The good news is that you don’t ever have to watch a silent movie if you don’t want to, so this is entirely optional. No one should have to watch anything; this is why the best kind of romantic relationships are the ones where you both look at each other and smile guiltily and one of you says “Want to watch [thing we love] instead of [thing we’ve been meaning to get around to watching]?” and the other says “GOD, yes” and the worst kind of romantic relationships are the ones where one of you is always saying “You promised you’d come with me” and “You really need to see this.” So, just to be super clear, you should not go about gazing at silent movies unless the idea strikes you as interesting; there are a lot of movies that exist and you are not obligated to watch them all, particularly ones whose only redeeming value is that they’re very old.
So with that said, if you’re going to give silent movies a shot, you need to remember not to pizza when you’re supposed to french fry, or else you’re not going to have a good time. One of the worst ways to watch a silent movie is to load one up on Netflix or Youtube and settle down by yourself in your bedroom to watch it on a laptop or a small screen. I promise you, even if you are one of God’s most solemn and patient creatures, you will start playing Text Twist or fall asleep in the first five minutes under those conditions. It’s not that silent movies are boring (or that you’re a stupid person who can’t appreciate “good” films), it’s just that they were created for an entirely different time and context.
I tried watching Metropolis for years on my own in my parents’ basement, and while I could appreciate the unbelievable set work and the gorgeous mis-en-scene, I could never go more than a few minutes at a stretch before I had to check out and do something else. But when I managed to see it at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood with a packed house and a full orchestra at the TCM Film Festival, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Success! I had transformed a bad time into a good time; a pizza into a french fry.
So here are my tips for maximizing your silent-movie-going experience:
- Try to find a film festival or an old movie palace that occasionally plays silent films near you. There are loads of silent film festivals nowadays — San Francisco has one every year, as do Denver and Topeka; Chicago has a silent film society. The way an audience reacts to a silent film can be so helpful. When you’re watching at home, even with a soundtrack, your mind can wander because you’re so used to hearing dialogue and audible cues — the audeince’s laughter, boos, hisses, etc. can make up for that and energize a viewing. AND PEOPLE WILL BOO. I saw the John Gilbert version of The Merry Widow and every time the evil Baron Sadoja clumped his way onscreen, people lost their minds hissing at him. It was fantastic. I don’t know what it is about silent movies that brings out the Statler and Waldorf in everyone, but I love it.
WHAT A MONSTER
- If you can’t find a theater showing silent films anywhere near you, make sure whatever version of the movie you’re watching has a decent soundtrack with it. Plenty of them don’t — lots of silent movies’ original scores have been lost entirely, while plenty of others have been dubbed over with completely awful, inappropriate soundtracks, so do a bit of research before you pick the version you’re going to watch.
- Watch it on the biggest screen you have access to. Silent films rely heavily on the expressiveness and charisma of individual actor’s faces and body language, so the smaller the screen, the more you miss. You know that goofy, overdramatic and heavily-rouged pantomime style you sometimes see as a way of poking fun at silent film acting? It’s ridiculous in a sound context — not just a movie where characters are talking, but a movie that’s filmed in the style of a talkie, which we tend not to think of as a genre in its own right any more because it’s all we know — but it can be amazingly effective in a silent film. So go big.
- Don’t watch anything with Mary Pickford in it.
- Watch it with someone. Try not to have any other distractions around, but if you find yourself getting antsy, give yourself a break. Pause it for a few minutes, stretch your legs, talk about what you’ve seen so far. If you find you just can’t focus on a wordless screen for more than ten to fifteen minutes at a time, don’t force it. Come back to it later.
I know we’ve talked about the Code before, so I won’t go into detail here, but I’ll remind you not to be shocked if you run into a little Jazz-Age-era nudity. Let’s say, for practical purposes, Hollywood’s silent era runs from about 1915-1927. That’s not meticulously accurate; there’s at least one movie on my list that’s from 1911 and of course silent films had been produced and shown around the country since the 1880s, but the mid-teens is around when feature-length films started to predominate over one-reelers and shorts. Also it’s a nice, round number. 1927, of course, is the year The Jazz Singer was released, and 1928-1931 was a weird, ambiguous period full of intertitles and shoddy dialogue. It’s a big mess and I’m not ready to make any recommendations from that time.
