Stavi Rants About: Silent Films

In this day and age, silent films are merely a small footnote in the grand history of cinema. If you ask anyone about silent films you might get some people mentioning people like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, maybe even knowing a George Méliès film though probably not by name.  If you ask someone with a little bit more knowledge of film they might be aware of a few of the famous German silent films, being Nosferatu or Metropolis. If they say Nosferatu that might just be because of Spongebob though, depending on how old the person is of course. Then there are a whole bunch of nerds, such as myself, who have taken a deep dive through film history and are actual fans of the silent era. I'm going to talk about my personal history with silent films and why I enjoy them so much, especially in comparison to a lot of modern films.

Like most I've always been vaguely aware of silent films, and like most the idea never quite interested me. How could one enjoy a movie without any sound? Then at some point I was informed of the fact that they had music, but I still was not that interested. I think most people share a similar thought of, "How could these ancient movies compare in any way to what we can produce now? We have such better technology and movies have developed so much that there is no way these movies could actually be any good!" This was certainly a frame of reference that I had probably thought of whenever silent films were brought up. They weren't really something that I had ever actively thought about though, only whenever the subject was brought up which was basically never. 

I ended up getting into silent films in a rather odd way. I have a feeling most got into them through delving deep into film history, or perhaps they were lucky enough to be somewhere with a theater that had an organ in it to play alongside silent films. I discovered silent films through a meme. Specifically this one, where someone had recreated the "Steamed Hams" bit from the Simpsons as a German Expressionist film. Just from the title alone I was very intrigued. I hadn't heard of Expressionism before, although I could figure out what it was based on the name. I was unaware that there was a German movement for it and I was also unaware that this applied to films to begin with. Things like Expressionism or Impressionism I had always heard applied to art forms like paintings, never to film. Based on this, and the fact that I do think "Steamed Hams" is funny, I had to watch this video. Seeing these distorted visuals, and finding out that a German Expressionist film is a silent film just furthered my curiosity. I went straight to the internet to do more research. I was quite surprised when I had actually heard of one of these movies, that being Nosferatu, of course having learned of it through Spongebob Squarepants as I assume most of my generation has. 

The first silent film I ever saw was Nosferatu, mostly due to my familiarity with it. I sat in front of my computer late one night, watching it, slowly becoming more engrossed in the film, and even being scared by it. The last part was something that surprised me the most, I never expected that a horror film so old could actually fill me with a sense of fear and dread. It left such an impact on me that I was having trouble with the dark for a couple days! I thought the film was fantastic. It was scary and it looked amazing. There are so many iconic shots in it for me, even besides the 2 well known shots of Count Orlok. It was safe to say that I was going to be watching more silent films. 

To date I have seen 18 silent films, those being:

• Nosferatu
• The Golem
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• The Phantom
• Die Niebelungen (both parts)
• Battleship Potemkin 
• Faust
• Pandora's Box
• A Trip to the Moon (Among other works by Méliès but almost all of those were shorts)
• The Big Parade
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
• The Last Laugh
• Passion of Joan of Arc
• The Hands of Orlac
• Metropolis 
• Häxan
• The General
• The Mystic 

I won't be talking about all of these movies, but I want to highlight several that I think are significant or I just really enjoy.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a film directed by Robert Wiene released in 1920. This is up there for one of the most visually unique films I've ever seen. The way that the sets are distorted to fit with the nature of the story and the mental state of the main character is so beautiful. The story is also interesting, about a somnambulist at a fair and a murder. It is fairly easy to get into it, which makes it almost always one of the first silent films I show anyone. A supreme example of the German Expressionist movement I was talking about earlier and the main influence on the "Steamed Hams" short that introduced me to the subject.

