What to show? Or, How to save and promote silent films

[Bob Birchard]

There are often discussions on Nitrateville about what should be screened to attract and hold newbies, and what should be on DVD.

To a great extent the silent film canon has been determined by three inter-related factors:

1) survival: According to Jon Mirsalis's archival survey 78 percent of all American silent films are lost, and the remaining 22 percent do not all survive in complete or pristine condition.

2) Availability: One is more likely to see something that is P.D. and once available through Blackhawk Films than one is to see an acknowledged classic that is still protected by major studio copyright.

3) MoMA, George Eastman House, James Agee and William K. Everson, Andrew Sarris: That is, those institutions and people who created the critical canon--based on a limited sampling of what survived and what was available.

Although he was a film critic of some note, the influence of Agee today is largely limited to the area of silent comedy. We still debate who should be in the "Bib Three" or "Big Four" or whether one should limit one's interest to only these acknowledged masters based on our acceptance or exception to Agee's famed 1940s "Life" magazine artucle about silent comedy.

MoMA established the supremacy of D.W. Griffith as THE silent era filmmaker--largely because they had most of Griffith's films. They similarly canonized Douglas Fairbanks, Mack Sennett and William S. Hart, while Eastman House made the case for Thomas H. Ince as the father of the studio system--even though current research suggests one could just as easily make the case for any number of other contenders.

Andrew Sarris established the auteur "Pantheon" and Bill Everson made the case for some lesser known works--that he just happened to have in his large collection.

To an overwhelming extent, those attracted to silent films and film history come face to face with these major influences--both in the original film selections, books and articles, but also in the re-exploration of these ideas by later enthusiasts.

So, the question is: As the silent film era recedes into being a smaller and smaller perctentage of the totality of film history, should we accept this established canon, say that's all we need, we don't need any more; or should we be trying to actively explore what survives and make a case for broadening the canon?

[Mike Gebert]

Very interesting discussion, although it leaves out two more areas of received wisdom that need questioning-- the picture of German filmmaking as springing from Caligari and the preeminence of Soviet montage theory.

Time and again, new video releases have forced reconsideration of these ideas. On the Russian side, we've seen exceptional films outside the Kuleshovian editing-driven tradition-- Barnet, Bed and Sofa, etc. On the German side, well, after seeing the extravagant visual fantasies of early Lubitsch or Joe May's The Indian Tomb, it's not nearly so clear why Caligari should have been seen as radical. Maybe most extreme, the Modesty Blaise to The Doll's Blow-up, but not a complete break with everything around it by any means.

And beyond both of those, the cinemas that were neglected for decades prove to be more sophisticated in one way or another-- L'Enfant de Paris is not a perfect film by any means, but in every way it's better crafted than almost any American (or Italian) film of that time I know of. Likewise Erotikon, from Sweden in 1920, working at a level of literary and psychological sophistication far beyond other films of that time.

As for American film, I think one of the biggest impediments to understanding the development of American film is this notion of Griffith as its father, all progress descending from him, Griffith to Ford to Peckinpah or whatever.

This seems hard to maintain once you've seen a number of films from the teens and begun to realize that many people were much more competent at the basic language of film at every stage. Traffic in Souls, The Cheat, The Stoning, Alias Jimmy Valentine, False Faces-- any of these is slicker, smoother, more controlled than whatever Griffith was up to at the same moment.

I've steadily come to think that it's much more valuable to think of Griffith as an eccentric, something like Welles or Cassavetes in that he's perfectly happy to leave basic competence behind in the hope of reaching transcendence. In Griffith's case, his greatness comes when he is able to put down, not history with lightning, but a performance with lightning-- Broken Blossoms, say. Nobody was more alive to actors-- when he was on. But as with Cassavetes, or Coppola, or Gance, there's no middle ground in his work between great and lousy.

Anyway, I certainly think that the canon laid down in the 20s through the 50s, and the histories we have which are still mostly written from a pre-home video-era perspective, ought to be under constant assault from the things that are found or restored or merely given a second look.

