I like to watch silent movies, and then make gifs from them.
Created by @dmchoull
Jul 7 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The evolution of cinema: four versions of the fatal shooting of Horatio Nelson from movies made in 1918, 1926, 1941 and 1973
Nelson: The Story of England's Immortal Naval Hero (1918) with Donald Calthrop as Horatio Nelson
Nelson (1926) with Cedric Hardwicke as Nelson
That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Laurence Olivier as Nelson
Bequest to the Nation (1973) with Peter Finch as Nelson
Dec 22, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
For a movie released in 1926, The Johnstown Flood has some pretty impressive visual effects
The hills and the tops of the buildings are painted on a glass plate, the water is filmed on a model set and added into the shot using the Williams process
.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_…
Sep 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès was first seen by audiences 120 years ago today, on Sept. 1, 1902
A Trip to the Moon was one of the most popular films in the early years of cinema, but it was widely pirated in the U.S., so Méliès didn't see the full benefit from his film's popularity. In 1908 an unauthorized remake was released
Oct 3, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A few fragments from Salomé (1918), a lost Theda Bara film, were recently discovered at the Filmoteca Española
You can watch the fragments (about two minutes in total) on Filmoteca Española's Vimeo channel vimeo.com/610569864
Oct 1, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Movies that take place at roughly the same time
Admittedly, this is only tangentially related to silent movies, but I had this idea, and I thought it would be an interesting thing to make
Aug 18, 2021 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
Harold Lloyd reading the New York Times in Speedy (1928)
Knowing that Lloyd was filming on location in New York in the summer of 1927, I was able to find the issue he's reading in the New York Times archive. It's the paper from Sunday, August 7, 1927
Mar 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A century-old gag that still works today
Hard Luck (1921), Mr. Nobody (2009)
The Shaggy Dog (1959), Book of Love (1990)
Are We There Yet? (2005), The Illusionist (2010)
Aug 2, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Between 1918 and 1920 a deadly influenza pandemic was killing millions of people, but you wouldn't know it from watching movies from that time period. This scene from Daddy-Long-Legs (1919) is a rare exception. Note how the mask-wearing crowd scatters when Mary Pickford sneezes
While influenza disrupted the production and distribution of movies, as reflected in this New York Times headline from October of 1918, it's unusual to see a silent film that actually acknowledges the ongoing pandemic
