Defend Your Darlings, You Sad Pandas! (Lists Project v 3.0)

[Tommaso]

8 Morecambe Church Lads' Brigade at Drill 1901 Mitchell & Kenyon - surprised this one didn't get voted for, it brought a tear to my eye. The boy losing his cap and trying to maintain composure, all the while completely falling out of sync with his mates. It's sweet and charming, and the In The Nursery score is impossibly evocative.

Yeah, it's marvellous. I think I wanted to restrict myself to just one M&K film for the list, and I thought everyone had inofficially agreed on "Morecambe Sea Coast" (me included, it's their most captivating film I think), so I chose that one. But for sure, this one is a stand-out as well. Ditto on ITN, of course.

21 Le friquet 1913 Tourneur, Maurice - A film that looks about 15 years ahead of it's time, it's so smoothly edited and paced. It's a precursor to all the doomed romance/circus movies of the 20's.

Probably because I've seen quite a few of the latter, this one didn't strike me as much as it should have. But yes, taken on its own, it's probably as good as all the other Tourneurs from the time. But you know, with only 50 films eligible..... I'm already afraid of the 20s list in this respect.

41 Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, The 1903 Zecca, Ferdinand - some great work in this one, love the tracking shot when Christ raises Jairus' daughter. I preferred it to the Alice Guy version, although I wasn't really doing a scene by scene comparison.

I once made another member, who is more content with reading this forum than with participating at the moment, watch this and he said that some scenes reminded him of Kenneth Anger! Well, I at least have an idea where he comes from, even if I don't really agree. But it is intense with a wholly captivating mise en scene which nevertheless might look decidedly 'strange' from today's point-of-view.

[reno dakota]

Towards the Light . . . I guess the 'message'-bits were a bit off-putting to me, though not in the same way as in Weber's "Hypocrites".

That's exactly the film I was thinking about when the "message"-bits started unfolding. I hesitated to make the comparison in my description of Towards the Light because I didn't want to alienate the anti-Hypocrites contingent.

From the same disc, "Afgrunden" almost made my list, but then I thought that central dance scene and the beautiful cityscapes at the beginning were not enough for me to fully make up for a certain wooden character in the direction in general. Perhaps I should have been more indulgent, after all it was made in 1910.

This one ended up at #52 on my list and I really regret not voting for it. I liked it immediately, but reading zedz's comment about the end title makes me like it even more.

Different from the Others . . . I'm ashamed to say that I completely forgot about this film. A similar case to "Blind Husbands" (which I didn't forget) perhaps: it feels much too modern thematically to immediately come to your mind as a pre-20s film. Conny Veidt indeed is great in this one, and I'm still sad that it only survives in an incomplete state.

I'll take some of the blame for its poor showing because I never offered a single word in support of it, despite knowing that it would definitely be on my list. I'm going to try harder next round to advocate for films that seem in danger of being forgotten.

A Life for a Life . . . And this one is still on my kevyip. I simply didn't manage to watch all the Bauers I wanted for this project.

Having Bauers in your kevyip is like having unopened gifts from someone who always gets you exactly what you want. I don't think you'll be disappointed by this one.

Perhaps in retrospect the voting deadline should have been extended, especially if I look at how long a time we now have for the 20s list. And I think I could immediately write down at least my Top 20 for that one, unlike with the pre-20s list. Here's hoping you all have a good many surprises in store for the 20s list, too, so that I might have to reconsider.

I didn't opt for the extension, but now I think I should have. I've collected a few of my neglected titles since the voting ended, so my list might well have been different. Anyway, next time . . .

[swo17]

You know, I saw Towards the Light right before turning in my list, and liked it quite a bit, but not enough to push anything else off my list. Perhaps if I had had a little while longer for it to fester in my mind...

As for films like Tih Minh (which made my list at #38) and A Life for a Life (which didn't), I definitely feel that they suffer from their presentations. Tih Minh doesn't have the benefit of a great looking print and even greater sounding score like Fantômas does (which probably makes me like the film more than I would otherwise), and there are still a few intertitles that are not completely translated or that are somewhat awkwardly translated (no one to blame but myself for that, I'm afraid!) which, to some extent, takes you out of the story as you focus on the surface defaults. I actually watched Tih Minh the second time with the score to Fantômas playing, and while half the time it didn't fit at all, there were some moments where it gelled completely and hinted at how wonderful a proper presentation of the film might be. I'm still not sure if it's quite at the level of Les vampires or Fantômas, but hopefully in a few years I'll be able to reassess my opinion on the matter.

As for A Life for a Life, the version I saw has a score that gets fairly unbearable at a few points, and I'm afraid that it was primarily that, plus the fact that I needed to knock a couple of Bauers off my list to be fair to all the merely human directors, that spelled the end for it. I do, however, love the double meaning of the title, particularly in its connotation of the casual dealing with women's lives represented by the Prince and Zhurov's compromise as to who would get to marry each sister. It is, I think, essential Bauer, and yet I'm hesitant to place it with the others because of that damned score. ](*,)

[reno dakota]

As for A Life for a Life, the version I saw has a score that gets fairly unbearable at a few points, and I'm afraid that it was primarily that, plus the fact that I needed to knock a couple of Bauers off my list to be fair to all the merely human directors, that spelled the end for it. I do, however, love the double meaning of the title, particularly in its connotation of the casual dealing with women's lives represented by the Prince and Zhurov's compromise as to who would get to marry each sister. It is, I think, essential Bauer, and yet I'm hesitant to place it with the others because of that damned score. ](*,)

You know, that score didn't bother me at all, but the one for Children of the Age sure did! I had to watch it silent.