Faust is an adaptation of the German tale/parts of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play directed by F. W. Murnau, who also directed Nosferatu, released in 1926. The film is an example of the true excellence that silent films could offer, as all the actors do a fantastic job representing everything visually. It also looks excellent, as all the sets look magnificent using a little bit of the Expressionist style to fit the mood. The film has some fantastic special effects, like this amazing scene where the text on a page burst out from fire. As of right now, it is my favorite film by Murnau. 

Pandora's Box is an adaptation of the Lulu plays directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst released in 1929. It was rather late in the grand scheme of silent films, as probably a year or two later they were no longer the main form of film. As a result it showcases a very matured film, as this style of film making had been around for quite some time. Louise Brooks does a fantastic job as the main character Lulu. She always has this look on her face that just gives this feeling that she does and doesn't know what she is doing at the same time. The plot is an absolute rollercoaster which had me flabbergasted the entire time. Just an extremely solid film.

The Big Parade is a film directed by King Vidor released in 1925. Something that you might have noticed about the films I've talked about so far is that they are all European, and so far specifically German. To me, the best serious films were made in Europe. The dramas and films of similar genres in the United States do not quite have the quality and experimentation that the European ones did, so I tend not to watch a ton of American silent films. The Big Parade is a major exception. This is probably my favorite war movie of all time. The extreme tone switch that happens midway through the film as the Americans make it to the front lines works so well when watching it. The first half is this lovey dove romance thing, which felt very typical of the films coming from America at the time, only for the audience to be slapped in the face with the horrors of World War 1. I can only imagine how it felt watching it when it first came out, with the war only ending 7 years prior. 

The Last Laugh is a film directed by F. W. Murnau released in 1924. This is a film that tries to communicate everything completely through visual storytelling, only having 1 intertitle through the entire film. It makes the film quite compelling to watch, as it isn't being interrupted and forces the actors to really put on their best performance. But not only are the actors the ones having to perform as the film makes use of some experimentation with the cinematography and editing that would've been very experimental and new at the time. While I like other Murnau films better, there is no better example of how he was pushing the medium of silent cinema forward.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a film directed by Carl Dreyer released in 1928. This is a historical drama using the record of Joan of Arc's actual trial as the basis. The main thing of interest with this film is Renée Jeanne Falconetti's performance as Joan of Arc. The emotion she is able to express on her face is just fantastic. She famously doesn't wear any makeup in this movie and the film is well known for its use of closeup shots on her face, which just makes it feel a little more real. It is just a super unique film in comparison to films from the time and films in general.

Lastly, Metropolis is a film directed by Fritz Lang released in 1927. This is probably one of the most famous silent films, and for good reason. Being one of the early science fiction films, its visuals have become very important to the look of the genre.The Maschinenmensch is an iconic robot design which has even gone on to influence the likes of Star Wars. The striking visuals stick in my mind so much, and it is up there for one of my favorite sci-fi aesthetics. While perhaps the ending kind makes the film end a little flat, I think the film overall has a very engaging plot.

There are many silent films that I haven't seen. Some of them I just haven't had a chance to see. For example, I've been meaning to watch both versions of The Student of Prague, but I just haven't gotten around to it. With some, I just don't have a good copy of the film. I like watching these movies in high quality as close to how they were meant to be shown as possible. This would go for films like Napoleon (which I am waiting to find the English subtitles for the intertiles) or From Morn To Midnight which I have struggled to find a good restoration of online that also has music. People need to want to see the film and the film itself needs to be put in good hands, so for a lesser known film like the latter it makes sense that one doesn't exist readily available. There exists a tragic third category of silent films I haven't seen, those being ones that I cannot see. These are films lost to time which we have no known copy of. For me these would be the various lost F. W. Murnau and Robert Wiene films and the infamous Cleopatra film from 1917. It's truly sad to me that these are films that I will likely never see. There are varying statistics as to how many silent films are lost, but it is safe to say it is a large amount of them. Back then, film was made out of nitrate which is very flammable. If it wasn't stored in the proper conditions the film could literally spontaneously combust. Several large film vault fires occurred because of this very fact. I'm very thankful for the films that do still exist. 

