Silents Synced presents Buster Keaton’s 1924 masterpiece, featuring music from R.E.M.‘s Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi albums.
Von Stroheim's idiosyncratic interpretation of Frank Norris has been cripplingly reduced from its original, ten-hour-long, epic dimensions (now available for study in book form only), but it still reveals a maniacal eye for detail, and it makes up for whatever it lacks in subtlety with a surplus of audacity. Zazu …
Griffith's depiction (guaranteed not to reverse his downhill commercial slide) of the day-to-day battles against poverty in post-WWI Europe: Carol Dempster stuffing cotton in her sunken cheeks to present to her lover the illusion of fine health, etc. Part document, part sentiment, and all in all a neglected gem.
F.W. Murnau's chronicle of a hotel doorman's grievous degradation, when he's demoted to lavatory attendant and has to swap his fancy drum major's uniform for a barber's plain white coat, and (for strictly commercial reasons) his sudden, miraculous redemption and exaltation. Done without a single title card, excepting the one …
Boy and Girl are adrift on a ghostly empty tanker, and cut off from Keaton's invigorating American backgrounds. A bit detached and coldly calculated, but still an efficient demonstration of the comedian's choreographic timing, his dream-state absurdity, and -- in a sluggish underwater sequence -- his cinematic adventurousness. Directed by …
Keaton's concern with the nature of the movie medium always far outdistanced Chaplin's or any other competitor's in the silent comedy field, and the dream sequence in which the mousy movie projectionist projects himself onto the movie screen is about as far in that direction as he ever went. The …