There are many, many silent films where one wishes one had a fuller and/or better copy by which to judge the film. There are however a handful where one wishes one had a less "perfect" copy.
The Informer (1929 version) was for instance made both as a silent film and as part talkie and for a long time the part-talkie version was thought to the lost. Now it has been rediscovered and the silent version seems to have disappeared. It is interesting (historically) to have the part-talkie, but the dubbing of the voices is so atrocious that it completely spoils the films. What one really wants to watch is the silent version.
The same is true for rather different reasons of Sternberg's The Salvation Hunters. If only one had this without the pretentious foreword or any of the intertitles, this would be a very charming little film if not really a masterpiece. But the intertitles (not a single word of which is necessary) are just awful, needlessly underlining the symbolism (and making it therefore seem more irritating than interesting) and written in a style that is absolutely nauseating. So here it would be much better to have an imperfect version which simply retained the images.
In this case one could, with a it of an effort, re-edit oneself but alas it is not possible with The Informer just to turn off the sound because one needs the intertitles that were present in the silent version.
If silent films survived to be re-released during the "sound" era, they were often sadly marred by the addition of sound, colour and unnecessary titling (on the theory presumably that audiences used to sound would lack the necessary concentration required for visual understanding). Some of the worst examples of this are the films of haplin, who seemed incapable of leaving well alone and would add his own overly-sentimental musical compositions and unnecessary (and unfunny) titles (he had absolutely no talent in this regard. It is again a case where the last thing one wants is the director's "final cut".
Sternberg was in many ways a pretentious man (certainly a highly conceited one) but he was not normally pretentious in this manner. He is in fact on record as saying that the use of language was the worst means of communicating and in his best films was an adept of the "unspoken" (Morocco is for me the finest example in that particular respect).
The verbosity in this film is therefore very uncharacteristic and reminds far more of Chaplin (the Chaplin for instance of Limelight). I would not be at all surprised if some day it is discovered that it was Chaplin who advised Sternberg to include so much tiresome verbiage, advice that Sternberg would have had at the time compelling reasons to accept.
The Informer (1929 version) was for instance made both as a silent film and as part talkie and for a long time the part-talkie version was thought to the lost. Now it has been rediscovered and the silent version seems to have disappeared. It is interesting (historically) to have the part-talkie, but the dubbing of the voices is so atrocious that it completely spoils the films. What one really wants to watch is the silent version.
The same is true for rather different reasons of Sternberg's The Salvation Hunters. If only one had this without the pretentious foreword or any of the intertitles, this would be a very charming little film if not really a masterpiece. But the intertitles (not a single word of which is necessary) are just awful, needlessly underlining the symbolism (and making it therefore seem more irritating than interesting) and written in a style that is absolutely nauseating. So here it would be much better to have an imperfect version which simply retained the images.
In this case one could, with a it of an effort, re-edit oneself but alas it is not possible with The Informer just to turn off the sound because one needs the intertitles that were present in the silent version.
If silent films survived to be re-released during the "sound" era, they were often sadly marred by the addition of sound, colour and unnecessary titling (on the theory presumably that audiences used to sound would lack the necessary concentration required for visual understanding). Some of the worst examples of this are the films of haplin, who seemed incapable of leaving well alone and would add his own overly-sentimental musical compositions and unnecessary (and unfunny) titles (he had absolutely no talent in this regard. It is again a case where the last thing one wants is the director's "final cut".
Sternberg was in many ways a pretentious man (certainly a highly conceited one) but he was not normally pretentious in this manner. He is in fact on record as saying that the use of language was the worst means of communicating and in his best films was an adept of the "unspoken" (Morocco is for me the finest example in that particular respect).
The verbosity in this film is therefore very uncharacteristic and reminds far more of Chaplin (the Chaplin for instance of Limelight). I would not be at all surprised if some day it is discovered that it was Chaplin who advised Sternberg to include so much tiresome verbiage, advice that Sternberg would have had at the time compelling reasons to accept.