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Voidsville Follies

Works featuring "music" (9)

The Cake-Walk Infernal

Georges Méliès (director/lead)
Star (production)

Language: Silent, released in Jun 1903
Minutes: 4

The Hollywood musical from Hell. [Star Film 453-457]

Featured elements:

: dance; fantasy; music

The Melomaniac (Le Mélomane)

Georges Méliès (director/lead)
Star (production)

Language: Silent, released in Aug 1903
Minutes: 2

A music lesson, using telegraph wires - and the teacher's head. Must be a French thing... [Star Film 479-480]

Featured elements:

: beheading; fantasy; music

La Polka des Trottins

Alice Guy-Blaché (director)
Félix Mayol (lead)
Gaumont (production)

Language: French, released in 1905, month unknown
Minutes: 2

The Phonoscène was an antecedent of music video and is regarded as a forerunner of sound film. It combined a sound recording with a film shot with actors lip-synching to the sound recording. The recording and film were synchronized by a mechanism ('Chronophone') patented by Léon Gaumont in 1902.

Featured elements:

: music

The True Jiu-Jitsu (Le Vrai Jiu-Jitsu)

Alice Guy-Blaché (director)
Armand Dranem (lead)
Gaumont (production)

Language: French, released in 1905, month unknown
Minutes: 2

The Phonoscène was an antecedent of music video and is regarded as a forerunner of sound film. It combined a sound recording with a film shot with actors lip-synching to the sound recording. The recording and film were synchronized by a mechanism ('Chronophone') patented by Léon Gaumont in 1902.

Featured elements:

: ethnic stereotype; music

That Ragtime Band

Mack Sennett (director/producer)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Ford Sterling (lead)
Alice Davenport (lead)
Edgar Kennedy (lead)
Nick Cogley (lead)
Charles Avery (lead)
Echo Park (location)
Keystone (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in May 1913
Minutes: 12

Dissonance erupts when Mabel's attention divides the band. Highlight: performers using the amateur show to market their...um...business...

Featured elements:

: backstage; comedy; music; revenge

Pierrot the Prodigal (Histoire d'un Pierrot)

Baldassarre Negroni (director)
Giorgio Ricci (cinematographer)
Fernand Beissier (author)
Francesca Bertini (lead)
Leda Gys (lead)
Emilio Ghione (lead)
Celio (production)

Language: Silent, released in Feb 1914
Minutes: 58

The diva plays the Italian-comedy/French-pantomime stock male character with a cute pear butt. Performance is in “classical” style - cinema's euphemism for “deathly boring”.

Featured elements:

: abuse; comedy; dance; gambling; gender-bender; heroic defender; infidelity; kiddie act; manipulator; melodrama; music; romance; unrequited love

Tigre Reale

Giovanni Pastrone (director)
Segundo de Chomón (cinematographer)
Giovanni Tomatis (cinematographer)
Giovanni Verga (author)
Pina Menichelli (lead)
Alberto Nepoti (lead)
Febo Mari (lead)
Gabriel Moreau (lead)
Itala (production)

Language: Silent, Italian titles, English subtitles, released in Nov 1916
Minutes: 77

Never again utter the phrase “Drama Queen” until you've watched this diva single-handedly transform a threadbare story into a symphony of sensual expression.

Featured elements:

: alienation; animal act; breaking class; flashback; forbidden love; forsaken; infidelity; manipulator; melodrama; music; neglected spouse; rescue; revenge; servitude; suicide

Be Silent, My Sorrow, Be Silent (Молчи, грусть, молчи)

Pyotr Chardynin (director/lead)
Vladimir Siversen (cinematographer)
Vera Kholodnaya (lead)
Vitold Polonsky (lead)
Olga Rakhmanova (lead)
Kharitonov (production)

Language: Silent, Russian titles, English subtitles, released in May 1918
Minutes: 45

Apparently, an attempt to address class conflict in the standard weepy melodramatic format (complete with violin). While the fragments that remain do not provide a convincing critique (compare with Child of the Big City (1914)), it's still more substantial than other surviving works by this director.

Featured elements:

: addiction; backstage; breaking class; circus; flashback; forsaken; gambling; gold digger; melodrama; metatheatre; music; poverty; prejudice; servitude; sugar daddy; treachery

Carmen/Gypsy Blood

Ernst Lubitsch (director)
Alfred Hansen (cinematographer)
Hanns Kräly (writer)
Prosper Mérimée (author)
Pola Negri (lead)
Harry Liedtke (lead)
PAGU (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Dec 1918
Minutes: 80

The power of a Carmen production derives from a hot Carmen and a tortured Don José. This version is only semi-powered: we see a tortured José, but this Carmen has nothing that could make a good man fall. So, a heavy dose of suspension of belief is required to get through this, yet in the end it wasn't worth the effort.

Featured elements:

: Bizet's Carmen; bookends; dance; death scene; ethnic stereotype; femme fatale; forsaken; music; obsession; prison

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