Survivors of the Silent Era Beckon at MoMA

‘Silent Movie Week’August 2-8Museum of Modern Art“Black-and-white movies,” a stray Gen Zer told me recently, “put me to sleep.” Makes sense if you think about it: Color, in its ability to arouse sensation without our acquiescence, can be a stimulant. Yet the antipathy of a generation or two toward black-and-white has as much to do with conditioning and culture. Having grown up with color on pretty much any screen you’d care to name, younger people are less amenable to the nature of black-and-white cinematography. That, and old movies betoken outdated mores, right? The future is now; the past is problematic.Yet if black-and-white is an issue for contemporary audiences, what might their attitude be toward silent films? I mean, talk about antiquated. Truth be told, movies made before the advent of sound are a species apart. The dearth of sound — not just dialogue, but all range of noise — made for an expressly visual art form and, with it, a level of stylization in its approach to acting. We can all, to one degree or another, bring to mind the exaggerated theatrics typical of silent cinema.I suspect, too, that the lack of opportunity to see a silent film under ideal circumstances — that is to say, in a theater with musical accompaniment and an audience — can hamper one’s appreciation for the art form.MoMA’s “Silent Movie Week,” starting this coming Wednesday, is a good place to sample a selection from an era from which, as curator Dave Kehr reminds us, only 20 percent of films are extant. With the exception of “La Dixième Symphonie (The Tenth Symphony)” (1918), Abel Gance’s drama about adultery, suicide, and creativity, the films are from the United States and feature stars that have a finger-hold on our collective memory (Noah Beery, Ronald Colman, and, fleetingly, Louise Brooks) and those known largely to specialists (Percy Marmont, Lois Moran, and Aileen Pringle).A still from ‘What Happened to Jones.’ Via Universal PicturesDrama skews heavily on the schedule. The original broadsheet accompanying “Padlocked” (1926) promises “a beautiful girl driven from home by a father’s oppression who plunges into the Broadway whirl, touches the depths but emerges a wonderful woman with a real man’s love!” The best-known cinematic version of “Stella Dallas,” Olive Higgins Prouty’s best-selling novel, is the 1937 version starring Barbara Stanwyck, but the story was filmed 12 years earlier with Belle Bennett in the title role. It’s here as well.The easiest entryway to silent cinema for novices and curiosity seekers is comedy. Who doesn’t take pleasure in a well-deserved kick in the pants? “The Adventurer” (1917), a swift but action-packed Charlie Chaplin short, brims with impish and often anarchic aggression. The title card has barely faded from sight before we’re privy to a scene already in progress: an array of policemen, rifles at the ready, scrambling down an abandoned beach. They’re on the hunt for an escaped convict. We have a good idea who that might be.“The Adventurer” is 24 minutes of frenetic shtick, a compendium of bits that retain a reckless, improvisatory air even as they are predicated on hard-won stagecraft. The lovely Edna Purviance is on hand, as is the towering Eric Campbell, as the villain out to thwart Chaplin’s attempts at both love and freedom. Auteurists won’t find much to relish, as Chaplin the cinematic innovator had yet to tip his hand. As a consummate comic force, though, he’s in full effect. Watch Charlie Chaplin cadge drinks at a tony soiree or deal with an errant scoop of ice cream and then ask yourself if laughter isn’t its own artistic rationale.The find of “Silent Movie Week” is “What Happened to Jones” (1926), a sprightly farce based on an 1897 play by George Broadhurst and directed by William A. Seiter. A graduate of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios, Seiter worked with, among others, Shirley Temple, Wheeler & Woolsey, and, alas, he helmed “Room Service” (1938), one of the most regrettable of Marx Brothers vehicles. Then again, he was also responsible for “Sons of the Desert” (1933), arguably the finest of Laurel and Hardy features, as well as a handful of unsung comedies starring Reginald Denny.The British-born Denny is best known as a character actor, having had plum roles in “Anna Karenina” (1935) and “Rebecca” (1940). During the silent era, Denny was a leading man in the mold of a less innocent Harold Lloyd or, perhaps, a more schticky Cary Grant. Although “What Happened to Jones” doesn’t score much in the way of belly laughs, it is consistently amusing and expertly contrived, with Denny proving as much a student of Music Hall convention as Chaplin.Denny’s performance as a man who behaves badly the night before his wedding and has to scramble in order to make recompense, is an essay in adroit timing and comic understatement: No mugging, please, we’re British. The star is ably supported by a fine comic cast, not least the rotund Otis Harlan as Denny’s compadre in misbehavior. The plot, such as it is, involves a boy’s night out playing poker, an unexpected visit to a Turkish bath, and, ultimately, Denny disguising himself as a man of the cloth. Seiter proves light on his feet and makes a real movie out of a stage play. “What Happened to Jones” is reason enough to attend “Silent Movie Week,” as well as to keep our fingers crossed that Mr. Kehr has a Denny retrospective in the works.

Survivors of the Silent Era Beckon at MoMA

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