All of this begs the question, why do I take such interest in silent films? To be quite honest, it is hard to really put it into words. The inherent nature of the films are just so completely different to modern ones. The way they do everything is just different. The stories are different. The way they tell stories are different. The visuals are different. It's all different! I've become so dissatisfied with the state of modern film making that different captures my attention so strongly. Silent films have the bonus of being an old form of a still-existing medium, which is something I always love. Being able to do all this research and investigations about how the film was made is very fun to me. It is very similar to reading old books or listening to old music; All the components that we know exist, but they are arranged in different ways than we are used to. There are also just so many fantastic experiences you can have with silent films that you can't really with modern films. For example, how many modern films can you say you've seen with live organ accompaniment? The medium just presents itself differently, and I cannot help but love it for that. If you haven't seen a single silent film, you should go watch one. Make some popcorn and go watch one! Many are public domain so you can watch them without needing a specific streaming service, but if you have access to a service like Kanopy you get a good selection of the most up to date restorations of many films. Perhaps you could even go to a local theater and see one with some accompaniment! Just go and watch one!

Album Discussion: Five O'Clock Charlie - Five O'Clock Charlie

Waiting for something for a long time often leads to disappointment. I have been waiting almost 2 years to listen to this album, but I can say it has not disappointed me. 

This story starts back in 2024, where a bassist I watch on YouTube released a solo acoustic cover of a song called, "Winter Trying" by this band called Five O'Clock Charlie. I found myself very intrigued by this song. It had such interesting lyrics and such a catchy guitar riff. It certainly screamed 2000s indie band which is a genre of band that I do have an affection for. Obviously my first instinct is to look into this band, and see what else they have available. The only thing on YouTube that was actually from this band (there have been several other bands that share the same name since this one disbanded, so if you look them up you'll get a lot of results for those other bands) was a performance of the same song from their final show. It is a fantastic performance that I have listened to many times over. 

But that was it. There was no other Five O'Clock Charlie easily accessible to me. I remember seeing their self titled album on a shop in Edmonton, where the band is from, on Ebay, but I eventually lost the listing and never bought it. I tried asking the bassist whose cover I watched and he said if he could find his CD he would upload it for me, but that never went anywhere. One of the members, Trevor Belley, made contact with me on a comment on original upload of their live performance (the one I linked is a reupload by Trevor), but I ended up being a little late to the comment and I wasn't sure if he saw my reply at the time. I tried emailing the band that formed out of the death of Five O'Clock Charlie, The Provincial Archive, to no avail. I tried asking the bassist again after this, and he said he would try contacting them. 

Randomly, a few weeks ago, I was on my phone waiting for a bus at night. I noticed I had a YouTube notification, so I checked it. It was Trevor replying to a comment of mine with a link. I clicked on the link... and there it was. The album cover that I had seen before. The first song? Winter Trying. 

So now that I have finally been able to listen to this album, do I actually like it? The simple answer is yes, I do like it. It was everything I wanted this album to be, more Five O'Clock Charlie. That melancholic 2000s indie sound that I had grown so very attached to from the live performance, but now in a high quality studio form. There is a bit more of a folksy flair to the album than I was expecting, but I welcomed it. The album also sounds fantastic, it is very well produced. 

Lost or hard to access media is something that will always interest me, as I am sure many can relate to. The thought of a piece of a media that seems so interesting yet inaccessible is so tantalizing. It makes you want to do nothing but find it, or even just any information about it. You never really expect to actually find it, so it makes it so much more special when you are given access to it. Thank you Trevor Belley for uploading this. Thank you Steve Badach for introducing me to such a wonderful artist. I highly recommend listening to the album, which I will link below. 

 Album: GO LISTEN

Stavi is Still Kicking!

