4 ms·

> Jan 1, 2023 will also be a fine day for film in the public domain, with Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, and Laurel and Hardy's Battle of the Century entering the

> Jan 1, 2023 will also be a fine day for film in the public domain, with Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, and Laurel and Hardy's Battle of the Century entering the commons. Also notable: Wings, winner of the first-ever best picture Academy Award; The Lodger, Hitchcock's first thriller; and FW "Nosferatu" Mirnau's Sunrise. Metropolis is so influential that I'd call it a must-watch for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind. Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its influence is everywhere. Sunrise is one hell of a roller-coaster of a movie. As with anything in the silent era (especially the non-comedy films) it's a bit of an acquired taste but it's among the earliest films that I didn't just find interesting or funny, but that really got me on the edge of my seat, several times. It's got some real "yell at the screen" moments :-) I enjoyed it way more than the director's more-iconic Nosferatu. Though, for my money, it's no M or The Passion of Joan of Arc, as silent film dramas go. Still, really good, and I think a lot of critics hold it in far higher regard than I do. Haven't seen the rest. > On the literary front, we have Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, AA Milne's Now We Are Six, Hemingway's Men Without Women, Faulkner's Mosquitoes, Christie's The Big Four, Wharton's Twilight Sleep, Hesse's Steppenwolf (in German), Kafka's Amerika (in German), and Proust's Le Temps retrouvé (in French). Damn, what a powerhouse year in literature. And look at that, my favorite novel (To the Lighthouse) is about to be public domain! The Holmes news is awesome, too. Bunch of copyright troll dicks have been making doing anything with Holmes risky for years. Great that everyone can more-easily ignore them.

