silentlondon
Silent London
A place for people who love silent film.
Visit the website at SilentLondon.co.uk
781 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
xurohigahe
Untitled
local2237
Untitled
deja-vu-esoterica
Déjà Vu Esoterica
girlwithlatteart
girl with latte
justseventeen
Just Seventeen
Text
The Artist on stage at Theatre Royal Plymouth
Devon. I’m in Devon. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.
This evening, at the Plymouth Arts Cinema I had the honours of introducing a screening of the modern silent that made a big noise, The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011). You remember? The one that won FIVE Oscars? With the dashing Jean Dujardin and the yet more dashing Uggie the Dog?
Raise one Gallic eyebrow if you know the…
View On WordPress
1 note
·
View note
Text
Napoléon vu par Netflix: What next for Abel Gance’s 1927 epic?
“Sixty years later I am still bringing people to see Napoléon, that’s quite true. And also bringing people back to the cinema because this is the age where they watch Lawrence of Arabia on their mobile phones, for God’s sake. The cinema was designed for sharing, and that is sharing the reactions to the film. It’s not just being in the same room as a lot of other people. It’s much more emotional…
View On WordPress
#Abel Gance#Cinematheque Francaise#featured#Georges Mourier#Kevin Brownlow#Napoleon#restoration#silent film
1 note
·
View note
Text
Clara Bow: Taylor Swift's It Girl era
“It’s hell on earth to be heavenly.”
How to break the silent-movie internet? Get Taylor Swift to write about one of the greatest stars of the cinematic jazz age. Better yet, get her to tease the track title ahead of time so that the web can be filled with clickbait speculation and “Everything you need to know” filler articles for weeks in advance of the album’s arrival.
But now, The Tortured…
View On WordPress
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2024: exposure to the shadows of the past
I was looking for Yoda when I bumped into Eadweard Muybridge. These are the circles film history moves in. This year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the 27th, took place in the grandeur of the theatre of the Palace of Fine Arts, an elegant neo-classical folly of gigantic proportions, built as a temporary attraction for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and then rebuilt in more permanent…
View On WordPress
#Charles Bickford#Clara Bow#Double-exposures#Eadweard Muybridge#featured#Gregory La Cava#Julien Duvivier#San Francisco#San Francisco Silent Film Festival#silent film#Victor Sjostrom#William Wyler
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hippfest 2024: seduced by silents
The fashionable set is always the first to know. So if you know you know, but if you don’t know you need to know that 2024 is the year of Coquette Core, a prettified aesthetic that can be boiled down to: put a bow on it. That’s technically a beribboned bow with a lower-case b, not a Clara Capital-B-Bow, but the difference is only nominal. At this year’s Hippodrome Silent Film Festival we…
View On WordPress
#Clara Bow#featured#Frances Marion#Frank Bockius#Jenny Hammerton#Joan Crawford#John Sweeney#Mary Pickford#Maud Nelissen#Mike Nolan#Neil Brand#silent film
1 note
·
View note
Text
Your silent cinema Valentine
If you truly love something, let he, she, they or it know. Now, in this instance, I am talking about silent film, and it is the season for wearing your heart on your sleeve, so here’s an opportunity to do just that. Coincidentally, if you are the sort of person who has considered giving up talkies for Lent this is also very much right up your avenue.
Cinema’s First Nasty Women: A Demographic…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
The Silent London Poll of 2023: And the winners are …
I may be a humble blogger typing at my desk, but just imagine I am a glamorous celebrity cracking first-rate jokes while wearing a designer ballgown. I have counted the votes, and I am ready to announce the winners of the Silent London Poll of 2023!
Congratulations to all the people mentioned below – as ever, these categories were bursting with great nominations. Thank you for all your votes,…
View On WordPress
#Alison Strauss#Anna May Wong#Bryony Dixon#Donal Sosin#Ed Lorusso#End of year poll#Eureka#featured#Giornate del Cinema Muto#Harry Piel#hippfest#Hippodrome Festival#Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema#In Spring#Johnstown Flood#Masters of Cinema#MoMA#Pandora&039;s Box#Poll winners#Pordenone#Pordenone Silent Film Festival#silent film#Sonic Bothy#Stella Dallas#Stephen Horne#The Crowd
1 note
·
View note
Text
Frances Marion for Hippfest at Home
Hippfest approaches! But before the IRL festival in Bo’ness, 20-24 March, the Hippfest at Home programme promises online treats for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home. And the first event is coming up very soon indeed!
