http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=d.w.%20griffith%20AND%20mediat ype%3Amovies
The Internet Archive hosts public domain films which you can watch and download for free. Several important Griffith entries are included such as "A Corner in Wheat", "Birth of a Nation", "Intolerance", "Broken Blossoms", and his first and only one of two talkies, "Abraham Lincoln".
WOW!!!! This site is amazing! I saw Intolerance, I liked it and it saved me the trouble of watching it through Netflix. Great suggestion, everyone should check this out, Thanks annadane!
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I said it somewhere and I'll say it again: nothing can compare with the pleasure of watching Intolerance in the big screen, with a live orchestra.
By the way, the film Griffith did about Abraham Lincoln (with Walter Huston) is terrible. He (I mean Griffith) did not know how to handle dialogue on the screen.
One great film I have never seen is the silent version of Beau Geste, with Ronald Colman. I know you can view it in YouTube. But I don't want to watch it that way. How come it is not in TCM? They have most of the great silents.
The number one film in my list of films I have never seen (and want to see) is Sirens of Atlantis with Maria Montez. The other one is Lucrezia Borgia with Martine Carole and Pedro Armendáriz.
Going back to Intolerance, I love the character of the mountain girl played by Constance Talmadge, and her performance too. I also like the girl who plays the villian in the modern story. I think she was married to Raoul Walsh.
There is a film by the Taviani brothers about the making of Intolerance. Griffith is played by ...I forgot! I'll tell you later.
Because of the way you write you should be in your 30's.
Thanks. A shame Im 21. Intelligence hurts when young :p.
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21!!!!!!!!!!! You're giving me hope for the future. A female member of IMDB entered recently into a discussion on the 10 Best Films of All times, and her opinion (as to if such a list is even possible) impressed me a lot. Then she said she was 19. I could not believe it.
Yes, you had to be either a young lady or a very old lady. Nothing in between.
I was 21 once ...a long time ago. But intelligence hurst more when you get older. People don't want to listen to you!!
By the way, have you ever read Pauline Kael? I read everything she ever wrote when I was in my teens. She's the best American film critic of all time, and the most influential. You don't have to agree with everything she said in order to love her. She's dead now. Much older than me.
siren of atlantis is out in the uk (not amazing quality though) , i too was desperate to see it. sadly was really disappointed with it!
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If I get a copy of Sirens of Atlantis from the UK, can I see it on my DVD or some transferring would be required? Another film I would like to see, and is only available in the UK, is the remake of The 39 Steps (the fact that Kennet More and Tania Elg pleayed the leads, made the handcuffs much more meaningfull and symbolic).
I've seen many poor quality copies of interesting films, and they do affect one's appreciation of the film. I supposse you were dissappointed because the film was not as good or great or surreal(?) as you thought it was going to be. I still want to see it. Another one I would like to see is "Lucrezia Borgia", with Martine Carole and Pedro Armendariz. "Sexually" ahead of its time. I remember some taxi drivers in my country (when I was a little boy) talking about it, but I suppose their description of certain scenes, was more imagination than reality. There are a few sexually daring scenes in European costume epics from the 40's and 50's, included in the final "montage" of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso which I cannot identify (in fact, those clips are the only films I cannot identify in NCP). I suppose Lucrezia Borgia could be one of those. When I was probably 3 or 4, I remember seeing a trailer of a film in which Rasputin takes off a blanket from a lady who was totally naked. I suppose this is the French version of the story made in the early 50's. The colors where mostly light-blue and pink; a similar color process was used in a version of the Bluebeard's tale made at the same time, also in France, which I remember seeing in its entirety.
One film that took me many years to see and I was NOT dissaspointed is Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Not very well known, but definitively a classic of sorts, with many surrealistic touches. It is also not a very good film in some aspects, which makes it more fascinanting. Don't you agree?
It seems that Lucrezia Borgia (with Martine Carol) is coming out on DVD in May. Too good to be true? Where can I get a copy of Siren of Atlantis. There's nothing on amazon.com. The reviews on IMDB make it sound like an extremely fascinating movie. I did not know about the "noir" angle.
ok firstly i live in the UK so do not take everything i say for fact here. I'm holding the dvd in my hands and it is definitely region free, so you can play it on your dvd player/laptop whatever no problem. The dvd is PAL, i know all tvs in the UK support PAL and NTSC, but you might want to google it to see if american tvs support PAL.
Get an account with amazon.co.uk, or play.com (not sure if the latter delivers internationally, sure it does though it'll say on the site), VAT (which i think is around 15% of the item price) will be deducted at checkout, with the appallingly weak pound right now you'll get it incredibly cheap. Don't think shipping to the US is too expensive. Don't want to link you just in case the post gets removed by admin, but the dvd case has purple borders at the top and bottom with a black and white poster in between. That should help you spot it.
It's worth signing up for the UK sites and i'm guessing you don't have a region free player, but if there's ever any region 2 dvds your wanting which are unavailable in the states just make your player region free by googling your dvd players serial number, it's legal and doesn't cost anything and after typing in a few numbers on your dvd player your region free!!! Cobra Woman is only available from Carlotta in France (in a gorgeous transfer and with optional subtitles and english dialogue), so its well worth making your player region free.
I was disappointed in Siren of Atlantis because i'd just recently bought a few books on the underground camp film director Jack Smith who idolized Montez and frequently mentions Siren of Atlantis. The plot is really weak on film and the only one with an interesting character is Jean-Pierre Aumont. There are a couple of interesting scenes, it's definitely worth getting, and I was very tired when i saw it so will definitely revisit it sometime this year, I just didn't find myself captivated by it. Now the Montez movies Arabian Nights, and Ali Baba, are films i'd like to see!
I thought Siren of Atlantis wasn't surreal enough apart from the ending.
where did you get Pandora and the Flying Dutchman? Now THATS a film i'm looking for!!!
Edit: Oh Kino released it, shall be picking that up shortly!