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Okay, so this one requires more than a little explanation. I think the consensus pick for best picture would be Erich von Stroheim's Greed, with Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. running a close second. And maybe I'll come around to that viewpoint by the time I actually write these essays. But for now I'm going with the Douglas Fairbanks's swashbuckling masterpiece The Thief of Bagdad as the best movie of the year.
Greed is a very good movie in its present form—ten reels of film about a dimwitted dentist, his gold-obsessed wife and a meddling friend who wants revenge for a wrong that only a self-entitled monster would think he was done—but I think its reputation as the best movie of 1924 rests as much on what's not on the screen as what's on it: as you likely know, Stroheim's first cut of the movie was nine hours long and film critics have lamented its loss as the number one tragedy in movie history.
Well, maybe.
I've read Stroheim's original screenplay—all 300 single-spaced pages of it—and it's either as wonderfully subtle as a season's worth of Mad Men episodes or as wordy and punishing as a nine hour silent movie threatens to be. Maybe both. I've given it the award for best screenplay, but without seeing how the actors performed their parts, how Stroheim set up his camera shots, and how the editor paced the story, I have no way of knowing how good it actually was. And neither does anybody else, not really.
As for Sherlock Jr., I'd call it the perfect summation of everything that Georges Méliès ever wanted to do on film, a collection of the most inventive trick camera shots of the entire silent era, all staged and performed by Keaton, edited together seamlessly into a very funny little comedy. If I were to treat Sherlock Jr. and Keaton's other 1924 film, The Navigator, together as a single body of work, I'd give the pair the award for best picture. But while I've done that in the past with short one- and two-reel films, I'm not inclined to do so with feature films.
Keaton wins a well deserved award for best direction, though.
Which leaves The Thief of Bagdad. I've written about it before, saying, "With the graceful and athletic Douglas Fairbanks at its heart, The Thief of Bagdad is as fluid as a ballet while at the same time serving up a rip-snorting yarn filled with the best special effects 1924 could offer." I stand by that. If you're only going to see one Douglas Fairbanks movie in your life, see this one.
I don't expect you to agree, but then half the fun of an award is giving people an opportunity to complain you got it wrong. So have at it: tell me I'm wrong.
Picture: The Thief Of Bagdad (prod. Douglas Fairbanks)
Actor: Emil Jannings (The Last Laugh)
Actress: Marie Prevost (The Marriage Circle)
Director: Buster Keaton (Sherlock Jr.)
Supporting Actor: Conrad Veidt (Waxworks)
Supporting Actress: Zasu Pitts (Greed)
Screenplay: Erich von Stroheim, from the novel McTeague by Frank Norris (Greed)
Special Awards: Buster Keaton (Sherlock, Jr.) (Film Editing); William Cameron Menzies (The Thief of Bagdad) (Art Direction-Set Decoration)
Along with Méliès's rocket hitting the moon in the eye and Chaplin as the Tramp, Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock is one of the most iconic images of the silent era. And the movie it comes from, Safety Last!, is quintessential Lloyd—the nebbishy nice guy with the glasses who winds up performing some truly outrageous and inventive physical stunts, all for love.
I'm going with Lloyd for best actor.
My choice for best picture is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You've probably heard of it—stars a fellow named Lon Chaney in one of his most famous roles.
Finally, according to Alternate Oscar guru Danny Peary, I'm entitled to one tie in the actor category and one in the actress. I'm using my actress tie here, to recognize Colleen Moore and Norma Talmadge with what are essentially career achievement awards. Only one reel of Flaming Youth survives, but it was a trendsetter—much more than anything Louise Brooks would later do, Colleen Moore with this role established the "flapper look" in the minds of the public—and along with those films of Moore's that do survive, I think she's one of the top actresses of the silent era. As for Norma Talmadge, she was to the silent era what Bette Davis was to the Golden Age. Her best available movie is the 1926 comedy Kiki, but Within the Law is actually more typical.
Picture: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (prod. Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg)
Actor: Harold Lloyd (Safety Last!)
Actress: Colleen Moore (Flaming Youth) and Norma Talmadge (Within The Law) (tie)
Director: Abel Gance (La Roue)
Supporting Actor: Adolphe Menjou (A Woman Of Paris)
Supporting Actress: Gladys Brockwell (The Hunchback Of Notre Dame)
Screenplay: Perley Poore Sheehan (adaptation) and Edward T. Lowe Jr. (scenario), from the novel by Victor Hugo (The Hunchback Of Notre Dame)
With all due respect to Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Buffy, and the Twilight series, Nosferatu is the best vampire movie ever made and belongs on any list of the best horror films of all time.
