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27 Aug 02:19

Scott Lord Silent Film: Yesterday and Today Newsreel (1929)

27 Aug 02:19

Our apartment on location: trailer for Hollywood film, but will it?

Cambridge, Massachusetts Our apartment and his sunglasses were at first thought to be are in the same shot, but this is only the trailer. During the on location shooting we did not see Depp, but did see the film crews at work.



The interior monologue of a method actor. I looked at the trailer again, and I don't know that the location shot used in the particular scene is the one that was filmed where we are. It is very much like the shot, but the building used in this instance seems different. It was part of location filming a could still be in the final version of the film.

Scott Lord silent film mystery
27 Aug 02:18

The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes

19 Aug 06:54

Victor Sjostrom

by Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film
19 Aug 06:53

Scott Lord Mystery: E.G. Marshall in C.B.S Radio Mystery Theater: The Sp...

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03 Aug 04:17

Scott Lord Mystery: The Late Show, Sherlock Holmes The Speckled Band

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03 Aug 04:17

Sherlock Holmes: Silent Film

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03 Aug 04:16

Scott Lord Mystery: E.G. Marshall in C.B.S Radio Mystery Theater: The Sp...

by Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film
03 Aug 04:16

Scott Lord Mystery: Mercury Theater: Orson Welles as The Immortal Sherlo...

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03 Aug 04:16

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Great Train Robbery (Porter,1903)

by Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film

In the autobiographical reminiscences William N. Selig printed in Photoplay Magazine during 1920, Selig, perhaps almost graciously, credits Edison with the "first single reel picture containing a story in continuity", although he adds that "The Great Train Robbery" was only 800 feet and that he was soon on Edison's coattails with films of his own of length equal to it. Interestingly, Selig recounts in the article director Frank Boggs as "the real pioneer in photographic reproduction", his during 1908 releasing a one reel film every week; Selig claims Boggs was assasinated on the Selig Studios during 1912. Vladimir Petric in A Visual/Analytical History of Silent Film (1895-1930), Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, notes Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" as a "primitive use of parralel editing to dramatize the narrative". Not only is this in sharp contrast to the earlier cinema of attractions that relegated storytelling to the act of display, but the film is significant as the first film made in the Western genre. It is uncanny that the closing shot, as a subjective shot, is an attraction, something static and something dispalyed, urging the spectatator to draw and shoot back. Patric Vonderau and Vinzenz Hedigar have written, "The visuality of the display, however, is still indispensible to its effect."- albeit their recent volume, Films That Work, is primarily concerned with international industrial films.
Author Nicholas A. Vardac opines that it was the films of Edwin S. Porter that D.W. Griffith aquired the technique of viewing the shot within its context as a "syntax for the melodrama". Whether crosscutting began with Edwin S. Porter and "The Great Train Robbery", a film which is attributed as having used croscutting in the volume The Film Idea, written by Stanley J. Solomon, or whether it was more properly developed by D.W. Griffith around 1908, as with the parallel editing in the 1907 films "The Greaser's Gauntlet" and "The Fatal Hour" (Phillipe Gauthier, Harvard University), author Stanley Solomon points out that crosscutting was intrinsiclly cinematic, rather than dramaturgical or theatrical by describing it as "a technique suitable to the form of cinema but unnatural to the form of nineteenth century stage drama, which was at that time a significant influence on the new media." A recent online film class on how to "read" a film from described the film as being comprised of "seperate shots of non-continuous, non-overlapping action" while being careful to designate the film as an early example of crosscutting. Of "The Great Train Robbery", author Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, writes, "The movement, as well as the narrative, was carried over from one scene to another." Cowie mentions the film "Runaway Match", directed in 1903 by Alf Collins as being an early narrative silent in which "camera movements and positions are exploited to advantage". The film is fast paced, depicting a couple hurriedly en route to their betrothal, but includes a close up insert shot of their wedding rings.
Film historian Charles Mussur, in Before the Nickelodeon :Edwin S. Porter, writes, "Porter's film meticulously documents a process...The film's narrative structure, as Gaudreault notes, utilizes temporal repetition with an overall narrative progression." As narrative it was essentially a reenactment film. He adds that "Porter exploited procedures that heighten the realism and believabilty of the image" (David Levy).
It is apparent that "The Great Train Robbery" was filmed not only in the studio, but on actual locations, including in fact a train Porter had borrowed in New Jersey; it also apparent that "The Great Train Robbery" released during 1904 by Sigmund Lubin also combined scenes filmed both outdoors and inside the studio, the film also concluding with a close up of an outlaw. Catalougues "free upon request" featuring "Lubin's Latest Hits" list Lubin's "The Great Train Robbery" as running 600 ft, there being sixteen seperate scenes to the film. The 1903 Edison Manufacturing Company catalougue lists the running legnth of Edison's "The Great Train Robbery", a "sensational and highly tragic subject", as 740 ft, the film divided into fourteen scenes.
The sequel to "The Great Train Robbery", titled "The Little Train Robbery" (1905) although directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Company, is a parody, and features an all child actor cast.
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03 Aug 04:16