Hello there! I just wanted to give a brief update so nobody thinks I just dropped off the face of the Earth. I am still here! You may wonder where the album reviews are? Well I'm suspending the consistent album reviews indefinitely. I thought about it at the beginning of the new year after the postmortem post and it just felt like it was too much to do consistent reviews like that. The reviews can feel like a lot of effort sometimes, especially when I want to really focus on an album, and are easy to get behind on as seen with what happened last year. I still enjoy the idea of reviewing albums though, so I think I will just do one when I listen to an album that I think is interesting enough to write about or that is very special to me. 

So with no reviews, what will I put on my blog now? Personally, I would like to branch out and talk about other forms of media that I enjoy, as well as just other things that I like. While music is something I truly love, I think by the end of last year I was feeling a little one dimensional in terms of the media I was consuming as I was listening to a lot of music to cover my backlog of albums. So expect posts about movies and other interests of mine. I'd like to at least make one post a month. I think that is an easily achievable goal and sets the expectations low so I don't feel stressed out about it. This post doesn't count towards that, but I have the idea for my next post already. I hope this has cleared things up about the future of this blog, and I look forward to a fun year on here!

Weekly Album: Postmortem

Hello and welcome to the Postmortem for the Weekly Album project that I've done this year. It is insane to me that I actually made it this far and managed to listen to every album before the year was over, as there have been points in the year where I thought for sure that this whole thing was going to fall apart at any moment. Before we get into the real meat of this post, I just want to say thank you to all the people who have read all these posts.

Statistics and Data

To start, I'm going to be doing a little bit of data analysis. The most basic aspect of this would be finding the mean and median score of all the albums I listened to this year. The mean ended up being 7.826 and the median was 8. The scores also had a standard deviation of 1.491. So what does this really mean for the albums? It means that on average I enjoyed the albums that I listened to as the mean score is rather high and the median score, being the score that is roughly in the center of all the scores, is also high. The standard deviation here means that on average the scores varied from the mean by 1.491 points, so on average my scores would be in the range of 6.335 to 9.317. All of this indicates to me that I seemed to enjoy the albums I listened to. 

 

Another important aspect of all of this is what kind of music did I listen to the most. The generalized Pie Chart below shows the percentages of each major genre that I listened to, with anything that didn't fit in the main categories summed into an "Other" category. I felt that it was right to combine Indie and Emo due to their ties and vagueness in genres, but anything labelled under Indie-Pop did not go into the Indie category. 

 

 

 

So based on this it seems I listened to a lot of Rock and Indie music, but it is also important to get into specifics on those. Below is a much less generalized Pie Chart which shows individual genres, except for anything that had a percentage smaller than 1%.

 

 

 

Apologies for the small font size. Based on this, the most represented genres would be Indie Rock, Alternative Rock, Progressive Pop, Midwest Emo, and Indie Pop. I do think that it might be fair to mix some of these genres together, but this is just what the raw data shows. The real question here is what genres did I like the most? To find this out I sorted all the albums with their genres by score, and only looked at albums with a score of 8 or above. This score is what I would consider to be the minimum score of a really good album, so it would be a good indicator of what genres I like if the albums with those genres have a score of 8 or above. Based on this, Rock shows up 21 times, Indie shows up 13 times, Pop shows up 9 times, and Emo shows up 5 times. It is important to note that this is doing a lot of double counting, as many albums have a mix of these genre tags. I do think that this kind of shows that I tend to like a mix of Indie and Rock, which I think is an accurate measurement. 

 

A fun piece of data to me is seeing when many of the albums that I enjoyed this year were made, as this can give me clues as to what eras to look into for more music. The Bar Graph below shows the amount of albums I listened to per year, with only the years I listened to an album represented to make it easier to understand.

 

 

 

So based on this we can see that the year with the most albums from was shockingly 2025! Though 1999 is in a close second place, only 1 album less. I will say though, the late 90s in general beat out any other era of time when it comes to what I listened to, which does not surprise me at all. A lot of that Indie, Emo, and Alternative Rock stuff I listened to this year was from the late 90s. That is just when that stuff existed for the most part. So what era did I like the most music from? To figure this out I once again only looked at albums with a score of 8 or above, and then sorted by year. The results of this are shown in a Bar Graph below.