(Now, if the question is, should Cinecon show a really nice print of something the whole committee has seen before... that's a business decision which is something else entirely. I tend to say yes because I think even if you've seen it a dozen times, you may never have seen it presented this well, and it will help replenish the pool of attendees over time to lure them in with some recognizable titles. At the same time, Cinecon is not the SFSFF, so I'm talking one or two slots, not a wholesale revamp of the mission. Besides, during our recent discussion on that subject I have to say what qualifies as familiar warhorses to you guys is still pretty rare to me, here in Chicago-- The Patent Leather Kid may be known to you but in 30-some years of dedicated filmgoing I don't believe it's ever played once near me, for instance. Rarity is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.)

[FrankFay]

As for American film, I think one of the biggest impediments to understanding the development of American film is this notion of Griffith as its father, all progress descending from him, Griffith to Ford to Peckinpah or whatever.

A great reflection of the attitude is Paul Rotha's comment on Henry king- something like :King copied from Griffith all that was good, to which he added his own spoil of filmic knowledge. Rotha implies that King was unoriginal and inferior. In my opinion King's output, taken over the whole scope of his career, is better than Griffith's.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

Anyway, I certainly think that the canon laid down in the 20s through the 50s, and the histories we have which are still mostly written from a pre-home video-era perspective, ought to be under constant assault from the things that are found or restored or merely given a second look.

Mike, I think that's the argumnet in a nutshell. While the established sacred cows are, like the auteur theory, a great gateway into the silent world, a few more cows may need to be added in order to present a more balanced picture of what actually happened as well as what's currently available.

Pre-codes might be the most obvious example for the sound era.

What to add to the Great Train Robbery, Griffith, Weimar Germany and the big three comedians in anyone's Silents 101 sylabus?

[Harold Aherne]

Without reservations, I say the canon should be broadened even further than it has been in the last 40 years or so. Titles like Hypocrites,
Young Romance, and Miss Lulu Bett received practically zero critical attention until maybe 20-ish years ago, and they still haven't become part of the silent canon in the way that Nosferatu and The General still are. But the three former titles are all so wondrously acted, directed and staged that I'd be perfectly willing to hold them up to film-school students and tell them: this is what a moving picture should be: the audience becomes profoundly involved in the characters' actions and emotions (whether the spectators really want to be or not); the photography is beautifully executed; all the actors are working at their very best.

I'd throw in many other titles that should be watched and studied more carefully too: The Golden Chance, Stella Maris, Hot Water (usually considered a second-tier Lloyd but I got a kick out of the comic timing and direction), Exit Smiling, maybe The Divine Lady (I watched part of it again recently and Corinne's flirtatious humour came through better the second time, and so did Frank Lloyd's skillful direction). And I'm not ready to say that I've mined all the wonderful titles that still exist--one can't reject a title as insignificant if one hasn't seen it (blame my empiricism!).

Critical perspectives on the early 1930s have been drastically renovated over the past couple of decades. When Arthur Knight wrote the "Motion Picture" article for World Book encyclopaedias in the late 60s and early 70s, he largely summed up the early 30s as gangsters, Mae West, and Busby Berkeley. If other critical studies from the same period mentioned the rise of Joseph Breen and the Legion of Decency, it was solely in the context of West and the gangsters--Baby Face, Red-Headed Woman, The Story of Temple Drake et al. were totally unmentioned. I get the impression that they were regarded as ephemeral women's pictures with dated storylines and assumptions compared to later talkies, and that they weren't given any real consideration or respect. By the late 80s many of the Turner-owned pre-codes had begun playing on TNT and eventually moved to TCM, and appreciation of their significance increased considerably--a process that may have already been fermenting at the various film conventions.

Norma Shearer and Kay Francis are two actresses who've particularly benefitted from the critical revision: in her 1983 obits, Shearer was remembered mostly for Marie Antoinette, The Women, and perhaps her Oscar for The Divorcée. Most of her other work was ignored, partly because it was so difficult to see. Kay Francis gets far more respect and attention now than she has at any point since she retired. Both actresses have a number of younger fans who only discovered them because of the video age.

