Weirdly, I saw Mary Reilly and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the same day (today). (they are both about the same story).
Anyway, MR is way more recent and stars Julia Roberts, but the other was made in 1920 and stars John Barrymore (Drew's grandfather). I highly enjoyed it. It's a silent movie. It was fascinating. I have decided I love silent movies. I don't find them boring--I just find them very interesting and at times hysterical. It's insane the different things they do. The few I have seen have all used tinting of the film, so that various scenes are colored bright green or orange, or whatever. Also, they do layering of the film or splicing for special effects. In this one, they layered this giant tarantula (supposed to be the "entity" of Mr. Hyde) over the film of Dr. Jekyll, and it was supposed to look like it was crawling on top of him. That was hilarious. Also, when he was changing back and forth, it would just be like one second he was Hyde and the next he was Jekyll. In a way it is better. In MR the way he switched back and forth was that an entire body formed underneath his skin and broke through somehow. It looked really bad. I also love how in silent movies they have to be insanely expressive with their faces, overly so. They flail their bodies around and do dramatic facial expressions, and it's all great. It's also just cool to see something that was made almost 90 years ago. That is INCREDIBLE.
I was looking at stuff on imdb about this movie, and people who were in silent movies were generally in like 30 movies a year, it seems. The woman who co-starred in this one was in like 40 movies in her life (or so), and she died at age 24 (a fire on the set). That was sad. Hollywood must have been so interesting back then.
4 comments:
i've only seen a few silent movies, but I agree, they're generally pretty funny. I don't think I enjoy them enough to go out and rent a bunch, but occasionally it's interesting.
i love when the whole screen turns into a giant "speech bubble."
also, the music that often accompanies them I find hilarious as well. It's many times very frantic sounding. Am I going insane, or is there not music going on in the background of silent movies? As I was writing this I started to think, "Uh, if it's a silent movie shouldn't it be SILENT? Why am I thinking there's music going on??" But I guess they maybe have to film it silent because they didn't have the technology, but then maybe played some sort of music in the background? Or did they add music to silent movies at a later date? Man, I'm so confused.
Haha, term "talkies" is funny.
I think the only real silent movies I've seen are Metropolis and Nosferatu, which are both genuinely good, not just for silent films, but in general. It is almost an entirely different medium, though. Nosferatu had the blue and green tinting things you talked about. And they both had acting that would be considered ridiculous and hammy by today's standards. I guess they thought that was the only way you could show emotion without any sound.
there is music. i don't know whether it was there at first. i am thinking that in the "olden" days they actually played it live. i saw a silent film in madison at vilas, and there was a live pianist that was playing along. in the one i saw last night, it said that the musical arrangements were done in 2004.
weird, Metropolis and Nosferatu are 2 of the few silent movies i've seen as well...huh.
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