[Lemmy Caution]

It is, I think, essential Bauer, and yet I'm hesitant to place it with the others because of that damned score. ](*,)

Boo. Just make your own score.
These days, I'm fond of using Hazel Scott (50's piano jazz) and Eddie South (30's violin jazz) as my score for silent films.
I keep a playlist or two on my computer of music which works well for silent films, and try new music from time to time.
Make your silent films interactive.
I'm often amazed at well it works.

[nsps]

1. La Sortie de l'Usine (Workers Exiting the Factory) (Lumiere, 1895)
2. Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front (Mitchell & Kenyon, 1901)
3. Départ de Jérusalem en chemin de fer (Leaving Jerusalem by Railway) (Lumiere, 1897)
4. The President (Dryer, 1919)
5. Gertie the Dinosaur (McKay, 1914)
6. Sir Arne's Treasure (Stiller, 1919)
7. The Cook (Arbuckle, 1918)
8. Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru (The Outlaw and His Wife) (Sjöstrom, 1918)
9. A Child of the Big City (Bauer, 1914)
10. Terje Vigen (A Man There Was) (Sjöstrom, 1917)

11. Westinghouse Works, Panorama View, Street Car Motor Room (Bitzer, 1904)
I suppose if we had counted Bitzer's Westinghouse Works photography as one piece, it woulda made the list, as some opted for the also very impressive isle B shot. Part of what I like about this one is the mistake and moment of commotion as the camera stops moving and then starts again.

12. After Death (Bauer, 1915)
13. The '?' Motorist (Booth, 1906)
14. Les Vampires (Feuillade, 1909)
15. The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917)
16. When the Clouds Roll by (Flemming, 1919)
17. The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
18. A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner (Kineto Films, 1910)
19. The Dying Swan (Bauer, 1917)
20. Blind Husbands (Von Stroheim, 1919)
21. The Revolutionary (Bauer, 1917)
22. Regeneration (Walsh, 1915)

23. Le repas de bébé (Childish Quarrel or Babies Quarreling) (Lumiere, 1895)
It's not as thrilling a composition as some Lumiere films, but the human emotions inherent behind this quarrel are quite moving.

24. An Interesting Story (Williamson, 1904)
I was glad to see The Big Swallow make it, but Fire! was the only other of his films to gather more than one vote. This film starts off as a nice little observational comedy about a man who can't stop reading his book, and ends on a wonderfully surreal gag.

25. Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1918)
26. The Blue Bird (Torneur, 1918)
27. The Teddy Bears (Porter & McCutcheon, 1907)
28. L'Arroseur Arrosé (The Sprinkler, Sprinkled) (Lumiere, 1896)
A slight but energetic entry into film comedy and storytelling.

29. Skyscrapers of New York City from North River (Edison Co., 1903)
30. A Desperate Poaching Affray (Haggar, 1903)
31. The Big Swallow (Williamson, 1901)
32. Intolerance (Griffith, 1916)

33. La Sirene (The Mermaid) (Melies, 1904)
The only Melies to make my list, this film is funny, inventive and very creative.

34. A Chess Dispute (Paul, 1903)
35. No. 765: Danse Serpentine (Serpentine Dance by Loie Fuller) (Lumiere, 1896)
36. Ingeborg Holm (Sjöstrom, 1913)
37. The Man with Wax Faces (Tourneur, 1914)
38. Suspense (Weber, 1913)
39. Coney Island (Arbuckle, 1918)
Funny gags, fascinating location shots and a tighter narrative than many of Arbuckle's films make this one a bit special for me.

40. Le Printemps (Feuillade, 1909)
41. Il Fuoco (Pastrone, 1916)
42. Washerwomen on the River (Lumière, 1897)
43. Making an American Citizen (Guy-Blaché, 1912)
The story of an immigrant who learns that once you come to America, you can't push your wife around. The film is lovingly photographed, and I was surprised that only one Alice Guy-Blanché film made the list, although my low placement obviously didn't help.

44. The Avenging Conscience (Griffith, 1913)

45. The Policemen's Little Run (Zecca, 1907)
I'm curious if Zecca might place on a top directors list. He didn't get a film on the main list, but a few people have had his films in their darlings. While not everything Zecca goes for works, this is a very energetic little comedy.

46. The Kiss (Edison, 1896)

47. The Vagabond (Chaplin, 1916)
Lubitsch obviously disagrees, but in hindsight I think I was a bit generous in the placement of both Chaplin films on my list. The syrupy ending doesn't do much for me, but the first half of the film is very clever.

48. Mary Jane's Mishap (Smith, 1903)

49. The Suburbanite (American Mutiscope, 1904)
Both a document and a satire on a burgeoning way of life whose modern evolution most of us know all too well.

50. Falling Leaves (Guy-Blaché, 1912)
Glad to see that this received one other vote.

33. Different from the Others (Oswald, 1919) – Orphan #2. Narratively, this one is a bit on the dry side, but I was impressed by how daring a project this was given the time-period, and I was moved by Conrad Veidt’s performance.

I felt strongly that this film could have made my list if so much of it weren't lost. Obviously this isn't a problem with the film itself but unfortunately I just found it too hard to judge and to love it as a cohesive whole. It really hurts the emotional impact to miss the whole subplot with the sister. That said, there are some great moments (the reaction of the boyfriend in the foreground during the fight) and Veidt is fantastic. His work in the final scene is just chilling.

36. A Life for a Life (Bauer, 1916) – Orphan #3. So many Bauer films made the final list, but I was surprised that no one else went for this tragedy of two half-sisters in love with the same man. All the great Bauer touches are there, included the devastating final shot.