The other nice thing about silent movies is that almost all of them are now in the public domain, and quite a few of them are available in full streaming on Netflix, Hulu, or on YouTube. If you’re not willing to make a purchase, you can almost always just google the name of the film you’re interested in watching and something (legal, even!) will pop up. So! 1915-1927 it is. What should you be watching?
The Heavies
These are the silent movies that even non-film buffs know about, or at least know they’re supposed to know about. Should you watch them?
Metropolis (1927) — This is an Important Movie for Serious People, so give yourself an out. It’s visually stunning — it’s unbelievable what they were able to pull off at the time; Fritz Lang is a fucking genius, and it’s influenced everything from Star Wars to the posters in your dorm freshman year. It’s also ver-r-r-y long and they repeat “between the head and the hands must be the heart” at least eight dozen times, so maybe give yourself a couple of breaks; pace yourself. The last ten years have brought at least three rediscoveries of previously lost footage, so be sure to watch the Kino or the F.W. Murnau foundation edition. Anything after 2011 is your best bet.
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors (1922) – You’ve seen this! If you’ve seen Muppet Babies, I guarantee that you have seen at least one scene from this. You’re also probably familiar with the basic mythology: that Nosferatu was supposed to be a straight adaptation of Dracula, but Bram Stoker’s widow blocked it so they had to change the name and parts of the story, “something something German Expressionism,” and maybe you’ve even seen John Malkovich’s excellent fan-fiction The Shadow of The Vampire. Nosferatu is 100% worth watching in its own right, but you should definitely watch it in order to understand The Shadow of The Vampire, which I cannot possibly oversell.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) — Man, I guess. We’re already leaning real heavy on the German Expressionism at this point, so if you’re ready to check out, I do not blame you. Watch the last five minutes and check out a few stills so you can ooh and ahh over the set design. Visually, it is cool as balls, so it’s worth watching at least for that, but the plot (while revolutionary at the time) is nothing you haven’t seen before in Jacob’s Ladder or Shutter Island. If you are the kind of person who enjoys doing drugs and watching movies, you will enjoy getting high and watching this movie quite a lot, I think.
Sunrise (1927) — Not the 1926 Australian comedy of the same name. Not that you would ever confuse the two, but still. It is sentimental and Theme-y to the hilt. Nobody has a name and it’s very archetypal. An evil Woman From the City, a tormented Man Who Wants Sex, a virtuous Wife Who Almost Gets Drowned But Is Not In Fact Drowned. You could not possibly make this movie with dialogue. It’s like a fairy tale in the original meaning of the phrase, full of portents and dread and awful temptations and has an eerie, dreamlike quality. It helps to think of it as a fairy tale, I think, because those are always full of surprising, out-of-nowhere violence, and otherwise it’s really hard to appreciate the sweet, dreamy getting-to-know-you-again sequences in the city when it’s like Hey, lady, this guy just tried to drown you. Watch it!
City Lights (1931) – I’m sorry, I really am, but Chaplin doesn’t do it for me. I finally got around to seeing it this year with a great audience (Jason Lee introduced it! Apparently it is his favorite film!) and I appreciated it and I get that he was a visual genius and yet it left me totally cold. Every time I see the Little Tramp, I just want to punch that stupid grin off his stupid face.
The ending was as good as everyone says it is; I genuinely loved the ending. You’ll probably like it; I think the problem here is me, not Chaplin.
(I also do not like Buster Keaton’s The General, please do not tell Orson Welles.)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) — YESSSS. YES TOTALLY WATCH IT, IT IS AMAZING, LON CHANEY’S FACE IS UNBELIEVABLE AND MESMERIZING AND THERE IS AN INTENSE SEQUENCE THAT WAS SHOT IN TECHNICOLOR AND I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW THEY DID IT BUT IT IS SO CREEPY AND WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES THAT NIGHT LON CHANEY’S TWISTED VISAGE WILL SWIM ACROSS THE TRANSOM OF YOUR FEVERED MIND, UNBIDDEN AND UNBOUND.
Also while you are at it, watch The Man Who Laughs (1928). They both fall into the category of “romance/melodrama” but are mostly semi-misremembered as horror films because of how arresting and horrifying the protagonists’ appearances are.
Then I guess never sleep again.
