CENTENNIAL CINEMA is a new series where I talk about movies that are 100 years old. If you’re 99% of people, that first sentence is enough to turn you off and not even give this sentence a chance. Which I get. Silent movies can be boring, and to those who’ve never seen one, sleep-inducing. But it’s not the movies’ fault. The form has changed so much that they can’t help but feel archaic. That’s actually one of the reasons I’m starting this column. I’m interested to see how much – and how little – movies have changed.

The other reason is that a lot of these movies are actually quite good, and silent cinema has been something of a blind spot for me. I’ve seen a handful of the classics but haven’t gone much deeper than that. I’ve always wanted to see more and this gives me a good reason to do so.

I’m going to try to put a lot of detail into this too. Not just discussing the movies themselves but also about their production and biographical details of the people involved (a huge inspiration for this is Tom Breihan’s excellent daily column about every Billboard #1 hit.) This may prove difficult since a lot of material about these filmmakers and actors is unknown. Facts disappeared into unrecorded history. A majority of the films are lost, too. And the ones have survived are not all available to watch. Even the Criterion Channel has few films from this era. I’ll have to rely on DVDs from the library and YouTube for a lot of them. Hopefully these will be from prints in good (and complete) condition.

Anyways, I hope you read this column. Maybe we’ll both learn something together.

And if you think silent cinema is all boring and hokey then I give you this to watch and to change your mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asEgQZhShLk