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Topic: Old B&W film question?
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-19-2004 02:17 AM
It's common to see vignetting on early films, & successive dupes exacerbate the condition.
However, there was quite a wide convention in silent movies of changing the 'aperture' for artistic reasons - irising or using a matte to a circle or slash, or masking the sides/top/bottom. It was generally done to direct focus to a particular point, as an alternative to moving in. There are a lot of 'closeups' of faces, scenery & action which are shot through a circular mask, or, just as often, with the sides & top matted to even something that looks like just a narrow vertical bar of picture in the middle of the screen. It may seem strange, but in practice it's often unnoticed. Since those pictures were 100% visual but not yet completely bound up in the conventions of having to look like a window on some scene as audiences came to expect with the sound era, the practice came from experimenting with ways to manipulate the audience only via means at the camera. It's not that different from the manipulation of cutting. Silent movies in the last years became very sophisticated in methods of image manipulation to manipulate the audience's attention & perception; however synchronized sound brought a lot of 'anchors' with it to expectations of realistic sound & viewing.
Most of the Harold Lloyd movies are from (cut) original camera negative, so increased vignetting due to successive duping is not likely the case. Lloyd owned his own films (except for the very early stuff), & took care of them. They're not available on video due to terms of his will, because Harold Lloyd was apalled at what television did to movies in terms of chopping them up for commercials, time, the reduced impact of comedies when not viewed with an audience, the reduced effectiveness on the tiny screen, etc. They're shown on TCM just as a sort of exposure & snack for the faithful, as well as sort of going someplace where all the folks who like the same things hang out. I don't know how long the agreement to run the Lloyds is with TCM this time, but if you like 'em, tape 'em. Otherwise, you'll have to be vigilant for theatrical showings of his movies - yep, they print them & run them. Lloyd movies are always GREAT in a theater with an audience. He was likely the first to do previews & edit, do re-takes, etc. based on audience reaction.
The Pickford Trust is sort of similar with the Mary Pickford movies. Few folks get to see them therefore, so there's no really accurate perception nowadays of a Mary Pickford movie. Somehow in memory & popular culture she's been spliced with Shirley Temple & Little Mary Sunshine, & the perception is of here as a sort of drone. She's a hoot & great comedienne, & her movies were VERY expensive, had the best directors & cameramen, & are a lot of fun. Mostly all you find these days on video is "Sparrows"; it's more Sunday School than anything else she's done. Her stuff is rarely mawkish; it's generally fast & fun like her husband Douglas Fairbanks stuff. And Fairbanks movies make Indian Jones look like a humorless old man who needs a walker.
The biggest stars of the late silent era were Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford, Keaton, Lloyd, & Gloria Swanson. They got that way by turning out hugely entertaining movies -& made a ton of money doing it.
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