Greed (1924) – NOPE. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s super influential and I love von Stroheim, but I would rather watch a Stanley Kubrick film than this nine-hour monstrosity. Do you know what you should watch instead? The Grand Illusion, from 1937. It’s not a silent film, so this is cheating, but von Stroheim has a wonderful part in it, and not nearly enough people have seen it. I feel about The Grand Illusion the way I feel about William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, which is really saying something.
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) — Watch the hair-cutting scene and the last twenty minutes. Renee Falconetti has one of the most incredibly expressive faces in the world.
It (1927) — You have to. Everyone has to watch at least one Clara Bow movie just to, you know, understand the past, and Wings doesn’t count because she’s barely in it and neither of the two male romantic leads care about her at all, so it might as well be It. She wiggles fetchingly throughout. You’ll have a good time as long as you don’t get too worked up about the obvious sexual double standard. Just…just pretend it doesn’t bother you, and you’ll have a good time, I promise. Plus there’s a great Coney Island sequence.
Birth of a Nation/Intolerance (1915/1916) — I mean, you already know that D.W. Griffith invented the closeup, right? You don’t need to sit through Three Cheers For the Ku Klux Klan. And Intolerance is just stressful to watch. So many jump cuts!
Broken Blossoms (1919) – AHHH, I am of two minds about this. ON THE ONE HAND, it’s about a Chinese missionary who attempts to spread Buddhism “throughout the Anglo-Saxon lands” and falls in love with/rescues a white woman, which is pretty daring and interesting stuff, given the time period. On the other hand, the role is played by a white American in yellowface, which is pretty predictable and tiresome stuff, given the time period. Also, everyone dies in the end. I say give it a shot, but leave yourself an out if you find you don’t have the patience for it.
You Gotta See These Though Dude
The Merry Widow (1925) – This version of The Merry Widow – there have been, like, NINE adaptations — is easily my favorite. It is my opinion that John Gilbert was the handsomest man in the world and Greta Garbo was crazy not to marry him. HE WAS SO DASHING. I got so caught up in this when I finally saw it on the big screen; I was like my great-aunt Earline and her soaps. I hissed at the evil Baron and I sighed whenever John Gilbert swashbuckled his way onscreen. Also there is a scene where the merry widow disappears from the screen EXCEPT FOR HER DIAMONDS, to highlight what the evil Baron sees in her, and that’s pretty amazing. Watch it and then call me right away so we can talk about John Gilbert!!!!!
Look at that handsome son of a bitch!!!
Wings (1927) – It’s so good. No, it’s SO GOOD. It does not feel like a movie that was made in 1927. It has just about every modern war-movie trope in it, but they’re executed so perfectly it feels completely fresh. Every time the strains of “My Buddy” start to play, I well up. I sobbed like a baby at the end of this movie, but in a way that felt terrific.
The Wind (1928) – LILLIAN GISH GOES INSANE IN THE DESERT. Silent movies can do eerie visual motifs like nobody’s business, and this one pulls it off perfectly. Plus a woman gets away with murdering an evil man in this movie, because the desert hates sexism. Four stars.
Girl Shy (1924) – The greatest movie in the world, hands down. I love Harold Lloyd. Harold Lloyd is a mensch and a delight and I wish he were still alive today and was also my best friend. It is so, so funny, and I think also is the first romantic comedy where somebody stops a wedding in progress to declare their love for one of the celebrants, which is something.
Also notable for creating the PUA community:
Beau Geste (1926) – Every single adaptation of Beau Geste is worth watching (you’ve seen the Gary Cooper version, right? RIGHT?), and this one has Ronald Coleman in it, which is great.
Borderline (1930) – 1. It’s got Paul Robeson in it. 2. It’s one of the earliest movies to deal with black-white interracial relationships that treats its black characters with dignity and nuance. 3. IT’S GOT PAUL ROBESON IN IT.
L’Inferno (1911) – It’s an early Italian adaptation of Dante’s Inferno with just unbelievable special effects. You might find that it looks oddly familiar because a lot of later films borrowed footage from it to illustrate hell, including Go Down, Death and Hell-O-Vision, which you should see for the title alone.
Robin Hood (1922) – For the Alan Hale completist! It’s been pretty much superseded (and rightly so!) for the Errol Flynn version, but luckily Alan Hale plays Little John in both versions.
Tags: advice, human connection and how to avoid it, mary pickford sucks eggs, maximizing a good time, movies
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The very best part of melodramas is hissing and booing every time the evil villain does something dastardly.
wait…
are you suggesting pizza is…bad?