Chalk this one up to availability. I saw eight Bauers (from the Milestone Early Russian Cinema series and and Mad Love), but not this one.

Also, despite my love for certain Vidor films, I've never seen Bud's Recruit. I'll have to seek it out.

Also, discussions for films that DID make the list go in that thread, right? I ask because I was going to make some comments, but the thread seems fairly dead now. (This is my first list, so I don't know how common that is.

[Tommaso]

You know, that score didn't bother me at all, but the one for Children of the Age sure did! I had to watch it silent.

I suppose it was only my lazyness on that particular evening which made me go through the film with that score. It's indeed terrible and distracting, but strangely I feel uncomfortable watching silents silent.

But normally I do the same as Lemmy Caution if I don't like a score, or if the film comes without one. "Tih Minh" I watched with a couple of Satie CDs running in the background, and that particular composer always works with silents, at least his piano works. For a change, mid-period Stravinsky also usually works well. For "Children of the Age", however, I could well imagine that any In The Nursery soundtrack that you don't already too closely associate with other films might work perfectly. So no "Electric Edwardians", "Man with a camera" or "Hindle wakes" perhaps, but I guess that their score for "Asphalt" might suit this Bauer film well, too. I'll try it next time I watch "Children of the age".

[Scharphedin2]

Thank you all for letting me participate! I am a little sorry that my list finally changed the order of the first two films on the list, but on the other hand, I am sure we all agree that the actual final sequence of titles is not of such great importance.
Below is my complete list. I will add comments over the next couple of evenings, when I have a little better time to do so.

1. Herr Arnes Pengar (Stiller, 1919)

2. Deti veka (Bauer, 1915) -- The first darling on my list is this film by Bauer. I had to convince myself not to include more than three of Bauer's films on my final list. Of all the many films I have viewed from the pre-'20s era, no other director made a more powerful impression, and I do think of the dozen or so films that I have seen as essentially one work. I am not at all sure that this particular film is my favorite of his, but it was the first one I thought of, when I sat down to make the list.

This particular film, I found a couple of years ago through one of those obscure backwater channels -- a Spanish or South American source of all things. There were no intertitles at all, and I do not even recall if it had a soundtrack. It does star the enthralling Vera Kholodnaya, and it belongs to the group of Bauer's films dealing with the decadence of pre-Czarist society. The compositions, the use of light, and the locales that Bauer used for this film were specifically striking, I thought. There is a scene of a party taking place in boats on a lake with everyone throwing confetti and streamers that stands out. Then there is a seduction scene in a kind of winter garden with the seducer serving the object of his affection (a married woman) champagne, and the sun's rays reflecting off the edge of the glass as she drinks. Meanwhile, the husband at home is falling into the darkness of the small apartment that the couple share. Shafts of light pour into the room briefly, as he opens the shutters or blinds to stare out into the street for his wife to come home; and there is the glow of his cigarette as he smokes in solitude, leaning on a small reading table.

On a closing note with Bauer. I viewed a (experimental) documentary film -- Ostrov myortvykh/Island of the Dead about Vera Kholodnaya, and the Russia before the revolution. It was made in 1992 by Oleg Kovalov (who also made an edit of Eistenstein's Mexican footage a few years later). For anyone interested in Bauer, the film will be a real find. Not only does it incorporate many fragments of his films into a rich mosaic of other film clips, acutalities and documentary recordings from the period; it also has a brief glimpse of Bauer at a social function (possibly the opening party of one of his films(?) And finally, it has what is one of the most impressive of all shots in any Bauer film -- the tracking shot in A Child of the City, closing in on the couple drinking champagne at a night club, and passing the woman, as an exotic dancer enters a stage in the background. The tracking shot lasts for about ten seconds, but if I remember correctly, this shot is ruined a little bit on the Milestone release, as it cuts right before the end to a medium shot of the dancer, then comes back a moment later to pick up the tracking shot, but it actually repeats a few moments of the shot from before the cut to the dancer. All in all, it is not a big deal, but it does jar an otherwise virtuoso moment. In Kovalov's film -- if my memory is correct, we get the whole shot without interruption.

3.Cabiria (Pastrone, 1914)
4. The Outlaw and His Wife (Sjöström, 1918)

5. Father Sergius (Protazanov, 1917) -- With all the love for Bauer, I was surprised that apparently no one else made a bid for any of Protazanov's films. There are fewer films available, but they are generally very close to Bauer's in quality, I think. The epic quality of this one -- the tale of an ambitious young army cadet, who is disgraced in love, becomes a monk, and eventually almost becomes a saint to his fellow men, only to succumb to lust, and eventually finds himself a vagrant, lost in the immense Russian winter landscape. Ivan Muzzokhin gives an unbelievably powerful performance as Sergius; in itself enough to seek out this little gem, which has been released in France and Russia on DVD (albeit, without English subtitles).

