Author: Ben Model
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“Jimmy Aubrey Comedy” is Not Always an Oxymoron
Worries and Wobbles (1917) has what might appear to be three strikes against it on the surface: “Jimmy Aubrey comedy”, “directed by Larry Semon” and that it’s a rather blatant knock-off of Chaplin’s One A.M.. The first of these is also usually an oxymoron. I can tell you that, like any of the very few…
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Charles Puffy’s Film Career Sandwich
You may know that face. No, it’s not Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Nor is it Oliver Hardy, sans mustache, nor is it Otto Fries, or any of the other lesser-known plus-size comedians of the silent era. This performer was in over 130 films from 1913 to 1939 — Destiny, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Mockery, The Man…
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Leo McCarey, Charley Chase and René Clair Walk Into a Bar…
Rene Clair’s Last Silent Completes the Boomerang Arc of French Comedies To America and Back (image above sourced from SFSFF press/downloads page, whose image credit reads “Poster courtesy of the Cinémathèque Française”) There are a few occasions I can recall from many years ago when, after playing for a film at MoMA, I went home,…
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Looking for Squibs
Two main elements in film programming, I’ve found, are knowing the films and knowing where prints of them are. The rest, to a certain degree, is setting the table or parking cars in a lot. Sometimes the prints turn up in unlikely places, and one film we scheduled for Silent Comedy International at MoMA (Nov 23…
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A Classic Horror Film Without a Monster to Sell It
Rotating bookcases, a Creeping Hands, Disappearing Bodies, a Madman on the Loose, Suspicious Family Members After the Family Jewels — All in a Spooky Old Mansion There’s no iconic monster in the title of Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary (1927, Universal) or in the film itself. Maybe that’s why very few people show it…
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Before There Was Parkour, There Was…Douglas Fairbanks
There is no deeply dramatic reason for Douglas Fairbanks to leap over the benches and fences or climb the trees or anything else of extreme athleticism he does to get from point A to point B in American Aristocracy (1916), except that he is Douglas Fairbanks. What else would you expect from him? How much…
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Found at “Mostly Lost”: volume 2 – new DVD
My DVD label Undercrank Productions has a new release, the second in a series that showcases the identification fun we have every year at the “Mostly Lost” workshop at the Library of Congress at it’s Packard Preservation Campus in Culpeper, VA. Attendees each year receive a “swag bag” when they arrive and register on day…
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Alternate Scores for Silent Films on Home Video
A couple weeks ago TCM aired The Love Light with Mary Pickford, and there was some Twitter chatter I picked up on about it referencing the score on it. This made me think about my now-defunct “altscore” site. It was a service loads of people thought was a great idea but which didn’t catch on.…
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ep. 30: How To Play the Piano or Organ for a Halloween Silent Movie
On this mini-episode, Ben Model gives you some tips and some do’s & don’t’s on how to accompany a silent movie if you’re doing one this Halloween…or any time of the year. Plus, there’s news about Ben’s upcoming silent film shows and DVD projects. Be sure you’re on Ben’s email list!
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How to Play the Piano or Organ for a Halloween Silent Movie
As a fan and proponent of silent films, I’ve enjoyed seeing that every year at Halloween time, more and more shows of silent films are happening. It’s occurred to me that this means there are a lot of musicians accompanying a silent film for the first time and may be wondering how to go about…