Is it possible for silent films to make the transition to modern cinema and still be good...

Is it possible for silent films to make the transition to modern cinema and still be good? I know that many were very simplistic and would be difficult to build upon, but there were many good films that never got an adaptation even in the "talkies" era. Have films evolved past the point of silent films having any relevance worth adapting?

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That movie was so fucking twisted, and from 1928 at that.

there's no relevance in remaking anything ever tbqh

I think you could make a good/entertaining silent film. I don't think you could make it popular enough to be successful.

I don't think I understand. By the late silent era these movies were far more sophisticated technically than early talkies. Ambitious camera movement, very artistic, epic storyline not seen again until the 1950s. First talkies were limtied by clumsy technology (they had to hide the mic somewhere). Maybe that's the reason why silents were so dynamic and fluid and early talkies so static. Transition to sound happened sometimes (Hell's Angels during filming and Phantom of the Opera after 4 years) but many movies were tailor made for silence.

Sadly it has a happy ending. Which was uncharacteristic for the period actually.

Amazing what they could do with fishing line, had to have been uncomfortable as all hell.
There have been remakes that are better than the original. The bela lugosi dracula was a remake, and they've done better versions since then. 1939 wizard of oz was a remake, scarface was a remake. A lot of remakes can be better than the original.

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They did and it was.

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All of these are book adaptations though, not remakes

Conrad Veidt was one of the true greats. His suffering only made him better.

In Hugo's book he and his gf both die. The film's ending was deliberately changed to prevent the audience from being depressed enough for suicide.

I remind you of Mr. Bean; the series was basically silent, and it worked.

>Sadly it has a happy ending
They did film 2 endings for it. The happy ending, an ending where Gwynplaine dies. and there was a 3rd ending where everyone dies which I think is what happens in the book, but they never filmed.

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Oh they removed the version with the Batman score. I hope I have it saved somewhere.

>depressed enough for suicide
I'd believe it seeing as the world was having economic issues everywhere. Around the same time I think is when a lot of people were killing themselves and quoting the Gloomy Sunday song; which later became known as the Hungarian suicide song.

They're book adaptations, but they weren't the first book adaptations of the source material; so they would usually be viewed as remakes. Many films were just being remade to transition into "talkies".

So it's not out there sadly. We even have problems finding the scenes that were in movies but were deleted after some time like the infamous epilogue in Dracula that does exist and it's even shown in some documentary but it's in bad shape (experts from Classic Horror Film Board found out what it was all about).
And it's been a while since the last big discovery. I know someone found one previously lost Houdini movie, complete version of The Lost World with colored sequences and I'm not sure what else. Some additional scenes from the lost Golem movie? Not much, nothing that would compete with complete Metropolis.

Very few tragic films were produced during that time period; people wanted escapism, not reminders. Gwynplaine's story, despite it being couched as a comedy, is so profoundly wretched I don't blame them at all for changing the ending.

If anyone asks I pray there's a chance to find The Head of Janus. Like Nosferatu only about Jekyll and Hyde and with Veidt and Lugosi directed by Murnau. Nothing comes close.

>Head of Janus
God damn, every time I think Yea Forums is a ghastly cesspit of shit taste with no concept of cinematic sublimity, someone has to blow my mind with how based they are.

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No, they're definitely not remakes in the modern sense, where retards just take a story and put it in the current year with a bunch of diversity hires and political talkpoints
They're still book adaptations first and foremost, and the source material played a bigger role in how they were made than the previous film adapted from the same source material, every single time.

Gawd, I wish you'd be silent, OP.

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lmao fucking nerds

Just watch Ryan Gosling films, the closest thing you can get.

Well the highlight of the silent era of film was also during and post WWI. A lot of the imagery were from directors who had seen the most bloody war in the world first hand. It's just something that I don't think today's filmmakers can fully recreate. Just everything from the scenery and characters has that sense of hopelessness or even when something is harmless it still has a feeling of dread and uncertainty. It feels like that's something that has gone missing from film.

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>the source material played a bigger role
Bram Stoker's Dracula by Coppola was a much closer adaptation than the Bela Lugosi version. Even Nosferatu is viewed as a more accurate adaptation and that one they changed the name so they wouldn't have to pay for the Dracula name.

Oh and lost cartoon about Oswald that predated Mickey Mouse. Found in Japan just like the uncensored Horror of Dracula.

Have yet to see a moment that conveys sympathy and dread to such a degree as this scene here. Fight me

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