Top Ten from the 10s

Frederica · Post by **Frederica** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:18 am

Dana wrote: One, take a look at Frank Borzage's one and two reelers on the Fox collection and two, PLEASE stop writing Winsor McKay. It's McCay, think C for cartoon. Sorry to be a crank about this.

It's OK, we're all cranks on this bus.

Fred

silentscreen · Post by **silentscreen** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:21 pm

Okay, here's my list:

1. Terje Vigen (1917)
2. Sir Arne's Treasure (1919)
3. Broken Blossoms (1919)
4. Don't Change Your Husband (1919)
5. Male and Female (1919)
6. Daddy Long Legs (1919)
7. The Immigrant (1917)
8. Easy Street (1917)
9. The Mothering Heart (1913)
10. Hoodoo Ann (1916)

Post by **silentfilm** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 8:36 pm

Everybody's had about six weeks to reply, so here are the tabulated results. Some people voted for more than 10, but I included these usually.

1. Les Vampires (1915-16)
2. (tie) Birth of a Nation (1915), Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919-1920)
4. (tie) Hell's Hinges (1916), Intolerance (1916)
6. Broken Blossoms (1919)
7. (tie) The Wishing Ring (1914), Ingeborg Holm (1913)
9. (tie) The Cheat (1915), St. Arne's treasure (1919), Terge Vigen (1916)
12. (tie) The New York Hat (1912), The Pawnshop (1916), The Immigrant (1917), The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918), Cabiria (1914), Land Beyond the Sunset (1912), Regeneration (1915), When the Clouds Roll By (1919), Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915), Male and Female (1919), The Italian (1915), Stella Maris (1918)

As you can see, after the 11th place there were so few votes that it was hard to rank the films. I guess we need more input to make this information meaningful, but I can guess at which films from the 1910s are included in many Nitratevillian's DVD collections. And although most people love comedy shorts, especially Chaplin's, no shorts were able to crack into the top ten.

There were 134 titles that had at least one vote.

Post by **Mike Gebert** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:20 pm

I think it also shows that even though we may feel like the teens are way underrepresented compared to the 20s, there's a lot more out there being seen than there was in 16mm film society/film class days, when it was pretty much only a few Griffiths and Caligari for teens drama. I had only seen two of the films on my list before 1990 (Hell's Hinges and The Outlaw and His Wife), none before I graduated college in '83, and the other 8 out of 10 are either DVD/TCM or things I've seen at the festivals since then.

Gregg Rickman · Post by **Gregg Rickman** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 10:17 pm

The ‘teens are a favorite decade of mine; I love the era’s freshness. I am never unhappy to see a film of 1912, although my favorites tend to cluster toward the end of the decade, and several of my favorite Sjostroms, Stillers and Lubitches were actually not made until the 1920s. This list is given in chronological order, alphabetical within the year. If I allowed myself more than one film per author, The Wishing Ring (Tourneur, 1914), Intolerance (Griffith, 1916), The Girl from the Marsh Croft (Sjostrom, 1917) and The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917) would be listed instead of… some of the others.

How a Mosquito Operates (McKay, 1912)
The Mothering Heart (Griffith, 1913)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (Arbuckle, 1916)
The Matrimaniac (Powell, 1916)
A Flyer in Flapjacks (Ham and Bud, 1917)
The Blue Bird (Tourneur, 1918)
A Dog’s Life (Chaplin, 1918)
Sons of Ingmar (Sjostrom, 1919)
The Oyster Princess (Lubitsch, 1919)
Sir Arne’s Treasure (Stiller 1919)