What’s a silent film, film forgers ?
Observations on film art and FILM ART : Film forgery has a couple of examples of silent films forged in mockumentaries around the years. I’d be especially intrigued by Forgotten Silver (1995) as I haven’t seen it yet; but judging from the screen grabs that Bordwell has made available, the pastiche references (Cecil B. De Mille’s 1916 Joan of Arc for one) seem pretty obvious. Forgery was so prevalent in silent Hollywood films that I’m surprised it is not mentioned in Bordwell’s post at all: from faked WW 1 battle shots presented as authentic to safaris that never quite took place, not to mention the countless times that the trade press reports an “authentic” background, or a “historically correct” background, opr a raging debate about how “authentic” a background is in a film — when what you really you get is a beautiful fantasy land of “Hungary” or “Europe” as Hollywood sees it –forgery was a constant. I’ve given a few examples of faked news on a previous web site of mine, cinebuds whi