The reason I bring up the 30s is to demonstrate that a mild revolution has occured in how most of us perceive at least the first half of that decade and I don't see why the same couldn't occur for the 10s and 20s--all we need are people who've seen enough from those years that they'd like to research more and open up some vaults. There are a number of silent directors whose work I'd like to see more of--James Cruze, George Melford, William C. de Mille, John S. Robertson, Frank Lloyd--and others who receive little attention now but were highly regarded at one time--J. Searle Dawley, Robert G. Vignola, et al.

In American Silent Film, WKE writes of the World film company and mentions its "tedious Alice Brady romances". I respect him a great deal, but I would also ask: how many of her World films have you seen? If you haven't seen them, you can't know they're tedious. Quite possibly he did see them, he just didn't specify. Anyway, there are hundreds of silents that exist but just haven't been seen because of lack of time or funds. Until we bother to project it, we must keep our minds equally open to the possibility that what we will see may prove to be a turkey or a cordon bleu. And that's why the silent canon isn't anywhere near being closed.

-Harold

[drednm]

As with the literary canon of writers and works, the canon of silent films is merely a place to start.

So much of what we respond to (positively and negatively) is based on personal taste it's difficult for a canon to be a the final word. While I can admire the historical importance of a film like Helen Gardner's Cleopatra, I don't like it and consider watching it on par with reading James Fenimore Cooper (whom I also dislike).

The canon gives as a context of films, filmmakers, and actors as a starting place. And because only 22% of all silent films still exist, the canon becomes looser because we're not even starting with a conclusive body of work. In other words, the best might be extinct while the canon might contain some mediocre stuff.

To me, the major obstacle to being a silent film fan is simple accessibility. Canon aside, if I can't see a film, I can't form an opinion of it regardless of what others have written.

[Gagman 66]

The more and more Silents that I have seen, the most obvious finding is that the majority of the more famous titles are not necessarily the best films. In many cases, they are not even close to being the best films. So yes, we need a much broader perspective of the entire genre as a whole, based on the existing materials. Some of these films have overblown reputations, because for decades they were all that was around to see.

Allot of the time, I feel the medium has suffered an appalling lack of interest from people clearly seeing the wrong movies. No one will ever convince me differently. How could a film such as THE BIG PARADE for example, virtually have fallen off the map? Yes it was one of the biggest films of the era, but few people have seen it today. Same with BEAU GESTE.

[boblipton]

I have no experience in presenting silent movies to people, so these are simply amateur thoughts. s to the question of how to get people interested in silent pictures and coming back, the first is best accomplished by publicity, and the Big Three comics and Griffith have all the pyblicity. oSO you keep them in the repetory, so that people can come in knowing tht there is something they "should" see.

Then you add in something they have never heard of. With any luck, you surprise and delight them. And tht's how you keep them coming back.

It makes sense to me. Whether it works, of course, is another matter entirely.

Bob

[drednm]

I'm sure that if we silent film fans put together our own lists of TEN ESSENTIAL SILENT FILMS we'd see a wide range of films, and we'd probably be surprised at how few films overlapped lists.

I agree with Jeff in being appalled that The Big Parade is seemingly slipping away from us. But even less accessible is The Patent Leather Kid, which was also an important film of its time and in many ways rivals the King Vidor film.

[Jack Theakston]

While time and interest constraints are obviously the reason for it, one of the things I have always thought was a mistake in educational circles is for the audience to only be exposed to the "sacred cows" or high-class pictures. The problem with this is that it skews the opinion of the audience towards the thought that pictures of that era were *all* quality pictures or 'A' productions.

What I would propose to any given film professor teaching the silent era is that they throw in a few "junk food" films or 'B'-westerns in for balance, as well as a lesson in frugality. So many film students end up entering the industry thinking that they'll be the next Stanley Kubrick, and thus have no humble beginnings that lay down the base work for good filmmaking. There is a lot to be learned from a Hoot Gibson western from the '20s, even though a snobby professor might tell you otherwise, and is probably more relevant to the independent/student filmmaker on a short budget than an Ernst Lubitsch production from the same year is.

