I'm taking two film classes this semester, as a senior guest auditor (meaning it's free). So I'm in hyperdrive with films and wanted to recommend one to you. It is called Die Wiesse Holle Vom Pitz Palu/The White Hell of Pitz Palu. If you've seen Inglorious Basterds you might have heard of it. It was made in 1929. Sound had already come to America by then, but the Europeans held back a bit because sound was expensive and risky. And so this one is silent. It was one of a specific German genre known as the Mountain Film. Most of them were directed by Arnold Fanke, who discovered the actress and later film maker Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl was a big star by this time and insisted that Fanke hire G.W. Pabst to help him. Pabst was one of the greatest of a galaxy of German Directors in the 1920s (Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and Paul Leni were some of the others).
The Mountain Films were shot on location and the actors did all their own stunts (except, of course, when they fell to their deaths in giant crevasses). This is an example of the peak (no pun intended) of the silent cinema. The film is three hours long, and the inter-titles are in German. The titles don't make a bit of difference in understanding the film, because, as Norma Desmond/Gloria Swanson said much later in Sunset Boulevard (paraphrasing here) "Talking pictures, nothing but a bunch of yak, yak, yakking." WHPP has been reconstructed with a beautiful soundtrack and is a joy to watch.
Silent films from about 1925-1930 were at the apex of an art form that was completely independent from the films that followed. Silents were not an evolutionary step on the way to sound, wide screen, and digital. They were an art unto themselves, a lost and buried art. If you are interested in seeing why, Kevin Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By... is a great starting point
I've been watching quite a few lately, The Wind (1928--Victor Sjostrom) (Intoduction by Lillian Gish) (Vimeo--music is jarring, you may want to watch it with no sound at all)
The Docks of New York (1928--Josef Von Sternberg)
Nanook of the North (1922--Robert Flaherty)
Robin Hood (1922--Allan Dwan--I watched this one with my mom, and as her vision isn't the best, I acted as her Benshi, really got into the role),
The Last Laugh/Der Letzte Mann, Sunrise, and Tabu (all F.W. Murnau, 1924, 27, and 31 respectively)
The Abyss (turn closed caption English on) (1910--Urban Gad, the film which introduced Asta Nielsen, one of the first great actresses)
Die Nibelungen (1924--Fritz Lang)
J'Accuse (1919--Abel Gance)
Man With a Movie Camera (1929--Dziga Vertov)
The End of St. Petersburg (1927--Vsevolod Pudovkin)
and the last silent film of the 20th Century, Juha (trailer only) (1999--Aki Kaurismaki)
Next time you watch a modern film, ask yourself how much of it is carried by the dialog. There is no dialog at all in Tabu.
WHPP is unique. I've never seen anything like it. If you get a chance, feast your eyes on it.