Only when you should have French fried
oh, come on, Mary Pickford isn’t that bad.
noted Canadian Mary Pickford
She’s alright if you like all the acting in one actor, in one role, in one scene ALL AT ONCE.
Okay, fair. And she can’t do a million different things with her face the way the best silent film actors can, but she IS fun to watch.
I don’t know much about her acting, but she was hella interesting as a businesswoman of her time. Produced her own movies! Cofounded United Artists! And was one of the original members of the Academy in the “Academy Awards”!
Yes, she founded United Artists along with Fairbanks, Griffith, and Chaplin. And Chaplin found her unfeminine because she was such a hardass in the boardroom. Really knew and understood contracts which is impressive considering she hardly went to school. She was pretty much supporting her family for the age of 13 on.
It is true, Shadow OF The Vampire cannot be oversold. I always forget HOW MUCH I like it until I’m actually watching it.
VASE OF PREHISTORY!
I mean, she had me at “John Malkovich’s excellent fan-fiction,” so.
Awesome list!! I haven’t seen so many of these, but YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES TO THE TERRIFYING VISAGE OF LON CHANEY!! Also, it’s the closest adaptation of Phantom to the book, so that’s something, too. Read the book while you’re at it. Wooo.
I saw The Bride of Glomdal on the big screen with a live pianist accompaniment at the National Gallery of Art, and I was totally enraptured.
I’ve tried to watch The Battleship Potemkin on Netflix like 8 times, and I fall asleep about 20 minutes in EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Skip the first 20 minutes. That’s just ‘it sucks being enlisted in the imperial navy’ its about halfway through when it gets good and you won’t miss anything.
I watched Battleship Potemkin in a East European Cinema class at my university a few years ago (I liked pretty much every movie we watched in that class, except for Roman Polanski’s Knife in Water which was literally the worst). I don’t remember anything except the staircase scene because I think I had one of the ten or so colds I caught that semester while we watched it. But I think its worth watching just for the staircase scene alone.
Best part of silent films is being able to just talk right through them.
Also, Metropolis was Fritz Lang, not Murnau.
Battleship potempkin is a bit rough because of the whole propaganda thing but its totally worth watching. Chaplin… Chaplin has never made me laugh but he charismatic as fuck and it makes his films really easy to watch.
Oh and if you can’t make it through metroplis watch Faust. Its just as impressive (if smaller) but much shorter.
Metropolis is truly my favorite movie. I have watched few other silent films, but I have a giant tv connected to the Netflix and a spouse who would be game for many of these, so I shall have to make it my business to get on these.
Something something RUDOLPH VALENTINO EEEEE something something. I mean, if you like smoldering pansexual Argentines (and can somehow look past the wildly problematic stuff in, well, every one of his movies, but especially the “Arabian” ones).
Yup-but Son of the Sheik is my fave anyway. You totally get what the frenzy for him was all about and why so many lost their minds when he died and all that awesome was just gone
My hometown university’s team name is the Gauchos, because way back when before it became the state university it was a teacher’s college filled mostly with young women and they chose their team name in 1927 so…
I just love Harold Lloyd so much, guys.
It’s crushingly depressing that two movies that are incredibly important historical artifacts in the evolution-of-the-movies sense — Birth of a Nation and The Jazz Singer — are also super super racist 🙁
I would put this on for my son when he was about 2-3 years old, just to crack up together. I LOVE HAROLD LLOYD AND I TOO WOULD HAVE LOVED TO BE HIS BEST FRIEND [sobbing quietly].
More Harold Lloyd awesomeness.
The local orchestra here does a concert every year where they play the accompaniment to a silent movie, so you have the whole orchestra on stage with the movie projected on a screen hanging over them. It is extremely awesome.
Louis Fueillade! He’s like Edward Gorey in French and on laudanum! To give you an idea what he’s about, here are some highlights from this list of his visual and thematic trademarks:
Kidnapping, often in boxes…heroes who live with their mothers… mirror surveillance technology…parties that are attacked destructively, e.g. sugar trader’s engagement party…elephant doing human tasks… humans wearing spines to ward off snakes…shots recreating famous paintings of historical events, but with Feuillade’s characters…unusual phones…shadows…silhouettes…polygonal rooms…people sticking out their arms to make X shapes…animated anagrams…body suits or stockings, all-black.
