My Top 5 Movies of the Roaring ‘20s: 1) Metropolis (1927) 2) Häxan (Witchcraft through the Ages) (1922) 3) The Kid (1921) 4) Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) 5) Nanook of the North (1922) Watching old silent films is definitely an adjustment to modern eyes so de-sensitized by nearly a century of technological innovation. For example, Metropolis had some of the most arresting visual effects ever screened for the public at its time, and its robot even inspired George Lucas (observe how closely it resembles C3PO). Nowadays, I reckon many audiences would struggle merely to spot the places where visual effects had been employed. That’s actually a big part of the fun for that one – 100 years ago it was a marvelous spectacle, but 100 years on it is a fascinating look at yesterday’s vision of the future. The 1920s were where cinema turned the corner from tech/art curiosity to the mainstream enterprise we know it as today. Moving pictures had been invented decades before, but now filmmakers were discovering ways to communicate with ever deeper layers of their audiences, and more than ever before were finding such profitable (if many still only just). There is an air of adventure in even the most staid of these; it was a risky experiment trying new filmmaking techniques, however commonplace some might be today, and as a viewer can easily see – not all of them worked, even in the best of compositions! Indeed, that is part of the fun. But SOME things really do never change... Many old movies remain great fun to watch, and can be very moving despite the lack of audible dialogue. These five are timeless.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:38:57 +0000
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