Regarding the original question: how to promote silent films? The films speak for themselves. The real question is: how do you expose an audience who has no concept of silent films to them? Television used to be an instrumental tool in exposing classic films to new generations because the programming was cheap. Unfortunately, this business model shot itself in the foot and no longer exists (save for TCM, which does it as a labor of love more than anything else).

Home video and film festivals hit their stride in about the last 20 years, and the results are excellent for the most part. The Internet is now making it possible to see many films previously impossible to find, and I foresee this will expand in the next ten years as the infrastructure grows.

Most of all, though, I think it is in the best interest of silent film fans who want to pass the torch on to make the environment for newcomers as welcoming as possible. Although I will undoubtedly burn a few bridges making the following statement, I stand by it: the silent film can/should not go the way of its company, the theater organ. There is so much politics and cattiness in the theater organ world that the demographic has now extremely shifted to the elderly and middle-aged groups. Young people seldom have the opportunity to hear, let alone perform on one of these instruments, and the end result is not even distaste, but oblivion to the subject.

[Chris Snowden]

So, the question is: As the silent film era recedes into being a smaller and smaller perctentage of the totality of film history, should we accept this established canon, say that's all we need, we don't need any more; or should we be trying to actively explore what survives and make a case for broadening the canon?

We've been stuck in a never-ending loop of searching for auteurs (first it was Griffith/Stroheim/Eisenstein, then the heroes were Murnau/Ford/Keaton, now it's Gance/Sternberg/Pabst and whoever else).

Maybe it's time to look beyond the auteurs. We've been oriented toward film as art, and that's fine as far as it goes, but we're neglecting the rest of the picture. The film industry itself was oriented toward a populist approach: giving the folks what they wanted to see. Success was defined not in terms of dramatic camera angles but in terms of audience approval. There's nothing illegitimate about that.

At Niles they've been running silents weekly for several years now. The films that really connect with audiences aren't necessarily the acclaimed classics; very often they're simple action pictures, comedies and hokum.

These films are unpretentious, but that doesn't mean they aren't worth taking seriously. Not only are they key to understanding the historical context of how silents were experienced by the majority of moviegoers, they have a lot to offer us today.

[Frederica]

I'm sure that if we silent film fans put together our own lists of TEN ESSENTIAL SILENT FILMS we'd see a wide range of films, and we'd probably be surprised at how few films overlapped lists.

I agree with Jeff in being appalled that The Big Parade is seemingly slipping away from us. But even less accessible is The Patent Leather Kid, which was also an important film of its time and in many ways rivals the King Vidor film.

I think we did that not too long ago, although I can't remember the thread title, you might try searching for it. It was interesting to see who liked which films, it was all very idiosyncratic and across-the-board.

I am on record as not particularly liking canons in any field of endeavor; I know they are useful as academic/teaching tools, but misused they lead inexorably to abominations such as ranking comedians in number order and kneejerk insistence that Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made. Nothing is more detrimental to true appreciation and enjoyment of a medium than establishing that you have to enjoy it.

Having said that, I consider myself a relative newbie (with only ten years of silent film fandom under my belt), and I've seen interests and critical acceptance, and yes--canons--evolve within the community during even that short period. The careers of people such as Marion Davies, Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew, and Milton Sills (for example) have been reevaluated as we've all had a chance to see their films, instead of having to rely on critical reviews derived from memories. It's yer basic Hegelian dialectic, a constantly evolving process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, it happens in this field as in any field.

So yes, we should take an intellectual moment to revisit the canon occasionally, if only because we revisit it constantly anyway. The tinkering messes it up and eventually it needs a shave and a haircut.

Fred
(who apologizes for the Hegel reference)

[drednm]

Good point there, Fred.... For decades we got the spiel that Marion Davies was a lousy actress, propped up by Hearst and his mass-media empire. But with many of her silent films now available and with new eyes we can now judge for ourselves (light years away from the "scandalous" aspects of Davies' life) and decide about Marion Davies.

Although Davies films will likely not show up in "the canon," she is slowly emerging from the morass as a talented actress and terrific comedienne, one who was more independent of Hearst than legend has it.

If we stuck to the canon, she (and others) would never have been rediscovered.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

I agree with Jeff in being appalled that The Big Parade is seemingly slipping away from us. But even less accessible is The Patent Leather Kid, which was also an important film of its time and in many ways rivals the King Vidor film.