Scott Lord Silent Film: Yesterday and Today Newsreel (1929)

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03 Aug 04:16

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The Old Actor (D.W.Griffith, Biograph 1912)

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"The Old Actor" (two reels) was directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Company during 1912and was photographed by G.W. Bitzer with a scenario by George Hennessy. The film stars Mary Pickford with Kate Bruce. Silent Film Silent Film
03 Aug 04:15

silent film - Scott Lord Silent Film

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03 Aug 04:14

In Memory of her father, Frank McLaughlin

I gave Donna a sympathy card on her father’s passing away which reads Nothing Loved Is Ever Lost. She had a doctor’s appointment today after which we went to lunch in an unfamiliar suburb. During a walk before going home we found a museum devoted to the American Revolutionary War. It was the house of a soldier that died during the first shots of the Revolutionary. The garden was fairly beautiful and there are outdoor guided tours during the week- in fact the house itself looks empty, so we gained as much as anyone would. Donna’s father was the prinicpal of Pleasant Point High School in New Jersey and she likes anything to do with the American Revolution here in Boston and near Harvard University. The church library where she worked before Co-Vid 19 in fact had a window to an adjoing graveyard where John Hancock, John Adams, Paul Revere and James Otis were buried. Since her father passed way this week, the musuem after hours provided a meditaive place for seenity that combines with the curiousity which life itself affords, ie. the wonder of prayer. In that way the afternoon, despite being a romantic date, was spent in the memory of her father.
The above is a photo of Donna's father from the Point Pleasant Beach Highschool year book from when Donna was attending highschool at nearby Tom's River High School, North, both on the New Jersey Shore.
03 Aug 04:14

Donna as Harvard Square reopens

During Christmas and New Year, Donna and I spent from a thousand to fifteen hundread dollars on food delivery in light of her having been sick, including with COVID. Particulalry baked scallops (I pronounced them scollops). The beginning of Spring has brought us out to restaurants again.
03 Aug 04:14

Scott Lord Silent Film: Intolerance; Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages...


Three years before the premier of "Intolerance" (D.W. Griffith, 1916), author Eustace Ball, in the volume "The Art of the Photoplay" advised, "Put one plot at a time; the single reel picture lasts only eighteen minutes and only one line can be worked out well in this time. This is another important detail in which the photplay differs from the drama."
David Bordwell sees cinematic history as a "Basic Story" and that within this approximation, D.W. Griffith is attributed with having invented "cinematic syntax". This syntax is apparent in what Raymond Spottiswoode referred to as the "grammar of film", or shot structure and perhaps in what is expanded later into semiotics and the "grande syntagmatique". While crediting Edwin S. Porter with the use of crosscutting two simultaneous actions, Bordwell notes the crosscutting of four historical periods (seperate storylines, which thematically merge) in Griffith's film Intolerance, filmed thirteen years later. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier sees crosscutting as a programmed languague and dismisses the need to view D.W. Griffith as its inventor, but rather as his "method of film construction", which having previous existed, he "developed and systemized", specifically that editing used in chase scenes and last minute rescue scenes to meet the exingencies of his narrative technique. While properly evaluating the work of D.W. Griffith and the canonical structuring of editing through a "suspensefull call for help, the proximity of the threat and the last minute rescue", Phillipe Gauthier finds early examples of the origins of film technique neglected by earlier prominent film historians. The director of the 1908 Pathe film "A Narrow Escape", if nothing else, certainly does quite often cut on the action of the character leaving the frame.
Author Stanley J. Solomon, in The Narrative Structure of the Film, from his volume The Film Idea eescribes the use of simultaneuous threads of action to climax thematically, "The last two reels (of the total thriteen in extant circulating versions) are among the most exciting sequences in all cinema. As the four stories head toward their conclusions, Griffith begins to cut back and forth much more quickly than he did earlier- mainly without the interference of the image of the rocking cradle...delaying the outcome of each story and building up a tremendous amountof suspense." Solomon looks to Iris Barry often. Iris Barry herself, author of D.W. Griffith, American film master, notes "Intolerance" directed by D. W. Griffith as being seminal. "The film Intolerance is of extreme importance to the history of the cienema." She singles out shots that use only part of the screen's area, tracking shots and rapid crosscutting as techniques used by Griffith in extraordinary combinations with his camera angles.
Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema implies that the storyline to "Intolerance" was entirely improvization on the part of D.W. Griffith; not only is there no credit for the photodramatist that wrote the photoplay, but there was originally no scenario to the film. Peter Cowie adds, "Like all Griffith's work, 'Intlerance' has a didactic ring that makes the captions seem pompous. But it lives up to the director's dictum 'Art is always revolutionary, always explosive and sensational."

