Silent Films
 

Ok, I just watched "Metropolis" by Fritz Lang today, and Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is up next, but I was wondering:

Are there any REALLY REALLY good Silent Films (like metropolis) out there?
Like, ones that you'd gladly recommend to anyone?
Foreign Films?
Anything not naturally in English?

One of the best films of all time is Battleship Potemkin, which is silent, Russian, and public access, handily enough. You can download a shitload of great public access films from here.

Silent film is an awesome genre of cinema-- neat idea, greatguy.

With such diverse styles ranging from the fascinatingly bizarre (Fritz Lang), the spooky and gloomy (FW Murnau), and the often hilarious (Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton -my fav!), it can become so engrossing.

There's a lot out there, but thankfully, as knkwzrd astutely mentioned, many are so old their copyrights have fallen into the public domain yeeeeaaahhs woowoo! which is so damn awesome I could just shoot my neighbor and eat a cupcake in the name of Odin in front of Thoth naked in a giant bubble in a Price Chopper parking lot.... for you..

greatguy, you seem to be onto the more dark sci-fiey side right now. I am still getting into the whole silent film genre myself, and I'm no scholar, but my strongest recommendation would be F.W. Murnau's "Nosteratu, a Symphony of Horror" - especially if you enjoyed the ghastly sets of Dr. Caligari. It's basically "an unathorized production" based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. An interesting fact: the production crew has to deal with some pretty abnormal occurrences during filming (some of the crew disappeared, some allegedly died). I might also suggest Murnau's "Sunrise", which like knkwzrd's recommendation, is supposedly considered to be one of those most important films in cinema history.

I am not at all sure if these are up your alley (and I fear a plate of nachos so mephitic as to be discharging their own purulent matter, should they not live up).

That aside, I must blabber about the coolness factor of silent comedy, the kingdom of Buster Keaton (and I suppose Chaplin as well). Known for some pretty extraordinary stunts for the time (decades before Jackie Chan, Buster Keaton was famous for his often perilous physical comedy and dangerous stunts). Check out the following short film; this one contains the infamous wall-falling scene, where Buster is saved from certain doom by a well-placed window:
http://www.archive.org/details/OneWeek

Something a bit longer for ya? Check out Buster's Sherlock Jr.

For more silent movies of public-domainy-goodness, check out this collection:
http://stage6.divx.com/The-Last-Stop/videos/

Ok, thanks for the links guys!

Just finished Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and it sucked booty.
Of course, I had high hopes after seeing Metropolis, so no wonder I was rather disappointed.

Finished Ivan the Terrible Part II also. Pretty good, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that didn't have a sick fascination with Prokofiev.

Many possibilities here. Buster Keaton and Potempkin mentioned are very well worth multiple viewings. My personal favorite silents are the following:

Pandora's Box
Man with a Movie Camera
Sunrise

All 3 should be very accessible, Pandora's probably being the easiest to find. Man with a Movie Camera, unlike the other too, is an experimental documentary pioneering editing techniques Vertov began with Kino-Eye. Extremely fascinating. I don't know the context in which you are seeking out these films; you may want to start w/ Pandora's or Sunrise just to play it safe.

Faust, Nosferatu, and Les Vampires are ubiquitous titles we've heard of but few (in my generation, anyway) have seen. Other than Sunrise and Les Vampires, the others I've mentioned are Russian or German.

I don't know if it fits in this category, but try to watch an animation film called Angel's Egg. The film has only two or three lines in the whole movie.
The beauty of the movie is that every single person who sees it have a different interpretation of the story. It's a mix bag of Sci-Fi, religion and symbolism. Pure art.

Obviously not like Metropolis, but the other day I saw "The Great Dictator" for the first time. It's been a while since I laughed so hard!. I now know why Chaplin was sooo damn popular.

Anyways, give Angel's Egg a chance.

I love silent films. I like how the music often becomes the means of expressing the characters thoughts, hopes and dreams.

I also wanted to mention that Angel's egg was artistically supervised by Yoshitaka Amano, final fantasy illustrator extraordinaire. You can find it in youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU9j5...elated&search=

I can recommend anything by Fritz Lang, one of the great masters of the silent era.

These are my personal favorites:

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
Die Nibelungen: Siegfrieds Tod
Frau im Mond
Spione
Der Müde Tod

As for acquiring these - most of them you should be able to get through various torrent sites, like demonoid or pirate bay. Most of them have also been released on dvd by Eureka Video and/or Criterion, should you want to purchase any of them.

You... didn't like it? It sucked 'booty?' I thought it was awesome. It was one of the few silent movies I really enjoyed (Battleship Potemkin was fun for the Odessa Steps scene alone, but I got kind of bored with the rest of the movie).

Still... I can't help but find myself in complete and utter

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/7...0764339nt0.gif

lol.
Well, I suppose it was the score that did it in.
I mean, it was SO BORING, musically.
The movie itself was pretty interesting, though. Plus it was tinted (-1 point), grainy picture (-15 points) and more for amusement than for intellectual depth like metropolis [that or I'm just shallow] (-3 points).