6. Blind Husbands (von Stroheim, 1919)
7. Intolerance (Griffith, 1916)
8. Afgrunden (Urban Gad, 1910)

9. Silent Witnesses (Bauer, 1914)

10. J'accuse (Gance, 1919)
11. The Dying Swan (Bauer, 1916)
12. Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)

13. Assunta Spina (Bertini, 1914)
14. Malombra (Gallone, 1917)

15. Cenere (Mari, 1916)

16. Madame Dubarry (Lubitsch, 1919)

17. Il fuoco (Pastrone, 1916)
18. A Dog's Life (Chaplin, 1918)
19. Hævnens Nat (Christensen, 1916)
20. The Whispering Chorus (DeMille, 1918)
21. Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1919)
22. Sinking of the Lusitania (McCay, 1918)
23. Regeneration (Walsh, 1915)
24. Fantômas (Feuillade, 1913)
25. Ingeborg Holm (Sjöström, 1913)

26. The Massacre (Griffith, 1912)

27. A Man There Was (Sjöström, 1917)
28. Rapsodia Satanica (Oxilia, 1917)
29. Civilization (Ince, 1916)
30. Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)

31. A Fool There Was (Powell, 1915)
32. Satana likuyuschiy (Protazanov, 1917)

33. L'enfant de Paris (Perret, 1913)
34. Victory (Tourneur, 1919)

35. Ride on the Tramcar through Belfast (Mitchell & Kenyon, 1901)
36. Canal's of Copenhagen (Nordisk Film/Ole Olsen, 1908)
37. Nugget Jim's Pardner (Borzage, 1916)

38. Suspense (Weber, 1913)
39. The Cameraman's Revenge (Starevich, 1913)
40. Hell's Hinges (Swickard, 1916)

41. Moscow Clad in Snow (Mundwiller, 1908)

42. A Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)
43. The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903)
44. The Heart of Humanity (Holubar, 1918)

45. The Sentimental Bloke (Raymond Longford, 1919)

46. The Cook (Arbuckle, 1918)
47. The Cheat (DeMille, 1915)
48. Bucking Broadway (Ford, 1917)

49. Arrival of a Train (Lumiere Brothers, 1897)

50. Præsidenten (Dreyer, 1919)

[swo17]

Also, despite my love for certain Vidor films, I've never seen Bud's Recruit. I'll have to seek it out.

Also, discussions for films that DID make the list go in that thread, right? I ask because I was going to make some comments, but the thread seems fairly dead now. (This is my first list, so I don't know how common that is.

Bud's Recruit is in the Treasures III box. Check your local library.

And yeah, I think generally, if you have something to say about films that made the list, put it in that thread, though there typically isn't a whole lot of discussion there after the list comes out. Unless of course the list is filled with a bunch of shiny, genocide-condoning films made by clueless, insincere fascist aesthetes. Which has been known to happen from time to time.

And oh, why not, here's my full list I guess. I've already talked about most of these in the main thread, except for the ones I haven't:

01 Intolerance (Griffith, 1916)
02 The Outlaw and His Wife (Sjöström, 1918)
03 The Dying Swan (Bauer, 1917)
04 The Sinking of the Lusitania (McCay, 1918)
05 Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front (Mitchell & Kenyon, 1901)
06 Les vampires (Feuillade, 1915-16)
07 The Doll (Lubitsch, 1919)
08 When the Clouds Roll By (Fleming, 1919)
09 The Serpentine Dance (Lumière, 1896)
10 After Death (Bauer, 1915)
11 Where Are My Children? (Weber & Smalley, 1916)
12 Sir Arne's Treasure (Stiller, 1919)
13 Washerwomen on the River (Lumière, 1897)
14 The President (Dreyer, 1919)
15 For Happiness (Bauer, 1917)
16 The Man with Wax Faces (Tourneur, 1914)
17 The Moving Pavement and the Electric Train (Lumière, 1900)
I had actually mentally taken this off my list a while ago since I figured I had too many Lumières, and it's just a sidewalk and a train, what's the big deal anyway? But then I watched it again right before compiling my list. Over and over, like twenty times in a row. There's just something about this film. It's a nice optical illusion, a viewfinder (as you get to see brief glimpses of how various people conduct themselves along the sidewalk), an historical document of two novelties at once. And, unsurprisingly, it's just framed perfectly.

18 Il fuoco (Pastrone, 1916)
19 Fantômas (Feuillade, 1913-14)
20 Homunculus (Rippert, 1916)
21 Cabiria (Pastrone, 1914)
22 Fantasmagorie (Cohl, 1908)
23 A Dog's Life (Chaplin, 1918)
24 The Cameraman's Revenge (Starewicz, 1912)
25 Monkeyshines, No. 1 (Dickson & Heise, 1890)
26 Hypocrites (Weber, 1915)
27 Passage Through a Railway Tunnel (Lumière, 1896)
28 Twilight of a Woman's Soul (Bauer, 1913)
29 J'accuse (Gance, 1919)
30 The 'Teddy' Bears (Porter & McCutcheon, 1907)
31 Suspense (Weber & Smalley, 1913)
32 Panoramic View, Aisle B, Westinghouse Works (Bitzer, 1904)
33 The Famous Box Trick (Méliès, 1898)
34 The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917)
35 The Mysterious X (Christensen, 1914)
36 A Lively Quarter-Day (Martin, 1906)
37 Bumping into Broadway (Roach, 1919)
38 Tih Minh (Feuillade, 1918)
39 Child of the Big City (Bauer, 1914)
40 The Oyster Princess (Lubitsch, 1919)
41 The Land Beyond the Sunset (Shaw, 1912)
42 South (Hurley, 1919)
43 The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Lumière, 1896)
44 One A.M. (Chaplin, 1916)
45 A Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)
46 Alias Jimmy Valentine (Tourneur, 1915)
I know I was supposed to go for Regeneration, which is perhaps a more "important" movie, but I just found this film so entertaining. The tinting and high camera angle (which causes the characters to cast tall blue shadows) during the bank heist just takes my breath away, and while Valentine is trying to go straight, there are several flashbacks to "the good ol' days" that make me nostalgic for my own youthful crimes (not really). And then he is of course put to the test at the very end when he has to resort to old tricks (and in turn reveal his hidden past to the cops!) in order to save a little girl.

