There are many, many things to love about silent films but one thing that doesn’t get discussed a whole lot is how WEIRD so many of them are. Well, I think it’s time that we discuss it, don’t you?
My favorite weirdo silent (besides the famously weird cabinet of a certain Caligari) is The Burning Crucible, in which Ivan Mosjoukine… well, he does this:
He plays a detective who is assigned to find and return a wife’s affections to her husband. I think we can all see the problem here.
What are your favorite oddball silents? And remember, like many things, weirdness is in the eye of the beholder and one reader’s weird may be another’s normal. I’m looking forward to strange things.
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Movies Silently 
The Monster (1925), a silly, unusual, and strange movie, but still a lot of fun, watch it every year on halloween.
Agreed! Quite underrated but I always get kick out of it.
I saw “The Monster” with a live audience last October up at Indiana University (Dennis James did the score). First time viewing the movie and I loved it!
Favorite weirdest movie for me is Salome (1923) with Alla Nazimova. I picked up the movie as a blind buy (among other silent movies) and was in awe of how different the movie was from others I’ve seen. It’s one of those movies that stuck with me long after seeing it. I quite enjoy the odd and bizarre movies and I think it may possibly be among my favorite silent films.
Nazimova always brought a helping of her muchness to everything she worked on.
Marcel L’Herbier’s ‘L’inhumaine’ is pretty weird. But I like the art direction, especially the ‘mad scientist laboratory’ set. Bonus for James Joyce aficionados: he is among the angry crowd at the theatre, as an extra, along with most of bohemian Paris of the time–but nobody has positively spotted him yet.
Mad science is always good!
I think I’d have to go with The Cameraman’s Revenge, which I discovered through your blog. Weirdness-wise, it’s hard to top a movie about adulterous stop-motion bugs.
Too true 😉
The cut down from “Intolerance” flick “The Fall of Babylon” with the sort of stuck-on happy ending. I had the Blackhawk Films 8mm version transferred to video in the 90’s.
Ha! I just saw a version of Ten Nights in a Bar Room with a happy ending tacked on.
Went down the rabbit hole of German Expressionism and found the 1920 “vampire'” film Genuine. It’s an odd one for sure but I found it oddly mesmerizing. The star is is Fern Andre, a former trapeze artist and another American girl who found work on the German silent screen.
Yes and one of the purest forms of Expressionism too.
“Weird” is one of my favourite categories! I like Haxan – you expect a horror film and it turns into a defence of women accused of witchcraft; the Cameraman’s Revenge, which I also discovered thanks to your review; The Love of Zero and The Life and Death of 9413, two surreal masterpieces made by Robert Florey in 1928; The Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks – hilarious and also surreal, though possibly not intentionally so; and a whole lot of Melies and Felix the Cat.
So much to choose from!
I’m probably the only one who thinks that Cecil B. DeMille’s The Godless Girl is strangely a masterpiece, even if it’s totally ridiculous both in symbolism and plot. But hey, I like films that are so ridiculously sincere as long as there’s an artistry to them- there’s a reason why I happily some otherwise questionably masterpieces, such as Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970) and Multiple Maniacs (1970). The Godless Girl is one mad melodrama that goes off the rails before coming back and throughly destroying said rails with the most epic prison fire/riot in cinematic history, but you do sense some genuine emotions in there. It’s a shame that Cecil B. DeMille was a conservative who supported blacklisting/naming names as his films, especially his silent films, should be drawing fiercely loyal cult audiences instead of blank stares or critical derision.
I find it baffling that people can deal with Raoul Walsh or Elia Kazan or John Ford but they can’t seem to figure out DeMille. His silent stuff is absolute entertainment gold!
“The Untamable” a 1923 potboiler staring Gladys Walton about split personality. Gladys plays a sweet nice girl who is under the hypnotic spell of her evil physician becomes her alter ego, a leopard skin clad dominatrix who smokes (Opium?), drinks and whips her Asian maid for fun. A handsome young man crashes his car on her estate and the plot thickens. I bought the Blackhawk print when I was young an found it on DVD on Amazon.
Oh my gracious, that sounds wonderful!
Hi Fritzi. “A Trip Down Market Street” by the Miles Brothers is a phantom ride with a camera mounted on the front of a Market Street cable car headed towards the Ferry Building. There is all sorts of weird random activity going on, especially with the early automobiles, some of which appear to be putting in multiple appearances. And it was shot just before the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. The movie ticks off several boxes for me as a cable car historian, a fan of silent movies and a fan of San Francisco history.
Great stuff!
If you’ve ever had the good fortune to see any of the short comedies of Charley Bowers, then you know that cars are hatched from eggs. Bowers mix of live-action with puppet animation was a wonder. His work has been aptly described as unique and bizarre and, of course, weird. His stuff is well worth a look.
They’re out of print in the US I believe but I was able to get a disc set from France, whoohoo!
Where they called him ‘Bricolo.’
Bricole:
1 Trifle, thing of no importance
2 Setback
3 Odds and ends
Perhaps #2: example of use: ‘Si ça continue, il va lui arriver des bricoles’ (If he keeps this up, he’s going to come a cropper)
Or
Bricoleur:
1 (pejorative) Jack-of-all trades (but master of none)
Source Dictionary of Modern Colloquial French.
It’s always fun to learn about those international names!
There’s a couple of pretty enjoyably nutty films on the National Film Preservation Foundation Site.
How about “Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy”?
https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/t1-princess-nicotine-or-the-smoke-fairy-1909
But I think my all-time favorite weird-posterior film is “Dog Factory”:
https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/t1-dog-factory-1904
Quite the little treasures!
A tie between ‘A Trip to the Moon’ and ‘Salome.’ I’m particularly interested in costuming, and can’t get over the plump sailor-styled chorines in ‘Voyage’ and Nazimova’s pearl-studded hairdo.
Forgive me if I’ve shared this before but I love to spread the word that Nazimova’s Salome costumes have been found:
https://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2015/04/03/42226/long-thought-lost-costumes-of-silent-film-star-all/
I love Ghosts Before Breakfast and The Astronomers Dream.
And from both ends of the silent era 😀
I’ll go with one that fits into the weirdness category with scant room to spare: Un Chien Andalou. Freaked me out viewing it the first time at university, freaks me out now. And must agree with Stephen Robertson upthread that silent Felix the Cat and his ‘toon pals inhabit a strange world that brings the weirdness on for me, as does much of Out of the Inkwell and the Inkwell Imps.
Oh most certainly! I was a huge Felix fan as a kid because he was so much stranger than his cartoon counterparts.
Once seen, it is impossible to forget Raoul Walsh’s THE MONKEY TALKS, a very strange & bizarre drama starring Olive Borden.
…and of course Jacques Lerner, playing Jocko the talking and smoking titular monkey!
Well, no sense in doing anything by halves! 😉
Had to think a while to come up with one that hadn’t been mentioned already! How about “Daisy Doodad’s Dial?” Apart from using obscure slang in the title (“dial”=face), the premise is that a married couple competes in a face-making competition!
And applause for alliteration!
Many favourites have already been mentioned. But one film that I’m especially partial to i Jean Renoir’s 1927 short Charleston Parade.
Fun!