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r/classicfilms r/stopmotion r/MidnightGrain r/stop_motion r/silentcinema r/UniversalMonsters r/ComicsPre1940 r/TrueSilentFilm r/ClassicHorror r/silentfilm r/silentmoviegifs r/OnCinemaAtTheCinema r/LovecraftLovedMovies
▲ 615 r/silentmoviegifs

The Great Train Robbery (1903) — Edison sold this shot separately and told exhibitors to put it at either the beginning or the end

The Great Train Robbery (1903), dir. Edwin S. Porter, Edison Manufacturing Company. Public domain.

The man is Justus D. Barnes. The shot belongs nowhere in the story — Edison's catalogue listed it on its own and left the placement to whoever was running the projector, so depending on which theatre you walked into in 1903 this was either the first thing you saw or the last.

u/Party_Tennis_128 — 11 days ago
▲ 23 r/silentfilm

The Great Train Robbery (1903) — Edison's catalogue told exhibitors they could put the close-up of the bandit firing at the camera at either the start or the end of the film, whichever they liked

youtu.be
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 11 days ago
▲ 8 r/silentcinema

Three films by Charley Bowers, the silent comedian who cut live action and stop-motion into the same shot — rediscovered in the 1960s in cans labelled only "Bricolo"

youtu.be
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 20 days ago
▲ 129 r/LovecraftLovedMovies+5 crossposts

Lovecraft named The Golem one of the finest uses of Jewish folklore in weird literature — and then admitted, twelve years later, that he had never read the book and only knew it from a film. Here is the 1920 film, complete, with the German title cards rebuilt in English.

youtu.be
u/GrandpaTheobaldus — 18 days ago
▲ 13 r/silentfilm

The Electric House (1922) — Keaton broke his ankle in the escalator while making this, shelved the film for two years, then rebuilt the entire house and shot it all over again

youtu.be
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 26 days ago
▲ 36 r/TrueSilentFilm+1 crossposts

One A.M. (1916) — Chaplin performs almost the entire film alone, fighting a drunk man's own house: a revolving table, a fold-down Murphy bed, and an impossible staircase

youtu.be
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 1 month ago
▲ 20 r/TrueSilentFilm+1 crossposts

The Rink (1916) — Chaplin plays the world's clumsiest waiter who becomes a genius on roller skates. All the skating is really him, a skill from his music-hall days

youtube.com
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 1 month ago
▲ 67 r/silentfilm+1 crossposts

Le Manoir du Diable (1896) — the world's first horror film. The Devil appears, bats transform, skeletons attack — all made 130 years ago by Georges Méliès

youtu.be
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 1 month ago
▲ 25 r/silentfilm+1 crossposts

The Cameraman's Revenge (1912) — a story of infidelity acted entirely by real dead beetles, posed frame by frame by Ladislas Starevich

youtu.be
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 17 days ago
▲ 94 r/OnCinemaAtTheCinema+1 crossposts

Keaton refused to fake the falling-wall gag in Steamboat Bill, Jr. — he really stood there

In Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), the entire front of a house falls on Buster Keaton, and he survives only because he's standing exactly where an open attic window passes over him. The clearance was a couple of inches at his shoulders. Several crew members reportedly looked away during the take, and Keaton — going through a rough patch in his personal life at the time — later said he wasn't sure he cared if it hit him.

No trick, no cut, no net. Just marks on the ground and nerve. For me it's the single most nerve-wracking moment in all of silent comedy.

What's the silent-era stunt or effect that still makes you hold your breath?

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u/Party_Tennis_128 — 2 months ago
▲ 24 r/silentfilm

The Lumière brothers called cinema "an invention with no future" — then went on to invent color photography

I've been going down a rabbit hole on the Lumière brothers lately. After they basically invented movies in 1895, Louis famously dismissed it as "an invention without a future" and wouldn't even sell their camera to other filmmakers.

But here's what gets me — they didn't stop inventing. In 1907 they patented the Autochrome, the first practical color photography. So the men who supposedly gave up on cinema went on to give the world its first real color images.

Their early Paris "actualités" are some of my favorite films ever — Notre-Dame, the 1900 World's Fair, the Eiffel Tower, all caught as everyday life. Anyone else have a favorite Lumière actualité?

reddit.com
u/Party_Tennis_128 — 2 months ago