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I was just wondering about the also-rans as well. It will be helpful to see which of our choices are orphans before we get too deep into the darlings thread.

swo17 wrote:lubitsch, will you be posting a list of "also rans"? This would just be a list of all the films that received at least 2 votes but didn't place in the top 100. This is helpful so that if a film you voted for didn't make the top 100, you can at least know whether or not anyone else voted for it.

Is there usually a one-hit wonder list as well, so we can see what only received one vote?

swo17 wrote:There are a lot of titles on the list right now that would take an IMDb lookup for someone to know what we're talking about. While that may be a valuable exercise, I don't think this is necessarily the place for it.

Agreed. I'm all for including the original titles—especially since some of these films have a couple different titles in English, but I think the English titles should be there as well. Especially for the Russian films, which are already not in their original alphabet.

nsps wrote: Is there usually a one-hit wonder list as well, so we can see what only received one vote?

Not usually, but I would be in favor of an addendum to the also-rans that includes these as well. lubitsch has already listed a few of them, but seeing the whole list would be interesting.

lubitsch, IMDb/my own viewing notes disagree with some of the directorial credits that you show in the final list. Here is what I have:

When the Clouds Roll By (Victor Fleming)
The Land Beyond the Sunset (Harold M. Shaw)
The '?' Motorist (Walter R. Booth)
The Passer-by (Oscar Apfel)
The 'Teddy' Bears (Edwin S. Porter & Wallace McCutcheon)
Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley)
A Lively Quarter-Day (J.H. Martin)
Cenere (Febo Mari)
Monkeyshines, No. 1 (William K.L. Dickson & William Heise)
The Courage of the Commonplace (Rollin S. Sturgeon)
The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (Christy Cabanne & John Emerson)

Also, both Suspense and Where Are My Children? should I believe be credited to both Weber and her husband Phillips Smalley.

One more thing--the Lumieres' Départ de Jérusalem en chemin de fer made the final list. I voted for a different film of theirs called Passage d'un tunnel en chemin de fer. I just want to make sure you didn't confuse these two in your final tally.

The much desired also ran list:
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (Edwin S. Porter) 38, 3 votes
An Unseen Enemy (D.W. Griffith) 37, 2 votes
Nerven (Robert Reinert, 1919) 36, 2 votes
Arrivée d’un train en gare à La Ciotat (Lumiere, 1896) 36, 3 votes
La Folie du Docteur Tube (Abel Gance, 1915) 35, 2 votes
The Magic Sword (Walter R. Booth, 1901) 35, 3 votes
La dixieme symphonie (Abel Gance, 1918) 34, 2 votes
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910) 34, 2 votes
Panoramic View, Aisle B, Westinghouse Works (G.W. Bitzer, 1904) 34, 2 votes
Tih Minh (Louis Feuillade, 1918) 32, 2 votes
Nugget Jim's Pardner (Frank Borzage, 1916) 29, 2 votes
The Sentimental Bloke (Raymond Longford, 1919) 29, 2 votes
True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith, 1919) 27, 2 votes
The Kiss (Edison, 1896) 25, 2 votes
The Unchanging Sea (D.W. Griffith, 1910) 24, 2 votes
Who Pays? Episode 12, Toil and Tyranny (Harry Harvey, 1915) 22, 2 votes
Fire! (James Williamson, 1901) 21, 2 votes
A Fool There Was (Theda Bara, 1915) 21, 2 votes
Wild and Woolly (Douglas Fairbanks, 1917) 20, 3 votes
Thais (Anton Giulio Bragaglia, 1917) 18, 2 votes
Le coeur et l'argent (Louis feuillade, 1912) 15, 2 votes
Le voyage à travers l'impossible (Georges Melies, 1904) 14, 2 votes
L'inferno (Bertolini/Padovan/de Liguoro) 11, 2 votes
Falling leaves (Alice Guy, 1912) 9, 2 votes
Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii (Mario Caserini, 1913) 9, 2 votes

I haven't always used the name of the director, but the name of the principal creative artist or the production firm. Nobody knows Febo Mari, but Eleonora Duse should be better known. When we get later to some comics like Laurel & Hardy or the Marx Brothers there isn't much gained from listing the director.
I didn't confuse the Lumieres that's why I asked everybody about certain points on their lists.

