Silent Movies Rediscovered

You know how every once in a while you stumble across something and it just re-ignites a dormant passion you’d long forgotten about?

This is where I am after a recent research journey for a commission piece on silent movies.

It had never occurred too much until a conversation with one of the child-shaped people, but when I grew up there were often silent movies on the television; nowadays they seem to never be on unless part of a clip-run during a documentary.

Laurel and Hardy were always lauded as the best during my childhood, but I never much liked them; possibly part of my anti-hype nature (Yes, maybe my hipster personality started that long ago!) but I really do not remember why now, nor is it particularly important; the films I loved were those of Harold Lloyd. And so it was that during my research for this article, I found myself whiling away hours watching and re-watching Youtube clips featuring some of the funnier moments of his movie career.

I am not going to analyse the whys and wherefores – it seems quite obvious really that with verbal comedy there is a delay as we wait for the build up to an inevitable punchline but silent comedy has to keep hitting to hold the focus of the audience hence we are given far more laughs per minute. Of course, being denied a punchline means we are also denied the big laugh at the end, with these films often just fizzling out but I personally think it’s worth the trade-off.

I do worry about the fact that there no longer seems the chance to view these films en masse; with the huge volume of television channels available to us, you would think they’d be shown somewhere and add that most cinemas nowadays have multiple screens so could surely show older films alongside new releases. When you think about the fact that an entire generation has absolutely no awareness of the existence of silent movies, not just the fabulous comedies but such aging classics as Ace of Hearts, Camille and of course the amazingly dark Nosferatu it makes you wonder what will become of these volumes over the next twenty years. Will anyone remember them or will they be lost forever?

But anyway… little whinge over!

And as a reminder of (or introduction to) some of the work of the utterly amazing Harold Lloyd, here’s a little clip video for you:



Incidentally, for those who are interested, there are a huge amount of 'proper' old films available in full on You-tube... Nosferatu being one! I know what I will spend my weekend doing!