"Eat some cocaine, you weakling!"

June 3, 2018 6:53 AM

"...the intertitle is the defining feature of silent cinema—more important than tinting or musical accompaniment or even the silence itself," claims Kyle Westphal in his article Corrupted Texts: Silent Cinema and the Intertitle. See a list of The Top 10 Intertitles from silent movies; or another, slightly larger assortment of them; or a whole Tumblr blog devoted to them. Or make your own in real time using Google's The Peanut Gallery (which, please note, will request access to your device's microphone).

Also, read about restoring/remaking intertitle and title cards in an article by Chaz DeSimone. Or peruse a profile of early Hollywood screenwriter and leading exponent of the intertitle Anita Loos. Or learn about the anonymous 'James Joyce of the Intertitle' (note: medium.com).

The post title is apparently an intertitle in Dr Mabuse the Gambler.

posted by misteraitch (22 comments total)

Metafilter: Let me alone! I’m looking for a piece of cheese — not a husband.
posted by not_the_water at 8:44 AM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Wow, that Peanut Gallery thing is awesome!
posted by Wild_Eep at 9:52 AM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Was very happy to see "BANG!" included. BANG's career took a downturn after that, appearing in numerous inexpensive westerns and gangster films. BANG's career revived in the 60's, however, with the popular Batman television series, where BANG starred alongside old friends like POW! and THWACK!
posted by SPrintF at 9:57 AM on June 3, 2018 [8 favorites]

Oh hi i've just watched a shit-ton of silent films hello.

I have become a Buster Keaton fan as of late, and in STEAMBOAT BILL JR., one of the intertitles got a bigger laugh out of me than some of his gags - it was just so unexpectedly snarky. Keaton is playing the son of a steamboat captain, who's been trying to learn the family business - and screwing up royally. In one scene, he's making complete hash of some simple task, while his father and the boat's first mate look on. Then the first mate turns to the father and says something as he offers him a pistol. The intertitle was: "No jury would convict you."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:08 AM on June 3, 2018 [13 favorites]

One of the things about silent movies is that not every line "spoken" by the actors is intertitled. There is SO much left up to the audience to infer based on the context of the last intertitle and the action and acting on the screen. I've been impressed at how some silents will go long stretches of actors interacting with no interruption because the actors are conveying the dialogue through their acting and it's easy to follow.

Silent movie era was NOT the era of Joey's "smell the fart" acting method, that's for certain!
posted by hippybear at 11:42 AM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

This one became a meme some years later; and then there's:

Mr. Marceau, how would you like to appear in the first silent movie made in nearly fifty years?
posted by TedW at 12:57 PM on June 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've never needed the phrase "Holy shitsnacks it's Moloch!" before, but I expect to need it in the future.
posted by rlk at 1:11 PM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Silent comedies had lots of puns in their intertitles.
posted by brujita at 1:31 PM on June 3, 2018

Alfred Hitchcock got his start in the movies making title cards, and he once said that the best movies were the ones that needed the fewest titles.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:03 PM on June 3, 2018

Some silent comedies were the Firesign Theatre of their day!
posted by hippybear at 2:06 PM on June 3, 2018

I've never needed the phrase "Holy shitsnacks it's Moloch!" before, but I expect to need it in the future.

Save it for your Archer/Watchmen crossover.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:38 PM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

I'm still a huge fan of these silent recuts of the star wars prequels (and the main trilogy). They make the things shockingly fun, and are only ~45 minutes each. They have intertitles and everything, but mercifully cut out almost all the dialog, and almost all of Jar Jar.

The same author has since done Episode 7.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:43 PM on June 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm still a huge fan of these silent recuts of the star wars prequels

Wowee wow wow! I didn't think Coruscant COULD look more like Metropolis than it already did, but there you go! And the action sequences that looked so glossy and prefab in the theater look as gonzo and terrifying as the chariot race from the original Ben-Hur!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:50 PM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Heres my Peanut Gallery take. The mike didn't work as well as I had hoped, so be merciful.
posted by Samizdata at 3:56 PM on June 3, 2018

I've been a little obsessed with silents over the last few years, have watched about 60 of them and only feel like I've scratched the surface of what's still out there. I'll admit that I'm often not a fan of inter-titles, the prose often seems so clunky compared to the filmmaking surrounding it.
posted by octothorpe at 4:09 PM on June 3, 2018

I should say, the 1925 Ben-Hur. There was at least one filmed version before that, that I had forgotten about.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:10 PM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

That's still the only version of Ben-Hur that I've seen; the race is amazing although you feel bad knowing that they probably killed some horses filming it.
posted by octothorpe at 5:06 PM on June 3, 2018

I'll have to do some rereading, but if memory serves me correctly at least one human died as well.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:35 PM on June 3, 2018

From Snopes;

The set in Rome proved to be unsuitable due to problems with shadows and the racetrack surface. Francis X. Bushman (Mesalla) relates the following: “During one take, we went around the curve and the wheel broke on the other fellow’s chariot. The hub hit the ground and the guy shot up in the air about thirty feet. I turned and saw him up there — it was like a slow-motion film. He fell on a pile of lumber and died of internal injuries.”

It was decided to give up the Rome location. Another set was built in Culver City and filled with both extras and the Hollywood elite on a festive Saturday in October. To ensure a good race, Eason offered a bonus to the winning driver. One spectacular unplanned pile-up was left in the final cut, 42 cameras were used that day, and a total of 50,000 feet of film was shot. The final, choreographed pile-up, in which Mesalla meets his end, was shot later at the cost of five horses.

So the guy who died, did so filming a previous version of the sequence. The horses died doing what we see on screen.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:52 PM on June 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Well it's harder than it looks. :P
posted by mazola at 7:57 PM on June 3, 2018

The German intertitle in Mabuse (which may be restored, but I assume was the same in the original) is "Friß Kokain, Schlappschwanz!" which translates on my DVD as "Eat some cocaine, you limp-dick!" (fressen being the word Germans use for animals eating, not humans, which makes it even more insulting).
posted by nja at 7:56 AM on June 4, 2018 [5 favorites]

I was kind of surprised to see no mention of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The intertitles in that one are gorgeous. Or maybe I just missed it in the sheer volume of visual bon bons.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:37 AM on June 4, 2018