47 Daydreams (Bauer, 1915)
48 L'inferno (Liguoro, Bertolini & Padovan, 1911)
49 The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (Guy, 1906)
50 The Big Swallow (Williamson, 1901)

[Tommaso]

Scharph, I second the praise for "Deti veka", aka "Children of the age". It may have indeed been that awful soundtrack and the fact that there were no intertitles (and I think they are simply missing) which made the film occasionally difficult to follow for me and perhaps caused it to be not on my list, which already had five Bauers anyway. But good to hear someone sing its praises again, it's indeed very beautiful.

14. Malombra (Gallone, 1917)

I suppose very much that if I had known about it, you may not have been the only one who voted for it, looking at some caps I found right now and at the beautiful Lyda Borelli.... Aaah, sometimes things simply come a little too late

[lubitsch]

1. Herr Arne's pengar
2. Die Puppe
3. The Wishing Ring
4. After Death
5. Berg Ejvind
6. Ingeborg Holm
7. The Golden Chance
8. The Blue Bird
9. Die Austernprinzessin
10. The Cure - ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)
11. Easy Street
12. Le Voyage dans la Lune
13. Broken Blossoms
14. The Ocean Waif - I wonder if the Gaumont set and the films in the Treasures boxes drew viewers off this beloved favorite of mine
15. Daydreams
16. Ingmarssönerna - the complete lack of availabilty explains everything, but if the SFI would kindly consider a second box then this film with its naively phantastic sequences, its realism and the redemption ending so reminiscnet of Sunrise would surely score for the next list, it's probably the best known but unavailable film of the era
17. Suspense
18. Stella Maris Did anyone except Tommaso even bother to seek out the Pickford films? But if you all don't like Chaplin, the chances for Pickford are even slimmer though it's a pity because here she plays a dual role, one raising her angelic image to a level where the girl she plays isn't hardly able to live by her own, and the other being an unloved exploited waif who only gets the worst deals until the lives of the two girls intersect.
19. The Immigrant
20. Intolerance
21. Fantasmagorie
22. The Land beyond the Sunset
23. The Courage of the Commonplace - not an orphan but it drew quite few votes considering its intelligent, realistic story
24. Unheimliche Geschichten - not that easily available, but still one can see it and while Oswald was no cinematographic genius with his long takes and static setups, this works pretty well especially in the episode "Suicide Club" which builds a considerable tension.
25. Regeneration
26. Hell's Hinges
27. The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
28. The Sentimental Bloke
29. The Pilgrim - the few votes the early Borzage westerns drew were also split, but these films are really good and surprisingly personal and Borzagian. No hollow action scenes, slow stories beyond the conventions of the genre taking the time they need, unusually deep characters. Unbelievable how he managed to rise above such an unpromising setup ("shoot a few cheap Western two-reelers"). This film gently introduces the charcter, a typical loner, somewhere in the middle hints at a love story and tactfully ends on a Chaplinesque note before Chaplin virtually copyrighted these end scenes for himself.
30. The Cameraman's Revenge
31. The Mysterious X
32. Nerven
33. La Royaume des fees - Not much love for Melies, but I thought this a fine example of his longer narrative specials with a very straight story and lovely effects
34. South.
35. The Italian
36. Nugget Jim's Pardner
37. Heavnens nat
38. Der Student von Prag
39. New York Subway
40. The Painted Lady
41. The Avenging Conscience - Some liked it, some not in the discussion, but I'm surprised to be the sole supporter.
42. The Champion - The boxing scenes are really funny, the scenes when he realizes that being a sparring partner won't be fun are funny, the scenes where he exercises and knocks out some people are funny, in fact the whole film is funny. But you folks prefer to sit around with gloomy Russian silents ...
43. Hodoo Ann - the last of my films like Golden Chance, Wishing Ring and Ocean waif built around innocent, lively and likeable heroines though the director leads Mae Marsh like Griffith did iton a rather jumpy performance style, Cleo Ridgely and Doris Kenyon did a better job.
44. Ask father
45. Corner in Wheat
46. Whp pays: Episode 12, Toil and Tyranny
47. Wild and Woolly
48. The Country Doctor
49. True Heart Susie - not an orphan, but this ended really low and down the list
50. The Teddy Bears

myrnyloy and me take the top spot as the most intense classic haters because each of us has left out 10 films of their list which ended up in the top 20 and which we have seen. So it's time to get nasty and get revenge at all these boring flicks which crawled away in endless shots with nothing happening. stop reading here if you're easily offended when your favorites are attacked.
Les Vampires and Fantomas. Together with watching Godard one of the great bores of my life, never again as long as I live. Hours of characters trapping each other, escaping arbitrarily, slow, uninspiringly directed and shot. Here's a director where I greatly appreciate that so many silents are lost.
The Sinking of the Lusitania. Pious indignation about the evil Germans who massacred innocent people. In fact the Luitania was an Armed Merchant Cruiser filled up with ammunition and the passengers warned to go aboard because they were abused as living shields. Stick to your dinosaurs Winsor, that's less complicated.
The Dying Swan. As silly as Bauer can get though at least not as ponderously slow as other efforts by him. But seeing a nutty artist strangle a ballerina, this film looks and feels as if Bauer was starting to make a parody if his previous. The great performance of the film in the poll shocked me.
President. I can hardly remember the story anymore. Dreyer fans love the sparsely decorated walls. Fine when one can be sop easily pleased.
Blind Husbands. Standard melodrama about an evil hun seducing the proper wife with a running time of roughly ten hours which makes one think that the studios were quite right to hack Stroheim's films to pieces. An even longer version appeared from edition filmmuseum, oh joy!
J'accuse. The brightest director of the silent era always trying to film a film to end all films and ending up with some trite melodrama lasting many hours for no discernible reason and always having a dubious message handy. What attitude towards war had this film exactly?
Panoramic View of the Morecambe Seafront A combined effort of the forum members to vote Mitchell & Kenyon on the list. Succeeded, on to more interesting films.
Terje Vigen The story is hopelessly silly, I really like Sjöström a lot, but these moralistic stories where you can bet your life that the principal characters will meet again under the most improbable of circumstances ... life is too short for that.
Cabiria The Italians couldn't make a single coherent, crisp film in the 10s and this is no exception, lumbering around from a vulcano to episodes with a Maciste character and so on. The brisk intertitles and the nuanced acting also deserve some praise.