I guess my mileage varried on this one. At least on the complete version screened at Cinecon a few years back. Apart from maybe two reels of impressive war footage, TPLK was a dog.

[rudyfan]

I did a survey on N-Ville and the yahoo silent films group and polled various friends well over a year ago on the top 10 silents for a podcast I was planning (and may still produce).

I will dig up the spreadsheet with the results (might be on the old PC that is still gathering dust in the corner). When I find it, I will either post it here or the original thread. It was a pretty large list, many titles had 1 or 2 votes and it was pretty much all over the map. The definition of ymmv.

[drednm]

I'd like to see the list.... I bet my list of 10 would really vary from the norm....

TPLK a dog? WOOF WOOF SAY IT ISN'T SO.....

[Frederica]

I'd like to see the list.... I bet my list of 10 would really vary from the norm....

TPLK a dog? WOOF WOOF SAY IT ISN'T SO.....

I'm afraid I vote with Harlett on this one. Some good moments, but overall it bayed at the moon and refused to do it on the papers.

Fred

[Mike Gebert]

But you guys saw the road show version, right? As I recall, most of the reports on it were-- could stand to lose a couple of reels!

I bought a disc of the release version a couple of conventions ago, guess I'll have to finally watch that.

[drednm]

well I think it's a great film, about 127 minutes.... my only reservation with it is leading lady Molly O'Day.... Richard Barthelmess is terrific.

[Frederica]

But you guys saw the road show version, right? As I recall, most of the reports on it were-- could stand to lose a couple of reels!

I bought a disc of the release version a couple of conventions ago, guess I'll have to finally watch that.

Dunno, think so, Bob or Mike would be able to answer that for sure. It could definitely have lost a couple of reels, specifically the reel with the ending. As I recall, I was sitting in between Harlett and Bruce--we did a pretty fabulous synchronized retching at the end of the film.

Fred

[Richard M Roberts]

I'd like to see the list.... I bet my list of 10 would really vary from the norm....

TPLK a dog? WOOF WOOF SAY IT ISN'T SO.....

I'm afraid I vote with Harlett on this one. Some good moments, but overall it bayed at the moon and refused to do it on the papers.

Fred

Woof Woof, I'll second that vote, TPLK is a long-winded bore, and even the battle footage was done better elsewhere. If you want an entertaining silent war film with just two reels of battle footage, I go with WHAT PRICE GLORY (1926)anyday.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Mike Gebert]

But it was nominated for an Oscar! Oh wait, that's not an argument against its being a longwinded, sentimental bore.

[Jim Reid]

I'd love to hear if TPLK is indeed better at the shorter length because I was at that Cinecon and was very disappointed in the roadshow version.

[David Pierce]

> To a great extent the silent film canon has been determined by three inter-related factors:

> 1) survival: [snip]
> 2) Availability: [snip]
> 3) MoMA, George Eastman House, James Agee and William K. Everson,
> Andrew Sarris: That is, those institutions and people who created the
> critical canon--based on a limited sampling of what survived and what
> was available.

For the period up through, perhaps 1980, you can answer the question with a single thread that links all three factors: the Museum of Modern Art Circulating Film Library. The titles that were in that circulating collection represented the canon, and textbooks (e.g. Arthur Knight's The Liveliest Art) hew to the MoMA line. Of course, who would want a textbook that primarily discussed films that teachers couldn't show in class, and how would the author see those films to write about them?

The more I look at the titles chosen by Iris Barry for the circulating program, the more astute her choices appear. These are limited, of course, by what the museum could acquire, but most of those titles stand the test of time. The 1936 catalog offered these features: The Cat and the Canary 1927, The Covered Wagon 1923, A Fool There Was 1914, The Freshman 1925, Intolerance 1916, The Last Command 1928, Monsieur Beaucaire 1924, Queen Elizabeth 1912, Safety Last 1923, Sunrise 1927, Underworld 1927. A mix of historical importance, audience appeal, and artistically significant. The only dud is Monsieur Beaucaire.