As for listing all the other one voters with less than 39 points ... let me sleep a night about that (don't know if this German saying can be translated, I'll do it anyway).

lubitsch wrote: As for listing all the other one voters with less than 39 points ... let me sleep a night about that (don't know if this German saying can be translated, I'll do it anyway).

By my count, there are 145 orphans (including the 18 already listed), so I can understand if it would be too much work to list them all.

lubitsch wrote:I haven't always used the name of the director, but the name of the principal creative artist or the production firm. Nobody knows Febo Mari, but Eleonora Duse should be better known. When we get later to some comics like Laurel & Hardy or the Marx Brothers there isn't much gained from listing the director.

I understand the thought here, but it's an extremely dangerous precedent to set. Are we going to debate which single person deserves authorial credit for every film that makes the list? The director's sole authorship can often be questioned, and sometimes great directors work with name stars. In this era, we have little archival information about the behind-the-scenes dynamics of a production, so we can either go with the credited artists or embark on a frivolous guessing game. I favor the former. (However, I don't object to including uncredited directors whose involvement in a project is confirmed and documented.)

lubitsch wrote:let me sleep a night about that (don't know if this German saying can be translated, I'll do it anyway).

It can be. In English, the common phrase is "let me sleep on it."

lubitsch wrote:I haven't always used the name of the director, but the name of the principal creative artist or the production firm. Nobody knows Febo Mari, but Eleonora Duse should be better known. When we get later to some comics like Laurel & Hardy or the Marx Brothers there isn't much gained from listing the director.

I'd still prefer just crediting the director, but if you insist on doing this, can you at least designate as much in the credit, i.e. Cenere (starring Eleonora Duse)? In most other cases you are crediting the director, and I think that's how people are accustomed to interpreting the role of the person credited with a particular film. It is not uncommon for the star of the film to also be the director (i.e. Chaplin, Keaton) so if someone who didn't know any better were to stumble upon our lists, they might come away with the idea that, say, the Marx brothers directed their own films.

For posterity's sake, I also think it might be a good idea to identify where select films on the overall list can be found, since so many of them are hidden away in various collections. For example:

When the Clouds Roll By (Victor Fleming, 1919) - available on Flicker Alley's Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer.

This way, Fleming (who is not an insignificant director, I might add) gets his directorial credit, Fairbanks gets a mention, and anyone who might stumble upon this list in the future will have some clue of where to look for the film, since it doesn't have a standalone release. Win, win, win.

Similarly, if a film comes from a Marx brothers collection, you'd be able to credit both the director (like say, the also not insignificant Leo McCarey) and the Marx brothers. Two birds. One stone.

swo17 wrote: I'd still prefer just crediting the director, but if you insist on doing this, can you at least designate as much in the credit, i.e. Cenere (starring Eleonora Duse)? In most other cases you are crediting the director, and I think that's how people are accustomed to interpreting the role of the person credited with a particular film. It is not uncommon for the star of the film to also be the director (i.e. Chaplin, Keaton) so if someone who didn't know any better were to stumble upon our lists, they might come away with the idea that, say, the Marx brothers directed their own films.

I've never seen a cinematheque or archive that attempted to differentiate in such a way. They might do a Marx Brothers series, but they'd still follow the "(director, year)" format in the film descriptions.

Sorry for the stupid question, as I suppose the relevant info is somewhere in this thread though I can't seem to find it at the moment. But it's the only Top 20 film I didn't manage to see, so can someone tell me where Weber's "Suspense" was released? The backchannels weren't any help with that one....

Tommaso wrote:Sorry for the stupid question, as I suppose the relevant info is somewhere in this thread though I can't seem to find it at the moment. But it's the only Top 20 film I didn't manage to see, so can someone tell me where Weber's "Suspense" was released? The backchannels weren't any help with that one....

