re: What is your favorite silent movie?

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What is your favorite silent movie?

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Any other movie.

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That film would never....EVER..be shown today

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They showed in TCM a couple of years ago as part of a series about political movies. All the movies had a prominent person intro and talk about the film with Ben Mankiewicz before and after (I think after). I forget who it was that introduced it, a black writer or journalist maybe.

I know that it was only able to be pieced together from still shots due to being lost in the 1965 MGM vault fire but London After Midnight (1927)

There's one silent-era comedian who has generally zipped under my radar through the years... Monty Banks. Like so many others, he started out in two-reelers, but by the latter half of the 1920s began to headline his own feature films, which he produced. These are much, much more modest productions than Chaplin/Lloyd/Keaton and whatnot. More like little comedy programmers that pleased the small-town theater patrons of the day, and then were duly forgotten. I got one of his features on disc, "Flying Luck" (1927) about a decade ago. It's only so-so at best. Mainly memorable just for having a young Jean Arthur as his leading lady.

But there's another feature Banks made that impressed me far more, due to its wild chase finale, which comprises a third of the 60-minute film. It's entitled "Play Safe" (1927), and features a lot of heart-stopping action, shot on top of a runaway train. Shots that look dangerous as hell. Stunning location work. Only a few short miniatures thrown in. In addition, a lot of scenes showing off some rarely seen Los Angeles streets, with terrific detail. The newly discovered print of this film is sharp as a tack, and included on a new blu-ray collection of Bank's work. The film also features the cute (if disturbingly youngish) Virginia Lee Corbin as leading lady, who has long had a bit of a cult following due to her prominent flapper role in the indie "Bare Knees" (1928), not to mention Raymond Griffith's popular "Hands Up!" (1926). The rest of the Banks material in the collection is pretty routine silent slapstick nonsense, but this "Play Safe" is a minor but marvelous gem.

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there's another feature Banks made that impressed me far more, due to its wild chase finale, which comprises a third of the 60-minute film. It's entitled "Play Safe" (1927), and features a lot of heart-stopping action, shot on top of a runaway train. Shots that look dangerous as hell.

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A stunt where Banks is holding onto a train while in a moving auto is shown in the Stuntmen episode of Brownlow's classic documentary series Hollywood.

Banks' double in the scene, the legendary Harvey Parry, is interviewed in the episode.

I'm familiar with Lloyd Hamilton, but mainly just his very early and very late work. I saw several of his early-talkie shorts back in the 1980s, and I also bought a videotape collection of 1910s "Ham and Bud" shorts around that time. The talkies were fine, but the latter were a bit woeful. I've never seen 'prime' Hamilton from his middle-years heyday. However, the same outfit that just put out this Monty Banks blu-ray have a collection of Lloyd Hamilton's shorts also, and I've been toying with ordering it. I do have their release of Lupino Lane's comedy shorts.

The silent 'short subject' comedians can sometimes be a little hit-or-miss with me. I have the dvd collection of Weiss Brothers' silent shorts that VCI put out, and they aren't too hot (although the prints are great). I'm open to trying out a lot of the obscure silent comedy stuff, but I try to keep my expectations in check. The Hal Roach stuff (Charley Chase, Max Davidson, Our Gang, etc.) is usually the material most likely to hit a bullseye with me, but they can vary in quality as well. I'd rather like to see more of Gale Henry, who always seemed pretty funny. Lots of names I've not seen much of, like Neal Burns, Billy Dooley, and so many others. I have a disc of Alice Howell comedies, which sometimes have their moments. Larry Semon never did too much for me.

Les Résultats du féminisme.

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there's another feature Banks made that impressed me far more, due to its wild chase finale, which comprises a third of the 60-minute film. It's entitled "Play Safe" (1927), and features a lot of heart-stopping action, shot on top of a runaway train. Shots that look dangerous as hell.

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A stunt where Banks is holding onto a train while in a moving auto is shown in the Stuntmen episode of Brownlow's classic documentary series Hollywood.

Banks' double in the scene, the legendary Harvey Parry, is interviewed in the episode.

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ESPN Gameday. Thanks to McAfee I keep it on mute unless Saban is speaking.