whycome 4y ago
Metropolis + AI could result in some cool outputs.
- runarberg 4y ago
  It actually could be kind of interesting to have AI fill in the missing segments. I believe there are only 2 remaining, and we roughly know what is supposed to be there, but not able to restore it because of how few original copies remain. So you should be able to do a supervised learning to interpolate the remaining scenes and be fairly confident that it matches the version that was premiered in 1927.
grujicd 4y ago
I disliked Metropolis quite a lot. Maybe it was influential and was probably a gamechanger at a time. But is it good in any way from today's point of view? I'm not talking about effects or scenography which could not technically be better at that era. I'm talking about acting and script which look abysmal to me. I would probably not have this kind of opinion but it's often on some kind of top list and my expectations were high. Maybe I'm missing something? Or is it just touted for historical significance? It's not that I have a problem with old movies. Casablanca came out only 15 years after Metropolis and is perfect in every way I care about.
- wazoox 4y ago
  Acting in silent movies is entirely different from what came later. That's why most silent stars didn't make it into the "talkie" era. Just like aliens in 60s movies speak English and are obviously people in disguise, you just have to adhere to the conventions of the time. Similarly, the ways to make the script go forward are usually quite different from what came later, because of the constant interruption required by text inserts. Last, the musical score is important. A bad one can make of break a silent film (versions from archive.org and similar sites often have random music instead of a true score). So you may need to learn the way of the silent movies before really appreciating them (out of slapstick comedy such as Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton).
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Silent-era sensibilities are very different from even WWII-era talkies. The field developed whole bunch, very fast. A lot of those films are difficult to appreciate without active effort to acclimatize oneself to them, much the same way lots of people bounce off classical music or jazz (or hip-hop, or heavy metal, or most musical genres, really) until they've had a bit more exposure and learned how to enjoy them. Plus, a lot of them were leaning really hard into one movement or another, and Metropolis is one of those (many) cases, so what it's aiming to do well isn't necessarily the same set of things most modern films would aim to do well (and indeed, off the beaten path you can find plenty of modern films that similarly target some particular effect or art movement, which can also take a bit of adjustment to one's expectations to enjoy) Acting in particular has gone through some serious changes as fashions come and go, and most any style one encounters aside from what's now in-vogue tends to come off as corny. Even Casablanca, which is ahead of its time in many ways (for an American movie, anyway—the US lagged in some film technique developments at the time, compared with other markets) features acting that's less-naturalistic than what's popular now. Also, changes in editing have really made a difference in how performances come across, which is part of why watching a scene being filmed from a behind-the-scenes camera can make the acting seem off or bad—because it's not being filtered through modern shot-framing and editing. IMO the comedies suffer the least and remain fairly accessible (no matter when you were born, if you can't laugh at Chaplin and Keaton, there's something wrong with you) but, for most people, approaching the rest of the silent era is more a project than something you can just dip into here and there and expect to have a good time. The field was immature, the whole "silent" part of it takes some getting used to, and there was a whole lot of art-movement-influenced experimentation going on. There is, however, a lot of variety in styles in the silent film era, especially in foreign film. If you don't like 20s German expressionist films, try films of the 30s (IMO the silent era got a lot better toward the end), try American films, try French, try Spanish, Russian, stuff like that. Weird absurdist Spanish films that evoke the atmosphere of Monty Python, shocking short films, heart-rending dramas, cheap action schlock, about-the-town documentary or semi-fictional films, heavy-handed allegory—lots of stuff to explore. Plus the comedies, of which many are excellent and most are fairly accessible to a modern audience. [EDIT] If you want something a bit easier to chew on, from the same director as Metropolis, M, which I mentioned in my first post, is much closer to a modern film, in terms of its storytelling and its plot structure.
slater- 4y ago
yes, it's true, I keep hearing the people everywhere clamoring for their shot at remaking "The Jazz Singer." (something something blackface)
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  It was re-made in 1980 with Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film)
ArtWomb 4y ago
Puttin' on the Ritz, covered by everyone from Taco to Young Frankenstein. What a joy to improve upon Irving Berlin's nearly-flawless lyrics ;) Jeeves & Wooster 'Puttin' on the Ritz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Getting to see 'Metropolis' in a restored movie palace with a live organist playing the entire time was quite the nice experience. Not sure I want to watch it at home and taint that experience. Still nice for others to have the option and for free.
ghghgfdfgh 4y ago
This is the craziest thing about copyright law. Maybe it's fair that an author and his family should receive compensation for their work even after their deaths. But Sunrise was released 95 years ago - the odds are that there is nobody alive who worked on this movie, nobody alive that even saw it in theaters. Why is it not publicly available? I doubt anyone is earning significant money off of an extremely old movie that caters to a niche audience - if the media is so old that it is both literally and aesthetically irrelevant in society, it's astounding that it wouldn't have been in the public domain already. It's a massive shame that Disney's corporate plots have been a detriment to other media that isn't generating huge profits. I only wish that "Steamboat Willie" going into the public domain will bring about some sort of copyright reform.
- joshspankit 4y ago
  I very much doubt that anyone involved in Sunrise is pushing for the “copyright extensions”. Steamboat Willie on the other hand... Even when he finally goes, Disney will be arguing for every single version of Mickey Mouse as a separately-copyrightable entity and therefore keep hold of him for even longer.
weregiraffe 4y ago
>Metropolis is so influential that I'd call it a must-watch for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind. Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its influence is everywhere. And notice that it managed to be extremely influential WITHOUT being in public domain.
orblivion 4y ago
I wonder how the efforts to reassemble and restore Metropolis from the various archives factor into its legal status. Does that count as a derivative work with its own copyright?

whycome 4y ago

Metropolis + AI could result in some cool outputs.

runarberg 4y ago
It actually could be kind of interesting to have AI fill in the missing segments. I believe there are only 2 remaining, and we roughly know what is supposed to be there, but not able to restore it because of how few original copies remain. So you should be able to do a supervised learning to interpolate the remaining scenes and be fairly confident that it matches the version that was premiered in 1927.

grujicd 4y ago

I disliked Metropolis quite a lot. Maybe it was influential and was probably a gamechanger at a time. But is it good in any way from today's point of view? I'm not talking about effects or scenography which could not technically be better at that era. I'm talking about acting and script which look abysmal to me. I would probably not have this kind of opinion but it's often on some kind of top list and my expectations were high. Maybe I'm missing something? Or is it just touted for historical significance? It's not that I have a problem with old movies. Casablanca came out only 15 years after Metropolis and is perfect in every way I care about.

