were learning to convey emotions subtly and even poetically as opposed to the earlier somewhat histrionic vocabulary that was common in the flickers. Camera techniques were more sophisticated and technically ingenious. Silent films had become the art form they had always been meant to be.

 

And then the unthinkable happened: Talkies. It’s a shame, really, that the two art forms couldn’t exist side-by-side, but once audiences heard their favorite stars speaking, the flickers simply flickered out. Some silent era stars made the transition and some didn’t (or did only briefly). Here are a few who didn’t (and some who never got a chance to make a talkie) but should be remembered for their artistry in an art form that died a premature death.