Comments | tsmaster: Treadmill Theater: Trudging Through the Classics #9

tsmaster

Treadmill Theater: Trudging Through the Classics #9 - Sunrise (part 1)

May 05, 2010 09:10

I've mentioned that I've been trying to see the best movies of all time. That's a squishy notion, so I started off with the American Film Institute's 100 years... 100 movies list, and I added in the Internet Movie Database's Top 250 back shortly after Pirates of the Caribbean had come out - I think it might have still been in the theaters when I ( Read more... )

Comments 4

johncomic May 5 2010, 17:31:13 UTC

I gather that Sunrise is Important -- as opposed to Good.

tsmaster May 5 2010, 17:41:30 UTC

I expect this is the case for most of the films I've seen in this project. I've been dragging my feet about seeing Birth of a Nation - I anticipate hating it ( ... )

johncomic May 5 2010, 19:40:52 UTC

I haven't seen BoaN yet, but I have seen Intolerance a couple of times. Griffith is interesting...

I dunno... I suspect that part of what I love about silents is what bothers you about them. What strikes you as dated, strikes me as so far removed from our present-day experience that it becomes downright alien and fascinatingly strange. These films are nothing like the films we know, and I'm intrigued by their wonderful weirdness.

tsmaster May 5 2010, 21:25:02 UTC

Yeah, they're definitely time capsules, and while I cringe at Al Jolson in blackface (and Fred Astaire, as well, but you always hear about Jolson), I find bits of interest in those early films.

Part of what I find interesting (in "Intolerance", "Jazz Singer", "Nosferatu", and so on...) is seeing these creative folks wrestling with a new medium and seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm sure I'm not recognizing some pretty groundbreaking techniques simply because they were absorbed, refined, and improved over the past several generations.