Tag Archive: Janet Gaynor


THE SILENT MELODRAMA OF STREET ANGEL

Filed under: Gender, Movies — 1 Comment
September 22, 2013

STREET ANGEL directed by Frank Borzage (USA, 1928)

street-angel-borzageThis week I began a 5 week MOOC in film history at Coursera run by Scott Higgins of Wesleyan University called ‘The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound, and Color’.  Street Angel is the first of ten movies on the syllabus and will be a hard act to follow.

What a great film this is!

It was chosen because it was made at a time when silent movies were about to be replaced by talkies and shows how directors with visual style didn’t really need dialogue to tell a rich and emotionally powerful story.

Prof Higgins says, rightly, that “it contains all that is great and weird about silent films”. Continue reading →

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THE SILENT SUNRISE EFFECT

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August 22, 2012

SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS directed by F.W. Murnau (USA, 1927)

Sunrise

The girl from the city leads the man from the country astray.

Some have called ‘Sunrise’ the Citizen Kane of the silent era. Like Orson Welles, F.W Murnau was given free rein and a stack of cash to realise his vision and it’s all up there on-screen to marvel at.

The German director fills the story with, for the time, innovative effects and bold studio trickery. It was also one of the first movies to be released with a specially recorded score of music and sound effects.

Is this enough to merit it being voted the greatest silent movie ever made by BFI/Sight & Sound critics, programmers and all-round cinematic smart asses?

Not in my view. Personally I’d give this honour to King Vidor’s The Crowd or Buster Keaton’s The General, but what do I know?

That said, ‘Sunrise’ does deserve a high standing for its sheer technical virtuosity and for the way it tells a simple story with such pizzazz. Continue reading →

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