Score: 10
"Close to silent perfection"
date: March 2, 2008
It's hard to do a silent movie effectively, since sound is critical to making an animation come to life. However, this was a valiant and successful attempt that went for laughing at the tropes rather than using a silent movie as an excuse not to add anything other than a musical sountrack.
I like the whole grainy, scratched, flawed fim feel, down to the flicker of large blacked out spots. I also like how you used animation to convey effects that would have been impossible for silent films that enliven the movie. The animation appears simple, but like the rather limited effects available in early film it manages to create something more meaningful than overproduced junk. Yet you use it to amp up the unintentioal "cheese" factor of those early films. As a result, this piece not only pays homage to the silent film era, but it also makes fun of lackluster animation techniques and narratives.
If I have to critique something, it's that by 1946, the silent movie was pretty much dead. But the overwhelming majority of this piece is refreshingly wonderful.
August 20, 2008
Author's Response:
Yeah, the whole time I was making this, I kept thinking 1946 isn't a good year to say, but for some reason, I wanted to keep it that way. something about those numbers, being put together like that, made me want to keep them in.
thank you so much for your review.
