Silent Movies Are Still Creating an Echo

With silent films more available than ever, now is the time to remember the era's most influential directors

by Bob Mastrangelo | Published July 31, 2007

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Robert Flaherty (1884-1951)
Flaherty’s output in the silent era was small, but how many directors can claim to have practically invented an entire form of moviemaking? The documentary tradition dates back at least to 1895, when the Lumiere brothers’ depictions of daily life, so-called “actualities,” became a staple of moviegoing. But the release of Flaherty’s Nanook of the North was a watershed event. This epic depiction of one Inuit hunter’s ceaseless struggle to find food for his family was an unprecedented box office sensation, and it inspired generations of moviemakers to travel the globe with their cameras in search of cultures and stories previously unrepresented in the cinema. While the debate continues over whether his methods would qualify as “documentary” by today’s standards (he made considerable use of dramatic recreation), there is no denying that Flaherty launched the wave of documentary moviemaking that has lasted, with ups and downs, for more than 80 years.

Recommended Viewing: Nanook of the North (1922), Moana (1926)

Abel Gance (1889-1981)
In explaining the importance of Gance’s work, film historian Kevin Brownlow singles out La Roue and Napoléon, as “they are packed with the most astonishing and daring sequences of the entire silent era.” Yet today Gance is almost invisible, and his place on this list is precarious. His major works—Napoléon, La Roue and J’accuse!—remain largely unavailable. He has become one of those early directors about whom film buffs hear much but see almost nothing. In the 1910s and 1920s, however, Gance was France’s foremost director. He was a relentless experimenter, admired for increasing the mobility of the camera and pioneering the use of widescreen and multiscreen techniques. Even more significant was his work with rapid-style editing, which influenced the Soviet masters of the 1920s and the French New Wave directors of the 1960s. But in order for a director’s body of work to endure, it needs to be assessed, debated and—most importantly—seen.

Recommended Viewing: Mater dolorosa (1917), The Tenth Symphony (1918), J’accuse! (1919), La Roue (1923), Napoléon (1927)

D.W. Griffith (1875-1948)
Every person who has made a movie in the past 100 years, regardless of whether or not he or she has ever seen one of Griffith’s movies, has been influenced by him. It’s not that he invented the techniques of moviemaking, but rather that he used them in revolutionary ways, which essentially created what we now recognize as the very grammar of cinema. The Birth of a Nation, his most notorious and important work, is overflowing with racist imagery that remains shocking and indefensible. Nevertheless, the film remains a titanic achievement, by turns deeply offensive and overwhelming poetic, and in many ways the principal blueprint for the next century of moviemaking.

Recommended Viewing: The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Hearts of the World (1918), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), Isn’t Life Wonderful (1924)

Buster Keaton (1895-1966)
Dubbed the “Great Stone Face” (though he was more expressive than that nickname implies), Keaton perfected the bewildered loner persona and was as sardonic as Chaplin was sentimental. In an era of physical comedians, he was perhaps the greatest of all. Like Douglas Fairbanks and Gene Kelly, he had the ability to perform astounding physical feats on camera, yet make them look easy and graceful. His fondness for large-scale props, from the ocean liner in The Navigator to the train in The General, is legendary. Keaton directed or co-directed most of his films and, like Chaplin, exercised such a degree of control over his movies that he was one of the earliest movie star auteurs. Fans of silent comedy will forever debate over who was greater, Chaplin or Keaton, but the dispute is silly: Both are essential figures.

Recommended Viewing: Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The General (1927)

Fritz Lang (1890-1976)
Lang was perhaps the silent era’s premier master of the genre picture. In the course of just a decade, he made a succession of films that helped establish the basic tenets for many of the genres that are now staples of modern moviemaking. The Spiders is an exotic swashbuckling adventure that anticipated the Indiana Jones franchise, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler is the tale of a larger-than-life criminal mastermind and an early example of the pulp crime thriller; Die Nibelungen is an epic-sized fantasy saga that foreshadows everything from Ray Harryhausen’s films to The Lord of the Rings trilogy; and Spies is an international espionage story in the vein of the later James Bond pictures. Metropolis is, of course, Lang’s most celebrated and influential work; a film that continues to be mined—sometimes shamelessly so—by present-day moviemakers. There’s no question that Lang was deeply influenced by Feuillade, and this influence is especially evident in his early films, but Lang also firmly established his own identity, and unlike many of his contemporaries, continued to be an important moviemaker for decades after the silent era ended.

Recommended Viewing: The Spiders (1919-1920), Destiny (1921), Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927), Spies (1928)

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Comment by Hindi movies online on 2/05/08 at 10:03 pm

charlie chaplin movies were damn hillarious
have to chk other guys in list

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