[swo17]

This thread is supposed to be a safe panda haven!

[Tommaso]

Great! You won't like to hear this, Lubitsch, but somehow I really can't help imagining your 'revenge' with the sound of the voice of Marcel Reich-Ranicki

To each his own, I'd say, but

Blind Husbands. Standard melodrama about an evil hun seducing the proper wife

It's not an evil hun, it's THE evil hun. And it makes all the difference. The man was the eponym of style and intelligence (with a twist), and while of course I like most of his 20s films even better, "Blind Husbands" has already so much of Stroheim's uniqueness to it that I can't see what's wrong with it. The story may be conventional, but not the sardonic treatment of it. Oh, and my avatar says that he also liked the mountains, of course.

You should have clamoured a bit more for "Unheimliche Geschichten" perhaps. I have had the arte recording for ages, but simply didn't think about rewatching it. As to the unavailability of "Ingmarssönerna", well, you know best how to change that...

[lubitsch]

This thread is supposed to be a safe panda haven!

Bah. All these cultivated heartful praise of underestimated masterpieces. It's fun to be the bull in a china shop \:D/ .

Great! You won't like to hear this, Lubitsch, but somehow I really can't help imagining your 'revenge' with the sound of the voice of Marcel Reich-Ranicki

It's not an evil hun, it's THE evil hun. And it makes all the difference. The man was the eponym of style and intelligence (with a twist), and while of course I like most of his 20s films even better, "Blind Husbands" has already so much of Stroheim's uniqueness to it that I can't see what's wrong with it. The story may be conventional, but not the sardonic treatment of it. Oh, and my avatar says that he also liked the mountains, of course.

You should have clamoured a bit more for "Unheimliche Geschichten" perhaps. I have had the arte recording for ages, but simply didn't think about rewatching it. As to the unavailability of "Ingmarssönerna", well, you know best how to change that...

Unfortunately I don't because I saw this film together with the rest of Sjöström's Swedish films in Munich and don't have copies of them. Regarding Unheimliche Geschichten you're probably right, but we two were also the only ones who supported Der Student von Prag.
And BTW I was born in Poland and have almost as nice a rolling R in my prononciation as Reich-Ranicki (whom I like).

[reno dakota]

41. The Avenging Conscience - Some liked it, some not in the discussion, but I'm surprised to be the sole supporter.

It was at #13 on my list and at #9 on Sloper's.

[Tommaso]

Unfortunately I don't because I saw this film together with the rest of Sjöström's Swedish films in Munich and don't have copies of them.

Dammit! But you have a good memory, then, too. In any case, you just saved me three quarters of a gig.

Regarding Unheimliche Geschichten you're probably right, but we two were also the only ones who supported Der Student von Prag.

Though that latter film is easily available, even if it's a supposedly abysmal Alpha edition. Well then, let's clamour for the Galeen and Robison versions in the next rounds.

And BTW I was born in Poland and have almost as nice a rolling R in my prononciation as Reich-Ranicki (whom I like).

But don't forget his 'S' sounds.... I really like the guy, too.

[lubitsch]

41. The Avenging Conscience - Some liked it, some not in the discussion, but I'm surprised to be the sole supporter.

It was at #13 on my list and at #9 on Sloper's.

#-o Please take a look at the corrected final list in the other thread ...

[reno dakota]

So it's time to get nasty and get revenge at all these boring flicks which crawled away in endless shots with nothing happening. stop reading here if you're easily offended when your favorites are attacked.

Wow. Maybe we need a new thread: "Slaughter The Darlings, Your Cruel Bastards! (Lists Project v 3.0)"

[nsps]

Maybe there should be a "Shit On the Popular Darlings" thread. Or should this just be part of the regular list discussion?

The Sinking of the Lusitania. Pious indignation about the evil Germans who massacred innocent people. In fact the Luitania was an Armed Merchant Cruiser filled up with ammunition and the passengers warned to go aboard because they were abused as living shields. Stick to your dinosaurs Winsor, that's less complicated.

Well, it was listed as an AMC, but wasn't actually equipped as one, but that's neither here nor there since the film is indeed a one-sided propaganda piece. I don't think the anti-German sentiment is what people were responding to, but I can definitely understand why that would turn you off the film. I think it's easier to separate the artistry from the message in this case because all the anti-German material is in the inter-titles rather than the actual images (and I only found the last one particularly ridiculous). If nothing else, the film is an impressive relic of the US's feelings at the time.

President. I can hardly remember the story anymore. Dreyer fans love the sparsely decorated walls. Fine when one can be sop easily pleased.

The story spans three generations of knocking up the help, and you can't remember it? The palpable feelings of guilt, regret and the aim for redemption are why I hold the film in such high esteem, but I'm sure most people like it for those sparsely decorated walls.