Feuillades most famous serial is Les Vampires, but it takes a while to ramp up to the body stockings and mind control eyes. Tih-Minh is denser and, if possible, even crazier, but caveat emp. for problematic orientalism.
OFTEN IN BOXES
“humans wearing spines to ward off snakes”
This…this happens enough to be a TRADEMARK?
PAUL ROBESON ALL DAY ERRY DAY PLEASE
Oh my gosh, Intolerance is hilarious! Basically, “people didn’t like my movie and it’s JUST LIKE THESE TERRIBLE HISTORICAL ATROCITIES. Also, feminists are terrible people, amiright?”
Highly entertaining.
Also, I totally want to be Onion Girl for Halloween next year.
HAROLD LLOYD = Dreamboat
In Portland we have FilmMusik. Where they match up silent films with a band, and they play live modern music accompaniment. I can’t stand it. They paired an Icelandic Jazz Jam Band with one of the silent Oz movies. But I go anyway because the theater is amazing, and they serve pizza, and I agree with you about the big screen/communal experience of silent films.
Also, those silent Oz movies in general are good for while you’re high (I suppose if I were into that).
Renee Falconetti. I am bad at watching media, can barely make it through episodes of shows I like with out tuning out or pausing for a bit. I watched all of The Passion of Joan of Arc sitting completely still because I could not stop looking at her face, and when her face wasn’t on the screen I didn’t want to look away because I knew it would come back.
Silent movies awwwwww yeeeeaaaaaahhhh. One thing, though. It’s okay that you don’t like The General. Takes all kinds, etc. But what about all the rest Keaton’s stuff? What about Sherlock Jr.??? Such visual trickery!!
(Okay, his female characters are despicably one-dimensional. But still.)
Sherlock Jr. is my life.
Even though Nosferatu was an adaptation of Dracula, many of the story elements were changed. So while Dracula was about the triumph of Christianity, Nosferatu was supposed to be an occult film. It was produced by this guy Albin Grau, who was into theosophy and was pals with Aleister Crowley. If you’ve read Dracula and it made you feel icky inside, you might find Nosferatu more to your taste (some people think it’s really scary but it’s supposed to be ironic, I promise!).
Back in the late ’80s, I got to see Metropolis on the big screen. It was accompanied, live, by an organ player who had played the organ for the movie during its original run (back when theatres had to hire players to provide the music). Dude was old as fuck, obviously, but as I far I could tell he got all the notes right.
When we were teenagers, my lil sis wanted to watch all 100 of the AFI’s best films. That means I have seen Birth Of A Nation. It is both horrific and hilarious, in that “I literally cannot believe what I am seeing onscreen right now” way.
Yes, silent films in theaters are the best! I recently saw Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances with accompaniment played on a restored 1920s Wurlizter organ, and it was absolutely my favorite movie-watching experience ever.
Watching silent movies in a theater is totally the best. Technically I cheated by seeing the Moroder version of Metropolis (which is somewhat colorized, sped up, and features awesome 80s music as the soundtrack), but the repertory theater near me (which also has a monthly Trash Night where they show a bad movie intercut with found footage VHS nonsense – love you, The Brattle!) did a Chaplin shorts retrospective that was amazing.
woo! gonna go see The Wind on Monday with my friend who won vip tickets! I’m also excited about this because that one Ann Marie McDonald novel (Fall On Your Knees, I read it several times in high school) there is a tomboy obsessed with Lillian Gish, this is not the gayest thing that happens in the book, but I was always curious about Lillian Gish afterward.
One more good German impressionist film is “M”, directed by Fritz Lang and released in 1931. It’s actually a talkie, but Lang’s use of sound is very, very careful and sparing. (He actually disliked talkies, apparently!)
I don’t love The General either, but Steamboat Bill Jr–the hurricane scene is amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LdY0ROdpp4
A character in Metropolis is named ‘Rotwang’. That is all.
One Halloween, many years ago, I saw the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera at the Vancouver Symphony. They had an organist, people dressed up (including a red cavalier) and it was amazing.
yo
This is probably a good time to mention my favorite ever (modern) silent film series, which is “Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_bjAhynSrY
A man recut many of these old films to re-tell the Batman origin story; “The Laughing Man” up there is recast as the Joker.
