Quiet riot
Silent films get a new life online, but not everybody's celebrating.
Packed with seduction, manslaughter, fugitives, illegal gambling, blackmail, prostitution and even a cameo by Jack the Ripper, Pandora’s Box has all of the elements of a contemporary summer blockbuster except one—there’s no sound. Released in 1929 and starring Louise Brooks, it was one of the most controversial films of its day, due to its portrayal of lesbianism. But like many silents, Pandora’s Box had a very limited audience for decades, until free streaming sites like Google Video, Retrovision.tv and Movieflix.com gave it a second life.
“The Internet has been a tremendous boon for silent films,” explains Thomas Gladysz, director of the Louise Brooks Society fan club in San Francisco. “It’s brought fans together and created activity in this community that wasn’t there before.”
Gladysz himself is testament to that. Starting the Louise Brooks Society in 1995, Gladysz has seen his site grow to more than 1,700 fans. The critical mass is now large enough to support real-world art exhibits on Brooks’s life as well as Gladysz’s side project of republishing Margarete Böhme’s novel, The Diary of a Lost Girl, the basis for Brooks’s 1929 film by the same name. While silent-film buffs like Gladysz embrace the far-reaching grasp of the Internet, others revile it.
“Watching a film like this online is 180 degrees different from the experience you should be getting,” says Dennis Wolkowicz, program director for the Silent Film Society of Chicago, a group that organizes 9 to 12 theatrical silent-film screenings throughout the year. “You need appropriate accompaniment, preferably live, to really get the full value of the film. It’s a handicap watching these films without it.”
Wolkowicz feels that it’s also a problem of quality. Silent films are available en masse online—Movieflix.com alone boasts more than 100—but picture quality varies from site to site, and accompaniment can range from the legitimate score to randomly selected tracks. Fans might not miss much watching The Back-up Plan on their laptops, but losing a sound effect germane to the plot of a silent film could have a significant impact.
Unlike traditional films, Wolkowicz notes, “the theatrical experience is part of watching a silent film. Without that, you’re not really getting its full value.”
Pandora’s Box is available for free on Google Video.