Looking back from the vantage point of the 21st century, you might be inclined to lump the look and style of Nosferatu in with every other silent film, but the fact is, at least in terms of its camera work, Nosferatu was a distinct throwback to the previous decade. Viewing it in context, one gets the impression director F.W. Murnau was saying to his audience "Here is a tale told long ago; the footage has only recently been rediscovered." The modern equivalent might be The Blair Witch Project—if you're old enough to remember all the way back to the dark ages of 1999 and how that film's low-budget, shot-on-video technique added an air of authenticity to the proceedings.
Picture: Nosferatu (prod. Enrico Dieckmann and Albin Grau)
Actor: Erich von Stroheim (Foolish Wives)
Actress: Anna May Wong (The Toll Of The Sea)
Director: F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu)
Supporting Actor: Ramon Novarro (The Prisoner of Zenda)
Supporting Actress: Mae Busch (Foolish Wives)
Screenplay: Henrik Galeen, adapted without credit from the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker (Nosferatu)
The other day, FlickChick noted in a comment that she'd hoped to see a mention of Miriam Cooper somewhere in my write-up of D.W. Griffith's epic masterpiece Intolerance, but alas, it was a short review and I was destined to disappoint her.
Like most silent performers whose careers didn't stretch into the sound era, Cooper is nearly forgotten today, with her reputation resting on the handful of surviving films, most made for Griffith. She was born in Baltimore in 1891 to affluent parents, but slid into poverty and then an orphanage after her father abandoned the family and her mother took ill.
Cooper made her film debut in the Griffith short The Duke's Plan, but really established herself in a series of short Civil War pictures made at Kalem Studios. "I was a stunt girl; I didn't do any acting."
Her first real picture with Griffith was Home, Sweet, Home, an early attempt to stitch four separate narratives together using a common theme (John Howard Payne's song "Home, Sweet, Home"). Cooper's role wasn't much—just a bit part in the second story as a woman who briefly catches Robert Harron's eye—but Griffith must have seen something because the following year he cast her as Mae Marsh's older sister in The Birth of a Nation.
In his book Silent Players, film historian Anthony Slide praised Cooper's acting as "modern" and "naturalistic."
"I think I must have been some sort of a natural actress," Cooper said later while cheerfully admitting to having no real formal technique or clear idea how to create the effect she wished to achieve.
"I couldn't cry to save my soul," she said of one scene played for Griffith. "He pulled a chair up [and said] 'Miss Cooper, I didn't want to tell you this, but your mother has just died.'" She cried buckets.
Cooper's best surviving performance was as "the Friendless One" in the Modern sequence of Intolerance. After murdering her philandering boyfriend, a slum gangster, Cooper played her grief and guilt so realistically, she bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. (In a later film, she permanently damaged her eyes by staring soulfully into a Klieg light.)
During the filming of Intolerance, Cooper and Raoul Walsh (who would later direct such films as White Heat and High Sierra) married—secretly, since Griffith was himself romantically interested in the actress. Not until after Walsh moved over to Fox studios did they make their marriage known.
Cooper made 100 movies in her career, but largely abandoned acting after her marriage, working only for her husband after they left Griffith. She made her last movie in 1923.
Cooper and Walsh had two children together but she divorced the chronically philandering director in 1925 and never remarried. She invested her movie money well, however, and lived comfortably until her death in 1976, touring the country as a golf enthusiast and playing well enough to sink holes-in-one in three different states—no doubt some sort of record among golfing ex-silent film actresses!
Okay, so this one requires more than a little explanation. I think the consensus pick for best picture would be Erich von Stroheim's Greed, with Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. running a close second. And maybe I'll come around to that viewpoint by the time I actually write these essays. But for now I'm going with the Douglas Fairbanks's swashbuckling masterpiece The Thief of Bagdad as the best movie of the year.
Greed is a very good movie in its present form—ten reels of film about a dimwitted dentist, his gold-obsessed wife and a meddling friend who wants revenge for a wrong that only a self-entitled monster would think he was done—but I think its reputation as the best movie of 1924 rests as much on what's not on the screen as what's on it: as you likely know, Stroheim's first cut of the movie was nine hours long and film critics have lamented its loss as the number one tragedy in movie history.
As for Sherlock Jr., I'd call it the perfect summation of everything that Georges Méliès ever wanted to do on film, a collection of the most inventive trick camera shots of the entire silent era, all staged and performed by Keaton, edited together seamlessly into a very funny little comedy. If I were to treat Sherlock Jr. and Keaton's other 1924 film, The Navigator, together as a single body of work, I'd give the pair the award for best picture. But while I've done that in the past with short one- and two-reel films, I'm not inclined to do so with feature films.
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