It's on the 'Unseen Cinema' set. (Disc four - Inverted Narratives - to be exact.)

Thank you! That set has been on my wishlist for ages.....

Tommaso wrote:Sorry for the stupid question, as I suppose the relevant info is somewhere in this thread though I can't seem to find it at the moment. But it's the only Top 20 film I didn't manage to see, so can someone tell me where Weber's "Suspense" was released? The backchannels weren't any help with that one....

It's also available on vol. 6 of the 'Retour de Flamme' series, which I got second-hand (along with vol. 2) for about £5 on Amazon UK. I see they're not quite so cheap now, though.

The Avenging Conscience jumped up three spots because I tabulated my vote into a seperate line instead using the existing one. I had sorted the films by title to avoid this mistake but this slipped by though it was glaringly obvious.
I ponder a director ranking, but this is going to be quite difficult due to all all these earlier films not to speak of the problem of attributing films to the director exclusively or the leading creative figure.

lubitsch wrote:not to speak of the problem of attributing films to the director exclusively or the leading creative figure.

I think you're the only one who has that problem...

Speaking of which: Out of curiosity, when has there been any information suggesting Edison was the leading creative figure on The Teddy Bears? I only attribute things to Edison when no other creator is known.

Orphans from this old list project (sorted by director):

La Femme collante (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1906)
Alice Guy tourne une phonoscène (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1907)
Making an American Citizen (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1912)
The Ocean Waif (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1916)

The Suburbanite (American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, 1904)
La Commune (Armand Guerra, 1914)
One Touch of Nature (Ashley Miller, 1914)
Verdens Undergang (August Blom, 1916)
A Natural Born Gambler (Bert Williams, 1916)
Malombra (Carmine Gallone, 1917)
The Golden Chance (Cecil DeMille, 1915)
Rescued by Rover (Cecil Hepworth, 1905)

The Rounders (Charles Chaplin, 1914)
The Champion (Charles Chaplin, 1915)
The Bank (Charles Chaplin, 1915)
The Vagabond (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
Behind the Screen (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
Work (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
The Floorwalker (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
The Count (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
The Cure (Charles Chaplin, 1917)
Shoulder Arms (Charles Chaplin, 1918)

The Public and Private Care of Infants (Charles Seay, 1912)
Farfale (Cinès co., 1907)

The Sealed Room (D.W. Griffith, 1909)
His Trust Fulfilled (D.W. Griffith, 1911)
The Female of the Species (D.W. Griffith, 1912)
The Massacre (D.W. Griffith, 1912)
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (D.W. Griffith, 1912)
For His Son (D.W. Griffith, 1912)

In the Land of the War Canoes (Edward Curtis, 1914)
The Hasher's Delirium (Émile Cohl, 1910)
Prinsengracht (Emile Lauste, 1899)
Madame Dubarry (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919)

History of a Crime (Ferdinand Zecca, 1901)
The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (Ferdinand Zecca, 1903)
The Policemen's Little Run (Ferdinand Zecca, 1907)

Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini & Gustavo Serena, 1914)
Richard III (Frank Benson, 1911)

The Pitch o' Chance (Frank Borzage, 1915)
The Pilgrim (Frank Borzage, 1916)

A Versatile Villain (Frank Griffin, 1915)
A Daring Daylight Burglary (Frank Mottershaw, 1903)
Harakiri (Fritz Lang, 1919)

The Kiss in the Tunnel (G.A. Smith, 1899)
Grandma's Reading Glass (G.A. Smith, 1900)
Let Me Dream Again (G.A. Smith, 1900)

Westinghouse Works, Panorama View, Street Car Motor Room (G.W. Bitzer, 1904)
La Peine du talion (Gaston Velle, 1906)
The Battle of the Somme (Geoffrey Malins & John McDowell, 1916)

