Reel Adventures 11 - Recommendations

For each Reel Adventures at R.W. Norton Art Gallery in addition to the highlighted movie I provide a few other recommendations. Here are the recommendations from our 11th Reel Adventures.

Reel Adventures 11 - Trivia Questions

Here are the trivia questions from Reel Adventures 11 at R.W. Norton Art Gallery:

ROUND ONE
• What does the country doctor make the Kid say?
• What clothing item does the Tramp use to light his match?
• What is the monetary award for bringing the Kid to the police?
• What is the name of the hospital that the Woman exits with the Kid?
• What are the car robbers doing when we first hear the Kid?

ROUND TWO
• How many years pass between the first time we see the Kid and when the film fast forwards?
• Who reunites the Tramp and the Kid at the end of the film?
• What is the Kid doing when we first see him as an older boy?
• What does the Tramp do to keep the Kid away after the Policeman busts them for breaking windows?
• Why does the Kid get into a fight with the other boy?

ROUND THREE
• What is the Kid reading when they come to take him away from his home?
• What does the Kid hold onto between rounds of his fight with the other little boy?
• When the Tramp first discovers the Kid, he tries to leave him in three places before finally accepting to keep him. What are the three places?
• How does the Woman realize the Kid is hers?
• Where does the dream sequence begin?

BONUS
• The Kid was Chaplin’s first ______-length film.
• What famous director owned the actual car where the Woman first leaves the Kid?
• As we discussed, silent cinema is an endangered species. The first Academy Awards were given for years 1927-1928. Only one Best Picture nominee is considered forever lost. What is the title of the film?

Reel Adventures 11 - Talk (Part 2 of 2)

Here's Part 2 of the talk I gave for Reel Adventures 11, The Kid:

Why then are so many people dismissive when it comes to silent films?

Is it because they’re different?

I think that’s probably the reputation of them and most people’s immediate response when they first watch one. I mean the actors mouths are moving but we can’t hear what they’re saying.

It’s long been my feeling that certain art is delicate. It requires the proper introduction, the proper entry point for someone to open up to forming a new relationship with a previous foreign object. In other words, if I’m trying to get someone interested in watching a silent film, I’m probably not going to choose a five-hour period film as the first thing to show them. I’m going to try to find something that I think is a good place to start and then incrementally begin introducing more challenging works.

I chose The Kid because I thought it was one of the great starting points for people who may never have seen a silent film before. And I believe, and I’m sure most of you will attest to this after watching The Kid - within minutes you forget the differences and relate to it like any other film and are moved by the characters and their experiences.

So the lesson to be learned from that?

That silent films aren’t so foreign or unfamiliar. You just have to start with the right one.

So now that I have you watching and actually enjoying a silent film, where do we go from here?

Well let me say a few things about why I feel silent film is important:

1. It shows us what film was when it started, what the medium originally looked and felt like. You watch The Kid and your view of what film can be and has been is enlarged.

2. Silent film is an endangered species. Many estimate that more than 75% of silent films are lost forever, the largest cause being intentional destruction. You watch The Kid and hopefully it makes you curious to see other silent films. It’s people watching and talking about silent films that helps protect this part of film’s endangered history.

3. It’s a window into our history and culture. Silent films show us what people looked and acted like at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Like #1, as we begin to form a relationship with silent film, our perspective becomes widened and enlarged.

4. Silent film is its own language. It’s a film language, among other things, with uniquely emotive faces, intertitles, rhythms, iris shots and tints that communicate to us in a way that is different than talking pictures. You watch The Kid and then other silent films and you begin learning this new language. You broaden your knowledge of film and your ability to understand it, in more of its different forms and styles.

Let’s look at a few examples of some of silent cinema’s unique language.

• Intertitles

I showed this clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_b4I-YJi5jYzUr000684IqLgQDSenAi/view

• Iris shots

I showed this clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h3Rq8yPKf982hMYnoiy9NUfBJiovp7UB/view

And mentioned that directors use iris shots for several different reasons - to transition into a scene, to transition out of scene, or to focus the audience's attention during certain scenes.

• Emotive close-up

I showed this clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MXcDmVltAXiTpE-NNA_PasaQMGrjmDYC/view

So my hope is that you’ll leave here tonight and periodically seek out other Chaplin films and more silent films in general. That 70 years from now, as the cinema turns 200, people will still be watching and enjoying silent cinema - keeping it alive as the birthplace of film.

Thank you.

Reel Adventures 11 - Talk (Part 1 of 2)

Wow, what another special night at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 11, The Kid!

Here's part one (of two) of the talk I gave.

Before I began, I started by showing this three-minute clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ERG05nOLKGB0btU5sThc5QzfrfF0y41k/view

And then:

At our previous Reel Adventures my focus has been on why directors made certain choices and what we might learn by looking deeper at those choices. Today we also ask why. But we turn the focus on you. Why, just maybe, you, or any of us, should watch and care about silent films in 2025?

It’s 2025. Nearly 100 years after the release of The Jazz Singer, the film that’s often considered the first “talkie”. So shouldn’t we just move on? Why look back? Why watch and care about silent films? For that matter, why watch and care about anything that isn’t 21st century?

Hopefully most, if not all of you enjoyed The Kid and maybe you already do care about silent films so I’m preaching to the choir. But as you leave here tonight and talk to others about silent film, hopefully some of what I’m about to say you can store in your back pocket and pull it out when it might be useful.

As I’ve said to you numerous times now, film - like literature, painting, opera, and sculpture - is an artform. It is a medium that began in 1895 that is now in its 130th year.

What I’m suggesting tonight then should not be new to most of you. I mean we don’t say we shouldn’t care about our ancestry or history that predates us. In fact, we say the opposite. We have museums like this very one where we’re sitting, that preserve the past and teach us about it so we can take lessons from it for the present.

So then, shouldn’t we have some of the same type of curiosity about silent film? I mean, they are the original films. The way all films were for the first 32 years of cinema’s 130 years.

Why then are so many people dismissive when it comes to silent films?

END OF PART 1