Sounding Off on the Silents

It's not easy being a pretentious movie fan. I've written before about the challenges of sitting through lengthy films that run several hours longer than most modern audiences can tolerate. If I had to pick a runner-up category of films that I find challenging to sit through, it would have to be the silents. Now I fully acknowledge the importance of these earliest, foundational films, and I've truly enjoyed many of them. I prefer the 1924 silent version of "Thief of Baghdad" to the 1940 remake with Sabu and Conrad Veidt. Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" has my vote for the greatest film of all time.

However, there's just no getting around the fact that silent films are slower paced, the filmmaking techniques are far more rudimentary, the performances are straight out of pantomime theater, and some of the most important films simply haven't aged well. "Birth of a Nation" and "The Jazz Singer" were both monumental achievements in film history, but neither could be shown to a classroom of school-aged children without causing a ruckus due to their racially inflammatory content. Additionally, modern releases of some silent films have been rife with gimmicks, like the recent DVD of "Nosferatu" I found with the title cards written in garish Halloween fonts, a bizarre new musical score, and the print tinted with distracting colors that obscured many of the visuals.

It's no wonder the best loved silents are the comedies. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd were masters of physical comedy, relying on mime, slapstick, and cartoonish gags that transcended spoken languages and generational divides. I saw my first Harold Lloyd film a few days ago, the much beloved "Safety Last!" where Lloyd famously climbs a skyscraper and ends up dangling over city traffic from the hands of a giant clock face. It was wonderful, and as fun to watch in 2010 as it must have been in 1923. I've loved Chaplin for years, though I fully admit that Keaton's films had the better gags. Thanks to their films, I could count myself a fan of silent movies from an early age. However, it took me a good long while before I was ready to venture outside the realms of the Tramp and the Great Stone Face to approach more serious and sedate material.

Most of the non-comedic films of the silent era were broad melodramas like DW Griffith's "Intolerance" or Erich von Stroheim's "Greed," the kind of simple, old fashioned morality tales that fell out of favor with the mainstream public a long time ago. I'm very proud of myself for getting through the four hour reconstruction of "Greed" a few nights ago, one of the most difficult viewing experiences I've ever had. Though the pace often felt leaden, the film required a good amount of attention because of the dated vernacular. Several characters spoke with thick accents that were transcribed on the title cards in creatively mangled English, which required no small effort to decipher.

But as the film went into its third hour, I found myself being won over by the story of John and Trina McTeague, a pair of tortured souls obsessed with money, who were caught in a trap of financial ruin and misery. The performances by Gibson Gowland and ZaSu Pitts were extraordinary, and the depth and harshness of the story were extremely affecting. All the elements that I found so distracting about the first half of the film, from the outlandish hair and makeup effects to the odd instances of spot color to the use of stills in the reconstruction, all seemed to fade into the background as the plot ramped up. By the final scene that finds John McTeague beyond all hope of salvation, I'd completely forgotten I was watching a silent film.

And this is why I'm willing to put up with all the minor aggravations, put in all the effort, and remain patient with these older films. Once in a while I'll get lucky and find masterpieces, films that that I really do enjoy and appreciate without reservation. Silent films often do leave me cold, like FW Murnau's "Tabu" and DW Griffith's "Broken Blossoms," most recently. But as I've learned to appreciate more of them, they're getting easier and easier to watch. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the newly restored version of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," which will run around 145 minutes. After four hours of "Greed," that doesn't seem like a very long movie at all.