Panoramic View of the Morecambe Seafront A combined effort of the forum members to vote Mitchell & Kenyon on the list. Succeeded, on to more interesting films.

If there was a combined effort, my vote wasn't part of it. The shot is ridiculously gorgeous, and made all the more jubiliant by the children chasing the camera.

18. Stella Maris Did anyone except Tommaso even bother to seek out the Pickford films? But if you all don't like Chaplin, the chances for Pickford are even slimmer though it's a pity because here she plays a dual role, one raising her angelic image to a level where the girl she plays isn't hardly able to live by her own, and the other being an unloved exploited waif who only gets the worst deals until the lives of the two girls intersect.

I did indeed see many Pickfords while compiling my list, but missed Stella Maris. I do find it amusing that you complain about some films' stories being too routine and/or melodramatic, then complain about the lack of Pickford titles on the list. (Not to say I don't enjoy any of the Pickford films, just saying…)

[nsps]

41. The Avenging Conscience - Some liked it, some not in the discussion, but I'm surprised to be the sole supporter.

It was at #13 on my list and at #9 on Sloper's.

#-o Please take a look at the corrected final list in the other thread ...

#44 on mine as well and it was on the list—what's going on exactly?

EDIT: Nevermind—just saw your explanation on the list thread.

[swo17]

Panoramic View of the Morecambe Seafront A combined effort of the forum members to vote Mitchell & Kenyon on the list. Succeeded, on to more interesting films.

If there was a combined effort, my vote wasn't part of it. The shot is ridiculously gorgeous, and made all the more jubiliant by the children chasing the camera.

For the record, at the very least, both Tommaso and I, and apparently nsps, came to the conclusion that Morecambe Sea Front was the standout M&K film completely independently. There is a paper trail in the thread that attests to this. Though if it makes you feel any better lubitsch, feel free to credit us as the "creative force" behind the film.

[essrog]

1. The President (Dreyer, 1919) -- for the record, I didn't even notice the goddamn sparsely decorated walls. But I responded to what nsps pointed out: "the palpable feelings of guilt, regret and the aim for redemption are why I hold the film in such high esteem." Also, the torchlight procession was one of the most beautiful moments of the project for me -- it looked beautiful, but the irony of it (because the protagonist didn't deserve such recognition) made it a tragic beauty.

2. Suspense (Weber, 1913)
3. Sir Arne’s Treasure (Stiller, 1919)
4. After Death (Bauer, 1915)
5. The Cameraman’s Revenge (Starewicz, 1912)
6. Easy Street (Chaplin, 1917)
7. Hell’s Hinges (Hart, 1916)
8. The Mysterious X (Christensen, 1914)
9. The Outlaw and His Wife (Sjostrom, 1918)
10. The Dying Swan (Bauer, 1917)
11. The Sinking of the Lusitania (McCay, 1918)
12. The Oyster Princess (Lubitsch, 1919)
13. Regeneration (Walsh, 1915)
14. Fantomas (Feuillade, 1913)
15. Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1919)
16. A Man There Was (Sjostrom, 1917)
17. Bucking Broadway (Ford, 1917)
18. J’accuse (Gance, 1919)

19. The Bank (Chaplin, 1915) -- given lubitsch's kvetching over the omission of The Cure, the high ranking of this darling might just send him over the edge. What can I say? I thought it was one of the best uses of the "it was only a dream" ending I've seen -- and this was when it was still fresh (maybe).

20. Les Vampires (Feuillade, 1915)
21. Blind Justice (Christensen, 1916)
22. The Blue Bird (Tourneur, 1918)
23. Blind Husbands (von Stroheim, 1919)
24. A Dog’s Life (Chaplin, 1918)
25. Intolerance (Griffith, 1916)

26. The Pitch O’ Chance (Borzage, 1915) -- As lubitsch mentioned, the three Borzage westerns split the votes. I voted for this one largely based on what I read as an ambiguous ending -- the reformed protagonist, who "won" the woman in a game of cards earlier in the film, proposes to her. Then we see two images: the first one seems to be her thinking back to her life as a saloon girl; the second is him imagining coming home to her and their kids. The two images are obviously incompatible, and the two awkwardly embrace. The film ends there. I could be reading the ending completely wrong, but it struck me as a mature resolution (or irresolution) for a genre still in its infancy.

27. Skyscrapers of New York from North River (James Blair Smith, 1903)
28. Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Bauer, 1913)
29. Ingeborg Holm (Sjostrom, 1913)
30. Hypocrites (Weber, 1915)
31. Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)
32. The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917)
33. The Passer-by (Apfel, 1912)
34. Nerven (Reinert, 1919)
35. Cabiria (Pastrone, 1914)
36. The Land Beyond the Sunset (Shaw, 1912)
37. The Big Swallow (Williamson, 1901)
38. The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903)
39. The Impossible Voyage (Melies, 1904)
40. Victory (Tourneur, 1919)

41. Wild and Woolly (Emerson, 1917) -- For the first two-thirds of this, I was convinced I was watching the unsung masterpiece of this project. I loved seeing a western so self-aware at this early stage -- not only that, but the jokes were really funny. I got a kick out of spotting the signs that the townspeople put up to make them look like stereotypical Western yokels/tough guys: "Hotel guests will bury their own dead," complete with backwards 's's and the like. Then the last third happened -- like a lot of parodies, it became the very thing it was parodying. Fairbanks went from doofus to hero in a flash, which was expected, but the portrayal of the drunken, malicious Indians was really what left a bad aftertaste. Still, enough of the film was great enough to get it on my list.