Next Friday evening, 26 January, I will be delivering a lecture called Frances Marion: Hollywood’s Favourite Storyteller, with clips accompanied by the brilliant Mike…
View On WordPress
#featured#Frances Marion#hippfest#Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema#Hollywood#Mary Pickford#silent film
1 note
·
View note
Text
Season's greetings, Silent Londoners
I am just about to sign off for the year, so I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading, and supporting, this blog in 2023. This year has been another very challenging one, on the world stage, and in the arts, but I continue to be impressed by the resilience, energy and imagination of people in the silent film world. So much work going on, so many opportunities to share great films and…
View On WordPress
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Silent London Poll of 2023: vote for your winners now
View On WordPress
#Alfred Hitchcock#BFI#featured#Foolish Wives#Giornate del Cinema Muto#Harold Lloyd#Il Cinema Ritrovato#Kennington Bioscope#Lon Chaney#London Film Festival#Masters of Cinema#Nasty Women#Pandora&039;s Box#poll#Pordenone Silent Film Festival#Salome#silent film#Theda Bara#Tod Browning#Victorian film#Women FIlm Pioneers Project
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: a refreshing take on the history of film, theatre and art
Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema, Vito Adriaensens, Edniburgh University Press 2023
This is a guest post by Alex Barrett for Silent London. Alex Barrett is an award-winning independent filmmaker based in London.
All too often over the years, the term “theatrical” has been thrown at films as an insult, as if showing an influence from the stage is something to…
View On WordPress
1 note
·
View note
Text
Danish and German Silent Cinema review: the rich entanglements of transnational filmmaking
Danish and German Silent Cinema: Towards a Common Film Culture, Edited by: Lars-Martin Sørensen and Casper Tybjerg, Edinburgh University Press, 2023
This is a guest post by Alex Barrett for Silent London. Alex Barrett is an award-winning independent filmmaker based in London.
At its simplest, the history of silent film in Denmark and Germany can be seen as a story of two halves, divided by…
View On WordPress
#Alex Barrett#Asta Nielsen#Axel Graatkjær#Danish Cinema#Danish silent cinema#featured#German cinema#German silent cinema#silent film#Urban Gad
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
The First Year (1926): The cure for matrimonial measles
This is an expanded version of an essay I wrote for Sight and Sound in 2020. The First Year (Frank Borzage, 1926) screens this week at MoMA on the opening night of the After Alice, Beyond Lois programme, curated by Kate Saccone and Dave Kehr to commemorate 10 years of the Women Film Pioneers Project.
Frank Borzage was one of the greatest Hollywood directors of young love. When we remember his…
View On WordPress
#Carolynne Snowden#Dave Kehr#featured#Frances Marion#Frank Borzage#J. Farrell MacDonald#Kate Saccone#Katherine Perry#Margaret Livingston#Matt Moore#MoMA#romantic comedy#silent film
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
After Alice, Beyond Lois: Celebrating the Women Film Pioneers Project at MoMA
Some news is too good not to share, even if the Atlantic Ocean makes this a little inconvenient for me, personally. If you can be in New York later this month and next, I urge you to attend a particularly excellent birthday party.
The Women Film Pioneers Project, an impeccable resource for early and silent film history, has reached its 10th birthday. The brainchild of Jane Gaines, and managed by…
View On WordPress
1 note
·
View note
Text
The Magician (1926): Rex Ingram, Michael Powell and the French Riviera
Michael Powell made films in the south of France. Before that one. His first job in the film industry was working at the Victorine studios of Rex Ingram, just outside Nice, in the mid-1920s. He was 19 and he took on pretty much any job he could on set, trying to learn the business from the ground up. It worked, didn’t it? He even appeared in front of the camera a few times, often playing a sappy…
View On WordPress
#Alice Terry#BFI#Bryony Dixon#featured#Michael Powell#Paul Wegener#Rex Ingram#silent film#Stephen Horne
1 note
·
View note
Text
Phantom Pipes: Häxan at Regent Street Cinema
I am almost home from my festival jaunts, and it seems the weather has turned chilly since I left home. The nights are drawing in, the candles are flickering… it must be spooky season.
Why not kick off your annual creepathon with a screening of a silent classic: Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 demonic drama-documentary Häxan? My excellent friends at Evolution of Horror, who leave no stone in scary…
View On WordPress
#Benjamin Christensen#Evolution of Horror#featured#haxan#horror#James Swanton#Kim Newman#organ#Regent Street Cinema#silent film
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Booking now: Neil Brand's An Evening with Laurel and Hardy
Excuse me while I push at an open door. Who here would like to see one of the world’s finest silent film experts and accompanists host a show dedicated to the comic brilliance of Laurel and Hardy? Ah, that’s all of you. Well good news, friends, as Neil Brand is taking his An Evening with Laurel and Hardy show on the road across Britain. And I mean across Britain.
Brand, his piano, and his…
View On WordPress
3 notes
·
View notes