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classicfilm2011-08-10 12:10 am
glinda) wrote in classicfilm2011-08-10 12:10 am
Entry tags:
*smalldrumroll*
Hello! I'm glinda and I'll be your host this week. I'm planning on posting about silent cinema tomorrow so I thought I'd garner your thoughts on the subject.
How do you feel about cinemas doing live musical accompaniments to silent film showings? An essential part of the proceedings? Take it or leave it? Utterly pretentious and off-putting?
Also restoration of silent films, which films are you longing to see restored to their former glory and which should have been left to moulder? Should they try to restore the original colour choices (tinting and toning etc) or is early colour experimentation best forgotten in favour for a crisp black and white?
glinda and I'll be your host this week. I'm planning on posting about silent cinema tomorrow so I thought I'd garner your thoughts on the subject. How do you feel about cinemas doing live musical accompaniments to silent film showings? An essential part of the proceedings? Take it or leave it? Utterly pretentious and off-putting?
Also restoration of silent films, which films are you longing to see restored to their former glory and which should have been left to moulder? Should they try to restore the original colour choices (tinting and toning etc) or is early colour experimentation best forgotten in favour for a crisp black and white?
I totally cut myself off there by leaning on the wrong button
(Hi Rat, ridiculously belated comment response, sorry)
I came into the genre via an obsession with early sound cinema and German expressionism in cinema so I suppose I have a predisposed affection for the aesthetics of a certain subsection of silent cinema. There was a big tv series here (Silent Clowns) on Silent Comedies and they showed a Laurel and Hardy film with live accompaniment, and it was so much more alive than the versions I'd seen growing up with canned soundtracks (which were funny but this was so much funnier). So after that I tried to see as many silent films with live accompaniments as I could and found that a whole swathe of films I had previously had no attention for suddenly came alive in front of my eyes. So I'm a big fan of seeing them with live music.
I've seen some really interesting re-scorings of silent film (I actually had an assignment at uni that had us do just that to The Golem...that wasn't a traumatic experience at all) and some really weird canned soundtracks (The Great White Silence is very odd, it has the creepiest version of Amazing Grace I've ever heard.) but I definitely prefer live accompaniment if I can get it.
I love tinting too! I find early Technicolor a bit creepy though I'm not sure why.