42. One A.M. (Chaplin, 1916)
43. A Trip to the Moon (Melies, 1902)
44. Where Are My Children? (Weber, 1916)
45. The Invaders (Ince, 1912)
46. The Wishing Ring (Tourneur, 1914)
47. Shoulder Arms (Chaplin, 1918)
48. The Courage of the Commonplace (Sturgeon, 1913)
49. Mary Jane’s Mishap, Or Don’t Fool with Paraffin (G.A. Smith, 1903)

50. A Girl’s Folly (Tourneur, 1917) -- I think only around a half to a third of the film survives, but what does is a delightful movie about making movies. I think I put it on the list almost for the great title cards alone, which showed the director's hand (who was played by Tourneur, I think) moving around actors on a chess board.

[nsps]

Also, the torchlight procession was one of the most beautiful moments of the project for me -- it looked beautiful, but the irony of it (because the protagonist didn't deserve such recognition) made it a tragic beauty.

Yes, that torchlight procession and the Serpentine Dance are the two most remarkable uses of coloring/tinting I've seen.

[myrnaloyisdope]

41. Wild and Woolly (Emerson, 1917) -- For the first two-thirds of this, I was convinced I was watching the unsung masterpiece of this project. I loved seeing a western so self-aware at this early stage -- not only that, but the jokes were really funny. I got a kick out of spotting the signs that the townspeople put up to make them look like stereotypical Western yokels/tough guys: "Hotel guests will bury their own dead," complete with backwards 's's and the like. Then the last third happened -- like a lot of parodies, it became the very thing it was parodying. Fairbanks went from doofus to hero in a flash, which was expected, but the portrayal of the drunken, malicious Indians was really what left a bad aftertaste. Still, enough of the film was great enough to get it on my list.

These are pretty much my exact thoughts on the film. I wanted to get it on my top 50, but it just missed out.

[lubitsch]

President. I can hardly remember the story anymore. Dreyer fans love the sparsely decorated walls. Fine when one can be sop easily pleased.

The story spans three generations of knocking up the help, and you can't remember it? The palpable feelings of guilt, regret and the aim for redemption are why I hold the film in such high esteem, but I'm sure most people like it for those sparsely decorated walls.

1. The President (Dreyer, 1919) -- for the record, I didn't even notice the goddamn sparsely decorated walls. But I responded to what nsps pointed out: "the palpable feelings of guilt, regret and the aim for redemption are why I hold the film in such high esteem." Also, the torchlight procession was one of the most beautiful moments of the project for me -- it looked beautiful, but the irony of it (because the protagonist didn't deserve such recognition) made it a tragic beauty.

Well, I often wonder if you would react as friendly towards such films if you wouldn't know that the director is THE Carl Theodor Dreyer of later fame. I'm quite happy with quoting Tom Milne'd Dreyer monograph: "The President is an absurdly contorted melodrama involving much breast-beating, three seductions spread over three generations, with attendant illegitimacies, and several wild coincidences (...) but since the drama is is conveyed largely through the medium of an apparently unending series of letters delivered to the hero - on receipt of which he reads, starts wildly, clutches bosom or brow - the net result is barely distinguishable from all the other tearful melodramas being manufactured in Denmark as elsewhere at the time (...).

18. Stella Maris Did anyone except Tommaso even bother to seek out the Pickford films? But if you all don't like Chaplin, the chances for Pickford are even slimmer though it's a pity because here she plays a dual role, one raising her angelic image to a level where the girl she plays isn't hardly able to live by her own, and the other being an unloved exploited waif who only gets the worst deals until the lives of the two girls intersect.

I did indeed see many Pickfords while compiling my list, but missed Stella Maris. I do find it amusing that you complain about some films' stories being too routine and/or melodramatic, then complain about the lack of Pickford titles on the list. (Not to say I don't enjoy any of the Pickford films, just saying…)

Most of the films of this era suffer from less than subtle, melodramatic plotting, but sometimes they manage to transcend this problems by focusing on the characters or scenes and out of this grows something very modern and believable. Yes, Pickford sometimes sinks in sentimental scripts but quite often they are pretty harsh social dramas where you can see a young girl trying to win a bit of happiness in a cruel world, it's not that different from Dickens and Chaplin really and in Stella Maris even this doesn't work anymore.

Wild and Woolly (Emerson, 1917) -- For the first two-thirds of this, I was convinced I was watching the unsung masterpiece of this project. I loved seeing a western so self-aware at this early stage -- not only that, but the jokes were really funny. I got a kick out of spotting the signs that the townspeople put up to make them look like stereotypical Western yokels/tough guys: "Hotel guests will bury their own dead," complete with backwards 's's and the like. Then the last third happened -- like a lot of parodies, it became the very thing it was parodying. Fairbanks went from doofus to hero in a flash, which was expected, but the portrayal of the drunken, malicious Indians was really what left a bad aftertaste. Still, enough of the film was great enough to get it on my list.

The film probably suffered from the surrealistic scenes in When the Clouds roll by which drew our art film lovers (an excerpt is also in the Unseen cinema set on the surrealism disc) to that film even though Wild any Woolly seems to me the better paced effort. It may be just fun, but it's good fun.

A Girl’s Folly (Tourneur, 1917) -- I think only around a half to a third of the film survives, but what does is a delightful movie about making movies. I think I put it on the list almost for the great title cards alone, which showed the director's hand (who was played by Tourneur, I think) moving around actors on a chess board.

The film has survived quite completely, the folks at image decided to cut away the parts of the story not dealing with the making of a film apparently also due to nitrate decomposition, but the Grapevine print is supposed to be the whole film.