Illusions fantasmagoriques (Georges Méliès, 1898)
The Dreyfus Affair (Georges Méliès, 1899)
Blue Beard (Georges Méliès, 1901)
La Royaume des fées (Georges Méliès, 1903)
The Melomaniac (Georges Méliès, 1903)
La Sirène (Georges Méliès, 1904)
Les Bulles de savon animées (Georges Méliès, 1906)

The Breath of a Nation (Gregory La Cava, 1919)
La signora delle camelie (Gustavo Serena, 1915)
Bumping into Broadway (Hal Roach, 1919)
Bangville Police (Henry Lehrman, 1913)

Himmelskibet (Holger-Madsen, 1918)
Towards the Light (Holger-Madsen, 1919)

Snow White (J.S. Dawley, 1916)
Cinderella (James Kirkwood, 1914)

Scene from Elevator Ascending Eiffel Tower (James White, 1900)
Panorama of Eiffel Tower (James White, 1900)

Stop Thief! (James Williamson, 1901)
The Little Match Seller (James Williamson, 1902)
An Interesting Story (James Williamson, 1904)

Moscow Clad in Snow (Joseph-Louis Mundwiller, 1908)
Hesanut Builds a Skyscraper (Kalem co., 1914)
Bud's Recruit (King Vidor, 1918)
The Narrow Trail (Lambert Hillyer, 1917)
Le Roman d'un mousse (Léonce Perret, 1914)
The Project of Engineer Pright (Lev Kuleshov, 1918)
Hoodoo Ann (Lloyd Ingraham, 1916)

La Fée des grèves (Louis Feuillade, 1909)
La Tare (Louis Feuillade, 1911)
Le Trust, ou les Batailles de l'argent (Louis Feuillade, 1911)
La Hantise (Louis Feuillade, 1912)
L'Agonie de Byzance (Louis Feuillade, 1913)
Erreur tragique (Louis Feuillade, 1913)
Bout-de-Zan vole un éléphant (Louis Feuillade, 1913)

Le repas de bébé (Louis Lumière, 1895)
L'Arroseur Arrosé (Louis Lumière, 1896)
Passage d'un tunnel en chemin de fer (Louis Lumière, 1896)
Demolition of a Wall (Louis Lumière, 1896)
Oil Wells of Baku (Louis Lumière, 1897)
Plate-forme mobile et Train électrique (Louis Lumière, 1900)

Der getäuschte Pierrot (Ludwig von Wich, 1917)
Stella Maris (Marshall Neilan, 1918)
The Life Story of David Lloyd George (Maurice Elvey, 1918)

La Bergère d'Ivry (Maurice Tourneur, 1913)
Le Friquet (Maurice Tourneur, 1913)
Alias Jimmy Valentine (Maurice Tourneur, 1915)
The Pride of the Clan (Maurice Tourneur, 1916)
The Poor Little Rich Girl (Maurice Tourneur, 1917)
A Girl's Folly (Maurice Tourneur, 1917)

Love and Journalism (Mauritz Stiller, 1916)
Thomas Graal's Best Film (Mauritz Stiller, 1917)

Der Andere (Max Mack, 1913)
Canals of Copenhagen (Ole Olsen, 1908)
Premier prix de Violoncelle (Pathé Brothers, 1907)
The Birth of a Flower (Percy Smith, 1910)

Blackfriars Bridge (R.W. Paul, 1896)
The Countryman and the Cinematograph (R.W. Paul, 1901)

The Wrath of the Gods (Reginald Barker, 1914)

Different from the Others (Richard Oswald, 1919)
Unheimliche Geschichten (Richard Oswald, 1919)

Coney Island (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1917)
His Wedding Night (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1917)
Out West (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1918)
The Hayseed (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1919)

Morecambe Church Lads' Brigade at Drill (Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon, 1901)
Parkgate Iron and Steel Co. Rotherham (Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon, 1901)
Ride on the Tramcar Through Belfast (Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon, 1901)
Alfred Butterworth and Sons, Glebe Mills, Hollinwood (Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon, 1901)
Torpedo Flotilla Visit to Manchester (Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon, 1901)
Nottingham Tram Ride #2 (Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon, 1902)
Blackpool Victoria Pier (Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon, 1904)