wazoox 4y ago
Acting in silent movies is entirely different from what came later. That's why most silent stars didn't make it into the "talkie" era. Just like aliens in 60s movies speak English and are obviously people in disguise, you just have to adhere to the conventions of the time. Similarly, the ways to make the script go forward are usually quite different from what came later, because of the constant interruption required by text inserts. Last, the musical score is important. A bad one can make of break a silent film (versions from archive.org and similar sites often have random music instead of a true score). So you may need to learn the way of the silent movies before really appreciating them (out of slapstick comedy such as Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton).
yamtaddle 4y ago
Silent-era sensibilities are very different from even WWII-era talkies. The field developed whole bunch, very fast. A lot of those films are difficult to appreciate without active effort to acclimatize oneself to them, much the same way lots of people bounce off classical music or jazz (or hip-hop, or heavy metal, or most musical genres, really) until they've had a bit more exposure and learned how to enjoy them. Plus, a lot of them were leaning really hard into one movement or another, and Metropolis is one of those (many) cases, so what it's aiming to do well isn't necessarily the same set of things most modern films would aim to do well (and indeed, off the beaten path you can find plenty of modern films that similarly target some particular effect or art movement, which can also take a bit of adjustment to one's expectations to enjoy) Acting in particular has gone through some serious changes as fashions come and go, and most any style one encounters aside from what's now in-vogue tends to come off as corny. Even Casablanca, which is ahead of its time in many ways (for an American movie, anyway—the US lagged in some film technique developments at the time, compared with other markets) features acting that's less-naturalistic than what's popular now. Also, changes in editing have really made a difference in how performances come across, which is part of why watching a scene being filmed from a behind-the-scenes camera can make the acting seem off or bad—because it's not being filtered through modern shot-framing and editing. IMO the comedies suffer the least and remain fairly accessible (no matter when you were born, if you can't laugh at Chaplin and Keaton, there's something wrong with you) but, for most people, approaching the rest of the silent era is more a project than something you can just dip into here and there and expect to have a good time. The field was immature, the whole "silent" part of it takes some getting used to, and there was a whole lot of art-movement-influenced experimentation going on. There is, however, a lot of variety in styles in the silent film era, especially in foreign film. If you don't like 20s German expressionist films, try films of the 30s (IMO the silent era got a lot better toward the end), try American films, try French, try Spanish, Russian, stuff like that. Weird absurdist Spanish films that evoke the atmosphere of Monty Python, shocking short films, heart-rending dramas, cheap action schlock, about-the-town documentary or semi-fictional films, heavy-handed allegory—lots of stuff to explore. Plus the comedies, of which many are excellent and most are fairly accessible to a modern audience. [EDIT] If you want something a bit easier to chew on, from the same director as Metropolis, M, which I mentioned in my first post, is much closer to a modern film, in terms of its storytelling and its plot structure.

slater- 4y ago

yes, it's true, I keep hearing the people everywhere clamoring for their shot at remaking "The Jazz Singer." (something something blackface)

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
It was re-made in 1980 with Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film)

ArtWomb 4y ago

Puttin' on the Ritz, covered by everyone from Taco to Young Frankenstein. What a joy to improve upon Irving Berlin's nearly-flawless lyrics ;) Jeeves & Wooster 'Puttin' on the Ritz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E

Mountain_Skies 4y ago

Getting to see 'Metropolis' in a restored movie palace with a live organist playing the entire time was quite the nice experience. Not sure I want to watch it at home and taint that experience. Still nice for others to have the option and for free.

ghghgfdfgh 4y ago

This is the craziest thing about copyright law. Maybe it's fair that an author and his family should receive compensation for their work even after their deaths. But Sunrise was released 95 years ago - the odds are that there is nobody alive who worked on this movie, nobody alive that even saw it in theaters. Why is it not publicly available? I doubt anyone is earning significant money off of an extremely old movie that caters to a niche audience - if the media is so old that it is both literally and aesthetically irrelevant in society, it's astounding that it wouldn't have been in the public domain already. It's a massive shame that Disney's corporate plots have been a detriment to other media that isn't generating huge profits. I only wish that "Steamboat Willie" going into the public domain will bring about some sort of copyright reform.

joshspankit 4y ago
I very much doubt that anyone involved in Sunrise is pushing for the “copyright extensions”. Steamboat Willie on the other hand... Even when he finally goes, Disney will be arguing for every single version of Mickey Mouse as a separately-copyrightable entity and therefore keep hold of him for even longer.

weregiraffe 4y ago

>Metropolis is so influential that I'd call it a must-watch for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind. Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its influence is everywhere. And notice that it managed to be extremely influential WITHOUT being in public domain.

orblivion 4y ago

I wonder how the efforts to reassemble and restore Metropolis from the various archives factor into its legal status. Does that count as a derivative work with its own copyright?