{"id":2635177,"date":"2026-07-25T06:59:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T10:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/museum-of-modern-art-to-feature-silent-masterpieces-by-chaplin-keaton-griffith\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T07:03:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:03:21","slug":"museum-of-modern-art-to-feature-silent-masterpieces-by-chaplin-keaton-griffith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/museum-of-modern-art-to-feature-silent-masterpieces-by-chaplin-keaton-griffith\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum of Modern Art to feature silent masterpieces by Chaplin, Keaton, Griffith"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmuseum-of-modern-art-to-feature-silent-masterpieces-by-chaplin-keaton-griffith%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2635177&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article reflects on the author&#8217;s experience with learning to read through magazines like The New Yorker, where cartoons, ads, and silent film screenings sparked a captivation with distant worlds and early cinema. It highlights the significance of the Museum of Modern Art&#8217;s Silent Movie Week, featuring restored classics such as D.W. Griffith\u2019s *Way Down East* and F.W. murnau\u2019s *Sunrise*. The event will honor authentic silent film traditions by including live music, supervised by composers who worked on the original scores, providing audiences with an immersive experience. <\/p>\n<p>the program also includes screenings of lesser-known but historically significant films like *The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg*, *The Navigator*, *What Price Glory*, and *3 Bad men*, some of which have been recently restored after decades of scarcity due to loss or destruction-most notably after the devastating 1937 nitrate film explosion in New Jersey.Many silent films, including works by stars like Theda Bara and Valeska Suratt, were lost forever, making the surviving prints a precious window into early cinema.<\/p>\n<p>The article emphasizes the artistic and cultural value of silent films, noting their ability to communicate worldwide stories through archetypes and visuals, often without dialog.It praises the timelessness of films like *Sunrise*, regarded as one of the greatest silent dramas, and celebrates the efforts to preserve and restore such cinematic heritage for new and seasoned audiences alike. The piece concludes by acknowledging the enduring beauty and significance of silent film as a pioneering art form that continues to fascinate and inspire.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<article class=\"fn-body\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I learned to read through turning the pages of the <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/magazine\/1069200\/there-at-the-new-yorker\/\">New Yorker<\/a><\/em>. It was the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/section\/editorial-cartoons\/\">cartoons<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/advertising\/\">ads<\/a> that hooked me, but after I grew fascinated by silent films, I always looked in the back of the magazine for its pages of faraway weekly screenings, my head full of dreams. <\/p>\n<section class=\"explore-more-section\" id=\"wex-recommended-widget\">\n<div class=\"magazine-container single\">\n<h1 class=\"magazine-title mt-2\">Recommended Stories<\/h1>\n<p>             <i class=\"fa-solid fa-play icon\"><\/i>         <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-grid\">\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4663169\/whca-dinner-do-over-enhanced-security-measures-fewer-crowds\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner do-over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/whca-dinner-do-over-features-enhanced-security-measures-and-fewer-crowds\/\" title=\"WHCA dinner do-over features enhanced security measures and fewer crowds\">features enhanced security measures<\/a>, smaller crowd<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4662203\/second-lady-usha-vance-shares-new-photos-of-baby-alec\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Second lady Usha Vance shares new photos of baby Alec<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4660794\/tucker-carlson-says-was-wrong-big-things-was-wrong-trump\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Tucker Carlson says he was \u2018wrong on big things. I was wrong on Trump\u2019\u00a0to Stephen A. Smith<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sixty years on, I remember that the most enticing listings were always from the Museum of Modern Art. The museum continues its primacy today, especially during Silent Movie Week,\u00a0organized by department of <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/film\/\">film<\/a> curator and scholar\u00a0Dave Kehr\u00a0and department assistant Steve Macfarlane, which begins\u00a0July 29\u00a0at MoMA with a screening of D.W. Griffith\u2019s <em>Way Down East<\/em> (1920). It will continue through Aug. 4, when a newly restored print of F.W. Murnau\u2019s eerie and ecstatic <em>Sunrise <\/em>(1927) will be shown for the first time in <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/new-york\/\">New York<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-1\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-1\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-15\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-1\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the larger cities, silent films were rarely \u201csilent.