Gregory Robinson's Blog, page 2

Early Version of All Movies, before it became All Movies...

Restoring Intolerance (the movie, not actual intolerance).

The Cohen film collection posted a split screen restoration of Intolerance, showing how much life can be given back to a movie. Film restoration specialists are a bit like doctors whose patients 

The Ship of Theseus

From the novel S, a close relative of Pale Fire and House of Leaves.

Female Film Pioneers

Drop whatever it is you are doing and check out the Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia. It is a remarkable look at women in early cinema. It has an entire section on women who worked as title writers, including

Hettie Gray Baker: “a writer of motion picture titles and scenarios; of library science, theatre, and fan magazine articles; and, later in life, of highly regarded books about cats”

And Katherine Hilliker, who worked on the famous titles from Sunrise:

A Very Ancient Man

from Marjorie Charles Driscoll, published in Motion Picture Classics in 1928, The beginning kind of reminds me of Stephen Crane's "In the Desert"

I met a very ancient man

with gray and revered head.

"It is growing dark," I said to him,

And this is what he said.

"Drifting shadows crept over the

World as suppliant Day knelt at the

threshold of Night, pleading for the

black of darkness."

I looked up at him in mild surprise,

He wept "Ah, well-a-day!

I once wrote titles for the films,

And now I talk this way!

A Tart Ending

R.R. King from Intertitle-o-Rama told me about The Sentimental Bloke, an Australian film from 1919 featuring the poetry of CJ Dennis. This title stood out a bit. What exactly constitutes a tart conclusion is debatable, but I am guessing that it is not good.

Atheist Meets Religious Guy, Drama Ensues

She finds God, of course, but I would love to see a remake where she converts him to atheism and they still end up okay.

Telling Rather Than Showing

"Show, don' tell" is a manta repeated in multiple forms of storytelling. It makes sense - it is more exciting to see someone punch a wall than it is to read "he was angry." This was one of the biggest arguments against using title cards in silent films - they "told" rather than "showed." That said, there is some appeal to being told what to expect and then seeing how it is enacted. Genre usually dictates the basics of what will happen anyway. The artistry is in how those events transpire. This is why title cards like this one from the 1918 movie The Things We Love were more common in the earlier and middle silent periods. Audiences did not mind knowing the story before it transpired on the screen.

We Don't Blame You, Anita Loos.

Anita Loos entered Hollywood at a young age, writing screenplays and (later) intertitles. By most accounts, she always had a very young appearance. Advertisements frequently capitalized on this, but they also usually note something about her intelligence or her wit. This ad starts with all kinds of infantilization (and  a crazy hat), then notes that she is one of the most brilliant writers of her age. 

From Now On, I am a Liver Pill

Here, Spence devotes an entire page to how he will not talk about himself. "The liver pill shows marked restraint and self-discipline during these spells of egotistical exuberance."