Les Kiriki, acrobates japonais (Segundo de Chomón, 1907)
From the Submerged (Theodore Wharton, 1912)
The Wicked Darling (Tod Browning, 1919)
Ingmarssönerna (Victor Sjöström, 1919)
How They Rob Men in Chicago (Wallace McCutcheon, 1900)
The Dragon Painter (William Worthington, 1919)
The Dragonfly and the Ant (Władysław Starewicz, 1913)

Father Sergius (Yakov Protazanov, 1917)
Satana likuyuschiy (Yakov Protazanov, 1917)

Silent Witnesses (Yevgeni Bauer, 1914)
Deti veka (Yevgeni Bauer, 1915)
A Life for a Life (Yevgeni Bauer, 1916)
The King of Paris (Yevgeni Bauer, 1917)

How They Rob Men In Chicago has to rank as one of the greatest titles of any film ever. Anywhere.

Caught sight of Wicked Darling just near there. One of my favorite Chaney/Brownings. The toothless bum with all the clothes layers and buttons is one of the coolest cameos ever. Probably not at all in the scenario, it's just one of those quick wordless pieces of business that speaks volumes about the heart of the director.

A little correction: "Assunta Spina" was (co-)directed by Francesca Bertini, who also starred in this great movie. Well, another chance to mention the excellent new Italian dvd, which hopefully a few people will watch before Vol.4 of this project, so that the film won't be an orphan any longer.

Assunta Spina, one of my favorite films ever. Definitely in my Top 10 of pre-1920 movies. :-"

Ditto on the above two posts about Assunta with the great diva from when Diva was actually a signifier of genuine greatness. Fell in love with that film on VHS at least ten years ago... another affectionate nod to Kino for broadening my horizons with films like this when no other company of that size was reaching that far down into the bin of now-completely obscure (and then completely forgotten) history.

I have no idea where to put this so here I go : I believe this short film posted by the BFI just now is my first viewing of a 19th century film in high resolution (though the YouTube compression is still in the way). It really isn't much of a film (it's cute and I like the first shot) but despite that it made me think how much we need a HD-era equivalent of the old sets such as Kino's "The Movies Begin", some sort of collection of noteworthy pre-1915 short films of all kinds. I know a lot of early films aren't in good shape, but for most of them the standard definition scans seems very old and they could look much better.

Det elektriske Hotel: This Danish silent short from 1916 was a surprisingly sublime romp. The first half is simply impressive on a technical level, implementing creative special effects for the period around the initiation of moving inanimate objects without explanation, the kind of unprompted absurdist internal logic that Quentin Dupieux might apply to his worlds. The last half kicks things up ten notches though, inviting a totally left-field zany central conceit that the film milks of all its imaginative potential in just a few minutes. If the film had operated entirely in this mold, it would be a newfound classic, but the bifurcated attention softens the whole product's impact, even if that first section is clever in its own right. Recommended, on backchannels.

Thank you very much for the recommendation. While I agree completely with your assessment, let me point out that Det elektriske Hotel is simply a very close remake of Segundo de Chomon's 1908 Electric Hotel, which is available on an excellent 2010 Spanish disc entitled "Segundo de Chomón 1903-1912: El Cine de la fantasia" (fully subtitled and with a 112-page bilingual booklet). The Danish remake is perhaps a little more accomplished in terms of narrative, but all the major events of the later film are already present in the earlier version: the self-unpacking of the suitcases, the shaving, and even the letter home, and of course also the final 'big havoc' sequence, which admittedly is more over-the-top in the 1916 film. Both films are great, for sure, but perhaps the Danish film might appear less striking if you have seen Chomón's original.

People who want to see the Danish version don't need the backchannels, btw. It is freely available online thanks to the Danish Film Institite here. That site has a lot of fantastic other Danish silents, including some great Asta Nielsen rarities. Check it out, folks, if you haven't already done so.