> From: PDML [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of Godfrey DiGiorgi > > Spent Saturday evening at the Edison Theater - Silent Movie Museum in > Niles watching an evening of Mary Pickford classics from the 1909 to > 1913 period of silent films. How beautiful these century old films are! > After a couple of them, the language of that era's silent film grows on > you and you begin to hear them with your eyes. > > And then you wander about the museum space and play with the old > cameras. How simple and precise, how mechanical they feel. Beautiful > things. > > Very inspiring evening. There is a simplicity and a nuance to these > ancient photographic works that is sublime. :-) >
that sounds like a very interesting and enjoyable experience. There is a Cinema Museum here in London (http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/), but I haven't been to it yet. I really must. One of the many enjoyable things about the French Cinema classes I've been taking over the last 2-3 years has been to watch some of the older films and be impressed how they achieved their effects so cleverly with so little technology. A real challenge for the imagination. Last term we looked at Cocteau's film Orphée, and at the moment we are doing his La Belle et la bête. He used a lot of trickery to create the fantasy worlds of his films (note: in French cinema there is a distinction between le fantastique and le merveilleux, which we don't really make much - these 2 films, esp. B&B, are merveilleux), but he created the trickery in the camera, not in post-production, and even now, some 70 years later it is still very impressive. Perhaps even more impressive now than then. He constructed the unreal from the real. B -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
