Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Comedies, and comedy-dramas: It’s a Wonderful Life, Buck Privates, Road
to Morocco, Caught in the Draft, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Hail the
Conquering Hero, It’s in the Bag, To Be or Not to Be, Life with Father, Woman
of the Year, Adam’s Rib, Born Yesterday, Heaven Can Wait, Miracle on 34th Street, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Gong My Way
Social consciousness films: Gentleman’s Agreement, Pinky, Intruder in the
Dust, The Boy With Green Hair, The Lost Weekend, The Ox-Bow Incident,
The Snake Pit
Westerns: Fort Apache, Billy the Kid, The Outlaw, Three Godfathers, Red
River, Mule Train, Don’t Fence Me In, The Gunslinger
Dramas, mysteries, biographies & film noir: Citizen Kane, Treasure of the
Sierra Madre, Casablanca, Sergeant York, The Maltese Falcon, The Song of
Bernadette, The Yearling, Watch on the Rhine, The Heiress, Double Indemnity,
Out of the Past, Mildred Pierce, Madame Curie, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Random Harvest, Pride of the Yankees, King’s Row, Talk of the Town, All
About Eve, A Letter to Three Wives, How Green Was My Valley
A Reply to Gillian Anderson
Stephen Bottomore
This text has been sent by Stephen Bottomore as a reply to the article Preserving our
Film Heritage or Making Mongrels? The Presentation of Early (Not Silent) Films published
in Journal of Film Preservation #57, in December 1998.
I was glad to read Gillian Anderson’s views on the aesthetics of original
versus modern scores for silent films, as I substantially agree with the
thrust of her argument. Clearly many modern scores for silent films are
more elaborate (‘sculpted to every second of the image’, as she puts it)
than those of the time. We owe a debt of gratitude to Ms Anderson who
has the musical expertise (rare in film historians) to demonstrate this difference.
If we want an authentic experience when viewing silent films we
should indeed question this overegging of the pudding.
However, I must take issue with Gillian Anderson on a couple of points.
Firstly, while it is true that Gorky (not Gogol) was puzzled and disturbed
by the lack of sound in the Lumière films which he viewed in 1896, it is
not certain that there was no musical accompaniment. The entertainment
venue of Aumont’s might well have offered incidental music. Gorky
simply noticed that the images lacked the sound effects and voices that
one would expect of the scenes in real life.
More importantly I would like to challenge Ms Anderson’s suggestion
that we should call silent films ‘early films’. This simply will not do. The
term ‘early film’ has come to refer to approximately the first 20 years of
cinema, that is from about 1895 to 1915 (with a possible extension to
109 Journal of Film Preservation / 58/59 / 1999
Réponse de Stephen
Bottomore à Gillian
Anderson
Suite à l'article paru dans le
Journal of Film Preservation
N° 57, déc. 1998, Stephen
Bottomore remercie Gillian
Anderson de son engagement
dans la polémique sur
l'utilisation des partitions
originales pour les films muets
et de relancer ainsi le débat sur
le caractère silencieux - ou non -
des séances des films Lumière et
sur l'utilisation, selon lui,
discutable des termes “films
muets” et “films des premiers
temps” par Madame Gillian
Anderson.
Letters / Courrier / Correo