This is a great list. But one great silent that’s missing is The Crowd. No plot really, just an honest look at everyday, working class lives. Many shots will seem familiar because many directors copied them.
I like Mary Pickford ok! My favourite silent film is Piccadilly because Anna May Wong. Sure she dies in the end like in 100% of her films, but the bit where the camera travels through the restaurant down to the kitchens and you see her for the first time dancing on a table!
The Great White Silence, the 1924 Ponting documentary about the doomed Scott expedition to the South Pole is also amazing – the BFI restored it a couple of years ago and there’s a new score that is really great.
I would have to add to the list of films to see, or learn about, Abel Gance’s Napoleon. So much vision from Gance! The opening scenes where Napoleon is a kid and you see him commanding all the other children in a snowball battle are so brilliant. It’s hard to see live as you need a super wide screen as when the last reel comes on, they turn on two extra projectors either side of the main projector and the image becomes a giant widescreen and then three different images in blue, white and red making up the French flag and you are overcome with emotion and want to stand up and sing La Marseillaise as the orchestra plays it with gusto. It’s also 8 hours long. I love that it’s 8 hours and all that we have is the French Revolution plus he gets to Italy. Gance planned lots more films to show Napoleon’s life but never made another one as this one bankrupted the whole of France or something. I also feel a duty to see it as a film archivist as Kevin Brownlow spent so long restoring it, and Kevin Brownlow is one of the greatest ever. I don’t think it’s the best film ever but it’s so interesting and such an EVENT if you ever do get the chance to see it.
<3 <3 <3 The Grand Illusion <3 <3 <3
Jean Gabin is the best.
Don't sleep on Louise Brooks, y'all! She will look at you from the past like "Yep, I have seen and done it all when your great granny was a girl. TA DA!"
Also, skip The General when you are first getting in to Buster. He is not nearly as hot as usual in that one (except for the one part where he's hiding under the table). Try One Week instead and you will be in LOVE.
Everyone please go watch Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, starring the perfect and amazing Louise Brooks, so we can talk about them immediately and forever.
But, Mallory, how can you not mention Louise Brooks? Or DIARY OF A LOST GIRL?
I’ve seen Metropolis in a theater twice, once with a restored antique organ accompaniment and once with a DJ spinning. Both experiences were amazing. (Same DJ did Battleship Potemkin the next year, and that was also great. THE STEPS, man.)
I've seen Metropolis in a theater twice, once with a restored antique organ accompaniment and once with a DJ spinning. Both experiences were amazing. (Same DJ did Battleship Potemkin the next year, and that was also great. THE STEPS, man.)
As a teenage goth my very favorite movie in the world was Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Part of that was probably that it was also my introduction to silent films outside of Chaplin and Keystone Cops, so I was startled by how modern and avent garde it seemed, but I think it also tells you something that a teenage goth would consider it their favorite movie (runner up: The Hunger).
One great thing about silent movies: You can watch them during long phone calls, like with Expedia or any other big corporation that leaves you on hold forever, or keeps coming back to just ask you a couple of basic questions before leaving you on hold again. Silent movies allow you to be entertained while still being ready to pick up the phone call whenever.
Some favorites: “Barbed Wire” with Pola Negri, “The Crowd” by King Vidor, and of course “Wings.”
Not sure how much overlap there is between people who watch WWE and silent-movie fan Toasties, but NXT has recently introduced a new wrestler, Simon Gotch, who is an old-timey strongman. He is one half of a tag team called The Vaudevillains; they do a silent-movie themed ring entrance and it’s basically the most amazing thing ever.
If you’re in the NYC area, the Loews Jersey is a fabulous 1929 movie palace with a fully restored organ, and silent screenings there are an absolutely amazing experience. I think my favorite was the original Zorro, with the entire audience cheering the good guys and booing the baddies. His alter ego is a REALLY TIRED GUY. It is the best.
Phantom of the Opera is a weird one. It was originally a silent film, but it was recut into a talkie a couple years later. The silent version was lost, but the talkie survived — minus its soundtrack. So if you go to a screening, you will see a silent version of a talkie made out of an earlier silent film. Complete with long sequences of an opera singer you can’t hear.
“I was like my great-aunt Earline and her soaps.”
Wait, does everyone have a great-aunt Earline? I thought I was the only one with a great-aunt Earline.