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What's The Last Movie You’ve Seen?

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Are there any non-comedy silent films that are even remotely watchable to the modern eye?

Battleship Potemkin
 
While I agree that it is very hard to find a silent film that is decent to watch today, you have to admire what they were able to do with such a huge limitation in special effects magic and sound back in that era. They had to show everything we see now but without anyone saying a word and on a very limited sound-stage due to the problems with filming anywhere on location.

I personally kind of liked Nosferatu. It creeped me out. Heck the name alone is pretty creepy. I have seen it 2 or 3 times. Of course the first time I watched it I was 11 and woke up late at night and it was playing on some random station. Watching it with the sound down low in the pitch black of a somewhat creepy basement with an already over-active imagination at that age, it had an impact. Of course it doesn't have the same impact on me now as it did that first time, but I also haven't watched it again since the mid-90's. Maybe I will get the restored version and show it to my kids.
 
While I agree that it is very hard to find a silent film that is decent to watch today, you have to admire what they were able to do with such a huge limitation in special effects magic and sound back in that era. They had to show everything we see now but without anyone saying a word and on a very limited sound-stage due to the problems with filming anywhere on location.

Which is why it's curious that the silent comedies still work. Some of that is creativity by restriction on options. Buster Keaton does things that you'd never see today because it's simply too dangerous.

I personally kind of liked Nosferatu. It creeped me out. Heck the name alone is pretty creepy. I have seen it 2 or 3 times. Of course the first time I watched it I was 11 and woke up late at night and it was playing on some random station. Watching it with the sound down low in the pitch black of a somewhat creepy basement with an already over-active imagination at that age, it had an impact. Of course it doesn't have the same impact on me now as it did that first time, but I also haven't watched it again since the mid-90's. Maybe I will get the restored version and show it to my kids.

I'm planning on watching this version which was made in the late-1970s by the Herzog-Kinski team:

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I suspect the update will be a significant improvement.
 
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Very solid. Not great or anything but just a notch below the first which I thought was always wildly overrated by fans and below other comedies of the last five or ten years like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Anchorman, and Wedding Crashers to name a few.
 
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It's basically astonishing to me that this was filmed six months after "Nosferatu." The difference in technical capabilities looks like decades. Oh yeah, and it's still an awesome movie.
 
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It's basically astonishing to me that this was filmed six months after "Nosferatu." The difference in technical capabilities looks like decades. Oh yeah, and it's still an awesome movie.

I think you need to check your facts, counselor. "Nosferatu" was filmed in 1921 and "Western Front" 1930. But I do agree that "All Quiet on the Western Front" is one of the most powerful movies I have ever seen.
 
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I was having a pretty up-beat Saturday, then I watched The Messenger.
 
I think you need to check your facts, counselor. "Nosferatu" was filmed in 1921 and "Western Front" 1930. But I do agree that "All Quiet on the Western Front" is one of the most powerful movies I have ever seen.

This is what I get for trusting Netflix, which lists "Nosferatu" as a 1929 production. A nine year difference is far more plausible than a less than one year difference.

As for "All Quiet ..." who can forget:

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The first time I saw "All Quiet" was after AFI did their first "100 Greatest Movies" list. I had always wondered about it so I rented it and was blown away by it. Even more so when I remembered that it was made in 1930. It is the very definition of "ahead of its time".
 
The first time I saw "All Quiet" was after AFI did their first "100 Greatest Movies" list. I had always wondered about it so I rented it and was blown away by it. Even more so when I remembered that it was made in 1930. It is the very definition of "ahead of its time".

All I've ever done is read the book and watch the John Boy Walton version (which were both great). Guess I should check out the 1930 rendering.
 
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I really wanted to see this movie when it came out, but just never got around to it.

Thank goodness. A solid C-.
 
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