What are your favorite period films?

[betweensunandmoon]

Mine are:

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
Captain Blood (1935)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Prince of Foxes (1948)
The Crimson Pirate (1952)
Scaramouche (1952)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Julius Caesar (1953)
The Music Man (1962)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Hello, Dolly! (1969)
The Sting (1973)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
The Great Gatsby (2013)

Comments

[sea_changed]

I love the Keaton cameo, and all the cameos by people playing themselves (DeMille obviously, but also all the poker players--including H.B. Warner/Mr. Gower from It's a Wonderful Life, which makes you remember that a lot of silent actors did survive into talkies and continued working for decades). I should definitely watch that Keaton documentary--I didn't realize he was in talkies at all, he's such an emblematic silent star to me.

And oh yes, the Singin' in the Rain ultimate ot3. Everything about that movie was incredibly formative for me, shipping priorities very much included.

[lettered]

The documentary isn't good. At all. I certainly don't need Quentin Tarantino telling me Buster Keaton is manly, because um. Did he see Steamboat Bill Jr.

BUT I am not a Keaton aficionado and so there was a lot of stuff I didn't know as well as excellent clips, so if you're interested in an overview it's nice. None of his talkies were good (according to the documentary), but they make the point that if he hadn't been so misused (by the MGM studio) he might've made it as a drama star. I'm not convinced; I guess I'd need to see more. I've never seen Limelight (the Chaplin film) but now I want to.

Yeah sometimes I think Sunset Blvd is having as much fun with its in-jokes/behind the scenes stuff as it is with it's in front of the screen stuff, which is part of what makes it so delightful. It's almost as fun to read about as it is to watch.

[sea_changed]

Oh lord, that does sound bad. I haven't watched enough silent movies in general, even the classics (Chaplin!); they take a different style of movie-watching that I'm just not as used to. (I did love The Artist from a few years ago, though--it did such clever things with the silent form while still being very watchable from a 21st-century perspective.)

The meta-ness of Sunset Blvd is half its fun, I agree--the more you know about the behind-the-scenes stuff the more interesting it gets (though I'd argue it's pretty interesting to begin with, for all that). Forever my favorite bit of trivia about it is that the movie they watch at one point was an actual silent movie Gloria Swanson starred in in the 20s--directed by Erich von Stroheim, who plays her butler/ex-director/ex-husband.

[lettered]

My city does this awesome thing where they do live music performance to go with the silent movie. Some of it is classic, on an organ, as it might've been done for the original movie, but some of it is modern bands. I saw the 1924 Peter Pan with a harp and flute and...one other instrument. Anyway, it was very moving.

Not being much for slapstick, I find I'm not as interested in the old Keaton and Chaplin type of silent movies. However, when I first saw The General, my friend and I decided to put on our own music and we picked something rather sad, and it was a perfect perfect way to watch that film.

the movie they watch at one point was an actual silent movie Gloria Swanson starred in in the 20s--directed by Erich von Stroheim, who plays her butler/ex-director/ex-husband.

I know! So wild!

[sea_changed]

I love that--the music is so important to silent movies, it would be great to hear it live, and fascinating to hear unexpected or more modern music over the film. I love the idea of watching more comedic/slapstick films with slower, sadder music, too. It really highlights how important soundtracks are in talkies, as well--it changes how you engage with a movie entirely.