 

 

 

This bar graph indicates to me that I really enjoyed music from the 90s. Looking at these albums, only 3 of them were from before 1996, so I would say the late 90s would be the most liked era for music based on the albums I listened to.

A fun piece of data to look at is what were my least favorite albums this year. I decided the criteria for this would be all the albums I gave a score below a 6. These albums (in order I listened to them) are:

• Animals - TTNG
• How To Leave Town - Car Seat Headrest
• Deathconciousness - Have a Nice Life
• Up High In the Night - Arlo
• Phantom Island - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
• One Week - First of October

For the most part, I wouldn't say I outright disliked these albums, just that they were not my thing or were disappointing in some way. I think they all had some good qualities, for example I liked some of the songs on One Week. But the good outweighed the bad just enough to go below a 6. These are just extremely average albums. 

I would say the most important piece of data to collect from this is what albums did I like the most? What albums did I give that mythical, 2 digit number... a 10. I gave 7 albums a score of a 10, and those are (in order of when I listened to them)

• Switched On Bach II - Wendy Carlos
• Long Season - Fishmans
• Everything is a Miracle Nothing is a Miracle Everything Is - Kickball
• Thank You, Guitar - Cyrus Pireh
• Song Cycle - Van Dyke Parks
• This Afternoon's Malady - Jejune
• Yeti - Amon Düül II

This 7 albums have the legendary status of being the best albums I listened to for this project. Looking back on this, I can say I think I am correct about all of them. Many of the albums I listened to this year I didn't give much thought after the listens I gave it for the review, but I came back to these albums multiple times after the review, except for Yeti as I just listened to that yesterday for the review so I'm giving it a little bit of time. I also know that I came back to Song Cycle the most as I listened to it so much it showed up in my Spotify Wrapped. How about that for an album that had an impact on what I listen to.

Conclusions

To wrap everything up, I think I can say that this project was mostly a success. I found a lot of albums that I enjoyed, and some that I really truly loved. I do wish I varied up the music I listened to more. In an ideal world, there wouldn't really be a clear winner in terms of what genre I listened to the most. That came about just because of my trouble finding albums to listen to on my own, so I would just gravitate towards stuff I had a feeling I would like or was already on my radar. 

 

So what now? Well I think based on how easy it was for this project to spiral out of my control, I think I might slow down for next year. I still greatly enjoy listening and reviewing music in this format, but I think next year I'll do every other week instead of every week. This will also give me more chances to make blog posts about other things, which I feel I lacked this year. It was a lot to listen to the albums and then write the review, and it would take away from the energy I wanted to give towards other blog posts. For example, that is why the Eggy review became my King Gizzard rant post because I could not find the motivation to write it besides for an album review. So look forward to more rants or maybe other post formats! Have a Happy New Year and thank you for reading. 