The other influences noted by Bob pale in comparison - up to about 1980, when they start to have a major influence. Since the advent of video, the MoMA canon has been forgotten (though not the individual films) as we now have much broader insight into what was produced in the teens and twenties.

David Pierce

[Richard M Roberts]

> To a great extent the silent film canon has been determined by three inter-related factors:

> 1) survival: [snip]
> 2) Availability: [snip]
> 3) MoMA, George Eastman House, James Agee and William K. Everson,
> Andrew Sarris: That is, those institutions and people who created the
> critical canon--based on a limited sampling of what survived and what
> was available.

For the period up through, perhaps 1980, you can answer the question with a single thread that links all three factors: the Museum of Modern Art Circulating Film Library. The titles that were in that circulating collection represented the canon, and textbooks (e.g. Arthur Knight's The Liveliest Art) hew to the MoMA line. Of course, who would want a textbook that primarily discussed films that teachers couldn't show in class, and how would the author see those films to write about them?

The more I look at the titles chosen by Iris Barry for the circulating program, the more astute her choices appear. These are limited, of course, by what the museum could acquire, but most of those titles stand the test of time. The 1936 catalog offered these features: The Cat and the Canary 1927, The Covered Wagon 1923, A Fool There Was 1914, The Freshman 1925, Intolerance 1916, The Last Command 1928, Monsieur Beaucaire 1924, Queen Elizabeth 1912, Safety Last 1923, Sunrise 1927, Underworld 1927. A mix of historical importance, audience appeal, and artistically significant. The only dud is Monsieur Beaucaire.

The other influences noted by Bob pale in comparison - up to about 1980, when they start to have a major influence. Since the advent of video, the MoMA canon has been forgotten (though not the individual films) as we now have much broader insight into what was produced in the teens and twenties.

David Pierce

Except that Iris Barry was a total snob when it came to genre films: westerns, action pictures, serials, and especially comedies. So, while I agree that the MOMA Circulating Film Library was indeed influential, I think that influence was indeed more damaging than good. Yes, most of these films are good pictures, but they present a completely distorted view of silent film history that historians are still fighting to correct today.

I'd also say Iris Barry also did as much harm as good in her choosing what was and wasn't to be preserved at MOMA, and in that case lost as much good stuff as she saved.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[gjohnson]

Birchard started this thread by asking, "Should we accept the old established canon of silent film in order to promote it?"

As usual everyone has gotten off track by just naming their favorites but to me the old canon no longer exists. It's been changing the last 30 years. I grew up in the 60's with that canon. I had to. That's all there was! But from the 80's on we have been experiencing new film discoveries, new research and new authors - many of whom chime in on sites just like this. I think everyone here is well versed to realize that silent cinema went beyond Griffith (...so you can relax Mike).

Now if we are talking about what they are teaching in schools I can't comment on that as I haven't been in a university for years (something to do with a chalkboard incident in my dim past) but if anyone is worried that the next generation will be swayed by the old canon, fear not! If for some odd reason a twenty year old should fall under the spell of the same art form that has mesmerized all of us, they will still read up on it by the latest books that have unbroken bindings with clean, plastic covers before they would ever go search out the works of Sarris or Everson encased in yellowing paper hidden on dusty mantels . Although I would hope that eventually they would search out those very books. It's nice to be well-rounded.

As to what should be shown nowadays I go back to that heartbreaking statistic that only 22% of American silent films survive - SHOW EVERYTHING!!!

Gary J.

[boblipton]

Gary Johnson wrote:

As to what should be shown nowadays I go back to that heartbreaking statistic that only 22% of American silent films survive - SHOW EVERYTHING!!!

That covers it so far as I am concerned.

Bob

[drednm]

Show them all..... I watch everything.

[silentfilm]

Well, I would show 'em almost everything. We watched Faro Nell (1929) last night with Louise Fazenda and it was terrible.

I'd say that a recurring feeling I get whenever I screen a new DVD set or catch some films at Cinecon or the KSFF is that you can't generalize about anything that you have not seen yet. Films that you would think would be great are not, and films that have no right to be entertaining, definitely are...