\u201d A band, a pianist, an organist, 78 rpm recordings, and sometimes an original score would accompany the screen action. MoMA will respect this tradition by including <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/music\/\">music<\/a> for all its films. Opening night should be particularly engaging. Griffith himself supervised the two composers who wrote music for <em>Way Down East<\/em>, William Frederick Peters and Louis Silvers, and the musicologist Gillian B. Anderson will lead a 10-piece orchestra in the premiere of her reconstruction of what audiences might have heard\u00a0over\u00a0105\u00a0years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us know <em>The Student Prince <\/em>through the 1954 setting of Sigmund Romberg\u2019s operetta with singing by Mario Lanza. The director\u00a0Ernst\u00a0Lubitsch made many musicals himself but\u00a0his version of the material,<em> The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg<\/em> (1927), was silent and has remained relatively obscure, as it was not successful with audiences or critics. It may be\u00a0high time for a reevalution\u00a0of the film,\u00a0showing Aug. 1.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\">Buster Keaton in \u201cThe Navigator.\u201d  (The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive)<\/p>\n<p>&#8221; data-large-file=&#8221;https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2026\/07\/localimages\/LA.Culture.072926.jpg?w=696&#8243; height=&#8221;658&#8243; width=&#8221;1024&#8243; &#8220;https:><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Buster Keaton in \u201cThe Navigator.\u201d  (The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At an afternoon screening the next day, Aug. 2, there will be a triple feature of Charles Chaplin\u2019s short films for First National from 1918 \u2014 the lovely <em>A Dog\u2019s Life<\/em>; <em>Shoulder Arms<\/em>, a comedy set on the battlefields of World War I; and a 10-minute propaganda film to help sell U.S. Liberty Bonds that Chaplin made with his regular actors Albert Austin, Edna Purviance, and his brother Sydney.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Buster Keaton is often spoken of as Chaplin\u2019s rival. In fact, aside from the fact that they both made great silent comedies, they had almost nothing to do with each other. Chaplin was generally warm and sentimental, while Keaton was cool and objective. <em>The Navigator <\/em>(1924), screening on July 30,\u00a0was Keaton\u2019s biggest success during his lifetime, and he named it at least once as his personal favorite among his films. This complicated story of mix-ups and mishaps at sea will be accompanied by the pianist and organist Ben Model, who will share keyboard duties with Makia Matsumura throughout the festival. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-2\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-2\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-16\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-2\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One film has long been particularly hard to find in a quality print. <em>What Price Glory<\/em> (1926), directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen, was a huge success in its time but fell out of copyright and was long available only in battered prints from smaller companies. This mixture of raucous comedy and unusually vivid war scenes was considered quite shocking for its time. The restoration being shown here on July 31 is magnificent. It should be noted that <em>What Price Glory<\/em> has no spoken dialogue but does incorporate sound effects \u2014 a technique that Chaplin also used in his last two \u201csilents,\u201d <em>City Lights<\/em> (1931) and <em>Modern Times<\/em> (1936). <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">John Ford\u2019s <em>3\u00a0Bad Men <\/em>was also difficult to find \u2014 and undervalued \u2014 for many years until 2007, when a gigantic\u00a0DVD box set\u00a0called \u201cFord at Fox\u201d was issued, containing\u00a0this Ford film and 23 others. Since then, it has received its own release and has won many admirers, especially for its panoramic images of the Old West. This showing of <em>3 Bad Men<\/em>, on Aug. 3, will mark the premiere of a newly recorded orchestral score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are enormously lucky to have prints of <em>3 Bad Men <\/em>and <em>What Price Glory <\/em>at all,\u00a0for their negatives haven\u2019t existed in almost 90 years. In\u00a0the early morning of July 9, 1937, a storage unit in Little Ferry, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/new-york\/\">New Jersey<\/a>, where 20th\u00a0Century Fox\u00a0stored\u00a0dangerously flammable nitrate film, simply exploded. It was ruled as a spontaneous combustion, apparently because of the summer heat combined with gases escaping from decomposing film, sending flames some 100 feet into the air and killing a 13-year-old boy.    <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-3\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-3\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-17\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-3\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This\u00a0was\u00a0the filmic equivalent of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Within a few minutes, 683 of the 820 silent films Fox made between 1914 and 1929 were no more. Whole careers vanished in the inferno \u2014 all but two of Ford\u2019s 40 silent Westerns that he made for Fox no longer existed, and almost all the early films by the young cowboy star Tom Mix went with them. The legendary \u201cvamp\u201d Theda Bara, whose image as Cleopatra has become one of the most recognizable icons of the silent screen, lost almost all of her films (including all but a few minutes of <em>Cleopatra<\/em>). It was even worse for Valeska Suratt, whose 11 feature films were destroyed, without a surviving fragment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are particularly lucky that Iris Barry, the founder and first curator for MoMA\u2019s film department, toured the world after her appointment in 1935 and acquired original prints of these perishable films. Indeed, the San Francisco Film Preserve version of <em>Sunrise <\/em>is far and away the most beautiful I\u2019ve ever seen, due in part to the incorporation of parts of the MoMA print that was bought so long ago. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Sunrise <\/em>vies with King Vidor\u2019s masterpiece, <em>The Crowd <\/em>(1928), as my favorite silent drama and also features sound effects. Spoken dialogue could hardly have \u201cimproved\u201d <em>Sunrise<\/em>. Indeed, the late historian William K. Everson called it \u201ca textbook illustration not only of what the silent film could achieve despite the lack of dialogue but, on the contrary, what it could achieve <em>because<\/em> of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-4\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-4\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-25\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-4\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe film is ambiguous as to its setting,\u201d he elaborated. \u201cCertain aspects suggest Europe but it could just as well be taking place in Canada or Georgia. Even the time period is arguable. Clothing is certainly not of the mid-1920\u2019s and, if the automobiles are, then the stylized city set and the futuristic amusement park further \u2014 and deliberately \u2014 muddy the waters. Yet dialogue \u2026 would automatically have tied it to a period and a country, and the universality would have gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/premium\/4623661\/film-review-were-all-too-old-for-new-toy-story-nostalgia-technology-lilypad\/\">WE\u2019RE ALL TOO OLD FOR THE NEW \u2018TOY STORY\u2019 MOVIE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Everson was right. In fact, the film\u2019s story would still be comprehensible if its few subtitles were removed (one of Murnau\u2019s earlier silents\u00a0\u2014 1924\u2019s <em>The Last Laugh<\/em> \u2014 has no titles whatsoever). The characters are not even given names but treated instead as pure archetypes \u2014 \u201cThe Man,\u201d \u201cThe Wife,\u201d \u201cThe Woman From the City,\u201d and so on. Murnau planned <em>Sunrise <\/em>as\u00a0a timeless, Aesopian fable, and he succeeded.\u00a0The story is simple and implausible, about a man who sets out to drown his wife but falls ever more deeply in love with her instead. (Many contemporary viewers will mistrust the outcome.) <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-5\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-5\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-26\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-5\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, go on and marvel. Those who have never explored silent film will have a wonderful introduction ahead of them\u00a0next week. The rest of us will simply bask in the\u00a0glowing\u00a0beauty of what film was able to accomplish in the early 20th\u00a0century\u00a0and be grateful for what we still have.  <\/p>\n<p><em>Tim Page began making his own silent 8mm films in 1966, a pastime that was captured in the short film <\/em>A Day With Timmy Page <em>(1967). He is a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California and the winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his writings about music in the <\/em>Washington Post<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learned to read via New Yorker cartoons, dreams of silent films<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4372,"featured_media":2635178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/LA.Culture.072926.jpg?w=696","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[83176,83174,83175],"class_list":["post-2635177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-chaplin","tag-modern-art","tag-silent-film"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/LA.Culture.072926.jpg?w=696","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2635177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2635181,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635177\/revisions\/2635181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2635178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2635177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2635177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2635177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}