Weekly Album: Week of 12/25 - 12/30 - Yeti

This week I listened to Yeti by Amon Düül II. I wanted to end the year off on a good note with an album from a band that has been on my radar for a while from a scene that I really love, but just never really gave them the time of day. Amon Düül II were a German Rock group from the 70s that fit in that Krautrock/Kosmische Musik/Psychedelic Rock or whatever you would like to call it scene at the time in Germany. I certainly wanted to end the year on a good note, and by golly did I! This is a fantastic album! It the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to this style of music to me and also how other bands are influenced by it. Yeti is a much more fuzzy and rocking album than a lot of the other music I've heard from this scene. This album just comes at you on the rocker numbers. It has fun jams and is just really interesting and engrossing to listen to. It reminds me a lot of late 2010s Osees (at the time Oh Sees) which makes sense because John Dwyer always said he got a lot of inspiration from these German bands. He always cited Can, though honestly I feel like that era of Osees sound a lot more like this album. The rockers are just some very amazing fuzzed out Psychedelic numbers. Amon Düül II are not afraid to get more experimental and not so rocking with it too, which is always the fun part about these bands. A song like "She Came Through The Chimney" is the prime example of this on the album. Things relax a little bit with some clean guitar and bongos while these wild melodies play in one year and these beautiful strings play in the other ear. What a fantastic little track, and it really serves as a great interlude in the middle of the album. Everything about all of this just works in my brain so fantastically. The production is perfect for this kind of sound and is actually quite good for the era. Everything sounds rather clean and I can hear all the layers pretty well. The main album does all this with some real brevity for an album of this nature, but this is just where the fun begins. There is another 23 minutes of improvised jams acting as the album's second side which are just great fun to listen to. They really go all out and wander wildly. It feels insane that some of these jams start the way they do considering where they end up. I truly love this album and am extremely glad I listened to it and that it was my last album of the year. 10/10

It has been a pleasure reviewing all these albums for anyone reading this. I know there aren't many of you out there, but I want to say thank you to those that are here right now, or whenever you are reading this. Sometime this week, though I plan on it being up tomorrow, I'm going to do a Postmortem of sorts on the Weekly Album project. I'll just be talking about my thoughts and feelings on it and also doing a little bit of data analysis about all the albums. See you then!

Weekly Album: Week of 04/09 - 04/15 - Deathconciousness

I was supposed to listen to Deathconciousness by Have A Nice Life during the week of April 9th to April 15th, but I didn't. So I listened to it this week instead. This album has been a bit of a nemesis to this weekly album project. It's absurd length scared me into not listening to it on time when I was supposed to, and it led to my Spring spiraling out of control when it came to my albums and I missed 7 in total because of it. I saved this one for last out of the missing ones due to this significance. I think I tried listening to this album 3 different times counting the original time, and I kept getting scared off by the length. After listening to it, I now realize that the length is not scary but rather excruciating. I can only take so many beatings against my ears before I want to call it quits, and I was right at my limit with this album. The album just does not sound very interesting which I was greatly disappointed by after finally getting past the first couple songs. The first one especially is quite enjoyable and was what I was hoping the rest of the album would be like. Instead the album is just some loud and poorly produced Shoegaze-esque music that I just can't jive with. I found it rather uninteresting and forgettable. I enjoy noisy music, or heavily layered music, but Shoegaze just does that stuff in the wrong ways to me. I really wish I had more to talk about with this album. It just is not my thing at all and I was bored the entire time. Sorry to my friend who suggested I listen to it. 4.5/10

Weekly Album: Week of 05/21 - 05/27 - Broken Door

I was supposed to listen to Broken Door by Propser during the week of May 21st to May 27th, but I didn't. So I listened to it this week instead. I believe when I found this album I was looking for more experimental German rock from the 1970s as this is what that is. I will say compared to other bands from the same era they are a bit more straight ahead when it comes to their Rock, but they also bring some Jazz to it to which is really fun. They also have a little bit of a feel closer to Space Rock bands, specifically the golden era of Hawkwind which would've been around the same time and while not quite Space Rock they sound a little like Pink Floyd at times. Both of these are good things as it all comes together to make a nice blend of sounds that makes them stand out from other bands of the era but still feel like they fit within that scene. Another thing that is a bit different is Prosper has more vocals than a lot of the other bands from that scene. Only really Can are known for really singing but especially when they had Damo Suzuki as the vocalist were a little more out there with the vocals. These feel a lot more in line with the more straight ahead feeling Rock that I was describing earlier. There is even some hints of Pop fun on this album with the song, "Your Country".  That has some fun melodies in from every instrument and has such a fun drive to it. This is an interesting album that changes up a genre I hold near and dear to my heart just enough to be unique but still enjoyable. 8/10