[spadeneal]

Bob Birchard wrote:

MoMA established the supremacy of D.W. Griffith as THE silent era filmmaker--largely because they had most of Griffith's films.

No, there's more to it than that; Griffith's influence in his own time is a well documented phenomenon. Whether or not we feel he was truly worthy of his reputation, he had earned it. Cecil B. DeMille idolized him, so did Eisenstein and many, many others right on down the line. A lot of people felt they owed DWG their start in pictures, and at one point I compiled a list of persons who worked in some capacity with Griffith up through Intolerance and then went into direction. I had about 60 director names on that list.

He did donate his personal film collection to MOMA in 1940, and judging from the first edition of Iris Barry's book on Griffith there were still many films missing. They didn't know yet about the LoC Paper Print collection and that filled in a huge number of gaps. But the recovery operation for MOMA continued up until about 1980, and the new series of books on Griffith's films make clear that there is a lot of work to be done before everything that survives can be made truly accessible, particularly in regard to the Biographs.

Mike Gebert wrote:

I've steadily come to think that it's much more valuable to think of Griffith as an eccentric, something like Welles or Cassavetes in that he's perfectly happy to leave basic competence behind in the hope of reaching transcendence.

And I agree with that; DWG was not really mainstream. However he did represent the kind of "Art with a capital A" filmmaker that early film critics held in the highest regard. It was harder for them to appreciate the artistic qualites of what seemed to be ordinary, commercial product -- we can do that, because we have seen more of those films than they did, and we are not looking quite so hard for art.

Anyway, I certainly think that the canon laid down in the 20s through the 50s, and the histories we have which are still mostly written from a pre-home video-era perspective, ought to be under constant assault from the things that are found or restored or merely given a second look.

I would say that this "second look" is happening, but the books are not keeping up with it. In current film textbooks, the space devoted to the silent era is getting smaller, it seems. The shrinking of the already limited 1960s canon, when it ought to be expanding.

David Pierce commented about the MOMA canon being forgotten, but it was -- in the 1970s and 80s -- pretty expansive. They had listings for some chapters of Fantomas, Onésime and other French films viewers in the US are only now getting hip to and some other oddball things in circulation by that time. However, these titles were not getting the rentals at the Universities; the big canonical titles were. Ironically, I remember that the first I heard of Segundo do Chomon was not from MOMA, but from the Thunderbird Catalogue(!)

Richard M. Roberts wrote:

I'd also say Iris Barry also did as much harm as good in her choosing what was and wasn't to be preserved at MOMA, and in that case lost as much good stuff as she saved.

Well, there were also those three big vault fires -- by 1955, MOMA had only a third of the collection left. In most cases, we simply don't know what was lost then, and how its survival may have effected MOMA's concept of the canon and, ergo, ours. I would say in hindsight there were too few players in the film preservation game at a time when the number of films to preserve was far higher than is the case today; some choices made were the wrong ones, such as discarding 35mm sources after 16mm prints were made of them.

Fred -- I liked your Hegelian comment! I am very grateful for books like Kracauer, George Pratt's Spellbound in Darkness, the Niver Paper Print Books (despite their many mistakes), the Everson books and even the Kalton LaHue books and various "Pictorial Histories" for giving me such a good idea as what to look for in silent film. However, these authors are all long gone, and continued investigation into silent film is constantly exposing what they missed -- I guess it was inevitable. This ball needs to be picked up; universities need to show more of a commitment to teaching silent film and cable television needs to get more involved. Local festivals are a great way to keep interest high, especially in small towns like Niles or in suburban communities.

One of my problems with getting to know the films I read about in the 70s was that I was in Ohio, not New York, and those films were only screened at Anthology or MOMA; I could read about them, but not see them. TCM and DVDs have very much helped to cure that problem since, although I still REALLY wanna see "Lady of the Pavements" and haven't.

My local library had several years worth of bound Moving Picture World; I used to read them like books. I think they gave them to an archive; they are not there now. There are MANY movies I read about in those books which I will never see, but still hope to, like Kalem's The Dance of Death (1914), Jim Bludso (1917), God knows what else. I'm getting tired.

spadeneal