Stanley J. Solomon in turn finds a thematic continuity in the film, "The four stories demonstrate the cause and effect relationship between individual acts and broadly calamitous events....That concept held in that the peculiarly suggestive medium of film, visual information should consist of fragments which, when carefully chosen and sensitively edited, would produce the idea of a completed action."
Both Lillian Gish and Paul Rotha write of Griffith having found lines in a poem by Walt Whitman that were to connect the stories thematically, Gish appearing at intervals throughout the film to contrast the dramatic quickening of the pace of the film and lending it a symbolism, "Intolerance was, and still is, the greatest spectacular film." Motion Picture World during 1916 popularized the film as bringing Griffith to a pantheon by subtitling its review with, "Griffith Surpasses Himself by a Spectacular Masterpiece in Which All Traditions of Dramatic Form are Successfully Revolutionized." Paragraph subtitles were to include, "Original Method of Construction", "Human Interest in Abundance" and "Marvelous Spectacular Effects".
In her book entitled Screen Acting, Mae Marsh explains the differences between the acting required for each camera distance. She begins with telling us that during a long shot facial expressions register indifferently and need to be compensated by body movement. She allows that most dramatic action is filmed in three quarters legnth, from the face to the knees, intermediate shots that require both facial expressions and body movement.
It is thought that the later films of D. W. Griffith, including "The White Rose" (1923) with Mae Marsh, more elaborately presented theme as being intertwined with the drama in which the characters were situated. D. W. Griffith
Victor Sjostrom
03 Aug 04:14

point of view shots of Donna's desk at Church Library

The library, built in 1809, is beautiful.
These two botttom photographs in particular were taken from behnd Donna's desk from where she checks in books with a scanner and removes the checkout cards. I discussed theology with a new minister today explaining to him that he was the eighth minster I have had a rapport with and that my questions are more precise after a decade. There have been ten or eleven I have known since attending. Scott Lord
30 Jul 04:47

Scott Lord Silent Film: Castle Films Yesteryear Lives Again

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29 Jul 23:54

Scott Lord Silent Film: Yesterday and Today Newsreel (1929)

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29 Jul 02:51

FIVE ALL NIGHT-Truly Great Entertainment



When I had my Super Eight projector, the Universal films were split into two channels. The Basil Rathbone Nigel Bruce, Warner Oland and Peter Lorre detective films were on an independent channel and the Universal Horror films were on one of the three network stations.

This intro to the film I remember and would have always wanted to have my own slot. Please enjoy this splice (ie. clip) of"my first professor", whose residence for his artistry was as host of classic horror film on the "late night double feature picture show" in Boston.

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29 Jul 02:50

Scandinavian Film



Revising my webpages on Swedish Film: Please visit:

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29 Jul 02:50

Mystery: SOS Coast Guard, Theatrical Trailer (1937)

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29 Jul 02:50

Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film: January 2023

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29 Jul 02:49

Scott Lord Horror Comedy: Ghost Parade (Mack Sennett, 1931)

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29 Jul 02:49

Swedish Silent Film

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29 Jul 02:49

Scott Lord Silent Film: Silent Film Studio Tour, Life In Hollywood (Dell...

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The short subject weekly newsreel "Life in Hollywood" featured on the set extratextural introductions of actors and actresses that inckuded Ruth Roland, Vivien Martin, Kathleen Clifford, and Jack and Lottie Pickford.

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29 Jul 02:49

Scott Lord Silent Film: Yesterday and Today Newsreel (1929)

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29 Jul 02:49

Scandinavian Silent Film: Victor Sjostrom as Seastrom, Mauritz Stiller, John Brunius, Greta Garbo: Victor Sjostrom as Seastrom and Mauritz Stiller

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29 Jul 02:34

Scott Lord: Silent Sherlock Holmes

29 Jul 02:34

Scott Lord Silent Film: Blood and Sand (Niblo, 1922)



With a photoplay by June Mathis, "Blood and Sand", directed in 1922 by Fred Niblo, showcased Rudolph Valentino with Lila Lee, Nita Naldi and Rose Rosanova. Author Peter Cowie, in his volume EIghty Years of Cinema, described "Blood and Sand" as "Stagebound and tearjerking".
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Silent Film Rudolph Valentino