The Sunday Intertitle-O-Rama
For all your intertitle needs. This guy also collects screen grabs of intertitles, but he doesn’t seem to post them, alas. I guess this could be a great resource for lazy film students who want to fake a familiarity with silent cinema — you could “read” a silent in just a few minutes, skipping all that boring pictorial flimflam.
Horribly, I fear someone may actually do this — so much film criticism focuses purely on plot and dialogue…
July 11, 2010 at 3:39 pm
It must be a really atrocious silent film if reading the intertitles gives them the whole plot better than watching the film.
Then there’s Murnau’s THE LAST LAUGH and TABU.
July 11, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Haha, coincidentally I just watched Nanook of the North a couple of nights ago. Nice to see an early example of cross cutting between two things happening during the same scene – cutting up the Walrus while the wolf dog starts going beserk – building an igloo while the kids turn themselves into human sledges – getting ready for bed while the dogs howl and curl up themselves…
July 11, 2010 at 9:18 pm
III dunno..few things are exciting as seeing Anthony Quinn eat Blubber!
July 11, 2010 at 10:49 pm
I’m glad you we’re able to reach him! As a researcher, I find his site invaluable. Plus, I love anyone who is loves intertitles more than I do.
Gregory
July 12, 2010 at 12:40 am
The Savage Innocents really works as an act of imagination, as does Nanook — I’m sure PARTS are accurate, but these are really creative individual responses to a culture, rather than accurate representations. The problem with Flaherty is he really tries to present his work as factual.
Gee, imagine if all we had of Tabu and The Last Laugh were the letters read/written in the stories… Mind you, the sole intertitle in The Last Laugh, introducing the happy ending, does give you something quite nice — the first Bokononist ending, maybe: a comforting lie which declares its own falsity even as it reassures you,
July 12, 2010 at 5:16 am
Title cards were as important as the the actors and direction and camerawork themselves..Just got thru watching William S Harts ,The Narrow Trail,where the dialog cards and artwork are a show unto themselves..much like Hart’s- Hell’s Hinges..and also Feel My Pulse from 1928, a light comedy where the title cards greatly shape Bebe Daniels’s hypochondriac character.
July 12, 2010 at 2:05 pm
THIS JUST IN!!!!!!
July 12, 2010 at 2:06 pm
July 12, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Saw Jon Ronson’s tweet “Polanski” a free man, but ah no he’s still verboten in the States. I got excited there for minute.
July 12, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Why should he come back to the United States? Had none of this happened he’d still find it impossible to make films here. Can you imagine an American company backing The Ghost Writer ? Not likely.
July 12, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Well, it means we’re back to the old status quo — nothing has really been settled, and I doubt he’ll be keen to travel to countries with extradition treaties like the UK, since there’s always the risk. So is he confined to France and Switzerland? That’s not exactly a dreadful prison sentence, but it’s not total freedom either.
July 12, 2010 at 5:38 pm
I only hope that the entire ordeal didn’t take too big a toll on him to affect his career. But yeah, he should stay in Europe just like his great idol and forbear(in many ways than one) Charlie Chaplin did. Chaplin made what Roberto Rossellini described as a film of a free man in Europe(A KING IN NEW YORK).
July 12, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Chaplin did get an emotional welcome back late in life. However, it’s doubtful such a thing awaits Polanski, however long he may live!
Friends suggest Polanski has been indomitable during this process. With his life experience, I suspect this is the kind of thing he half-expects, all the time…
Anyhow, back to work, Mr. P!
July 12, 2010 at 7:07 pm
I saw THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS a few weeks back, a real masterpiece. His first in colour and first with himself in a leading role(he’s a terrific comic actor and his love scenes with Sharon Tate are very moving) and I think the end of the film where the Vampire Killers end up unleashing the very evil they were hunting is pretty much how he sees the world.
July 12, 2010 at 7:33 pm
One of the first things that struck me about his work is how he loves circular stories or endings that return to a location seen at the beginning. Macbeth, Vampire Killers, Pirates, Frantic, Cul de Sac, going back to Two Men and a Wardobe and Mammals. We end up back where we started, only a little worse off than before. Which is what’s happened with this whole extradition drama.