A love letter, and a chronicle. Silents, Please! focuses on silent cinema and silent film history, illustrated plentifully with film stills and animated gifs.
Generally, I follow the road less travelled in silent film, looking at interesting flotsam & jetsam of the silent era rather than the Hollywood canon. Some of my main interests include: women on the silent screen; Italian silent cinema; pre-Revolutionary Russian cinema; experimental films; cinema of the teens; and films celebrating 100 years of age. This blog started out as a relatively casual place for film commentary, but has increasingly become more research-focused.
One of the major foci of Silents, Please! is the genre of Italian diva films, one of my longest and strong obsessions. For several years I ran Diva December, a concentrated burst of writing about the genre. All my posts on diva films are here, or you can read an introduction to the genre here.
Feel free to send me an email at silentspleaseblog@gmail.com, or comment here.
Update, December 2021: Obviously, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog. I haven’t lost my love for the topic, but the last couple of years have been very demanding with job/career/life stuff. I won’t be going back to weekly updates any time soon, but I may post sporadically in future!
About me: I live in Aotearoa New Zealand. In time gone by, I worked in audiovisual preservation; now, by day I work in software; by night I’m obsessed with old films, among other things. I’m not very active on social media, but I do Tweet … infrequently.
Copyright notice: Contents of this blog © Silents, Please; all rights are reserved on original content and research posted here. Please credit me if referring to my research or writing.
Silents, Please! 
Beautiful to discover someone who finds their own niche in life, on the web, wherever, and then blooms and blossoms!, and starts to flower out of it! and just grows & grows and starts to take over everything around it. Beautifully well done! Bravo!
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Thank you! This is a lovely comment.
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Wow! What an incredible blog. Outside of the usual suspects (Melie, Murnau, Lang, Lubitsch, Eisenstein, Pabst, etc) I wasn’t aware just how rich the canon of European silent cinema was.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and interest with us and for opening my eyes to these fascinating and overlooked gems! :-)
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Thank you for the lovely comment! :)
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Amazing blog! Congrats! https://cinemaliquido.wordpress.com/
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Thank you!
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Your blog is really beautiful and amazing, just as much as your writing style. Keep going with this passion we both share!
Greetings from Italy: I’m following you from now on.
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Ciao! Thank you for the lovely comment. Look out for some more writing about Italian films in the next while :)
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There is a Giff on Facebook today depicting a group of bewinged and pitchfork wielding devils tormentinting those in a pit. What films this from please.
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Hi there! That will be from the 1911 film Inferno. :)
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I love your blog – especially because you also are a big fan of the dashing, adorable, brilliant, athletic, multi-talented, and expressive artist – the divine Ivan Mosjoukine! Do you have any leads on where to buy films such as, “LE SERGENT X”, “Michel Beefstrogoff”, and “Casanova” talking version – just to name a few? I would be so ever grateful!
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Thank you! Yes, Mosjoukine is brilliant – I just came off a rewatch of the fabulous La maison de mystère, which no doubt you’ve seen. A poor quality copy of Michel Strogoff is floating round the web, but I’ve never seen Le sergent X nor the 1934 Casanova in the wild. Let’s hope that Flicker Alley’s valiant output over the last couple of years leads to more Mosjoukine releases in future.
There are a couple of his films online that I haven’t yet watched. Der Adjutant des Zaren is available at the Danish Film Institute’s site; and Manolescu with Brigitte Helm is available here (terrible quality, though).
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Thank you, I bought it!!! At least we have the film, despite the poor quality.
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Yes, I bought it too. It is my favourite Ivan film. He is absolutely gorgeous! The saddest, is that he died in poverty from tuberculosis. I believe his brother, Alexandr, urged him to confess his sins and all that rot, but he refused!!!
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I’ll have to look out for Michel Strogoff, I’ve heard wonderful things from a few people!
Indeed, it’s awful that after such a career, Mosjoukine died in penury. It is too bad for us that he didn’t write an autobiography – such an interesting life. Some letters and documents survive in Alexandr Mozzhukhin’s archive – it would be interesting to find out what they say.
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Auto correct made a boo-boo regards: Michel Strogoff, not Beefstrogoff! Anyway I bought it and loved it!
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Really into your articles <3
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Thanks so much, I love to hear this!
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I’ve nominated you for the Sunshine Blogger Award! – http://wp.me/p2mMDp-3b7
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Thank you! I’m slammed at the moment so I’m not sure that I can do the Q&A, but I appreciate the nod. :)
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Hi there! Thought I would leave this here (the email link wasn’t working for me, however my laptop is quite ancient and strange ;-) ) You are cordially invited to join the Third Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon, which I’m hosting February 19-21, 2017. 2017 will mark 100 years since Buster first entered “moving pictures,” so this year’s event is extra exciting! I will also be working with the International Buster Keaton Society to help publicize this event.
Let me know if you’d like to join, would love to have you!
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Huh, that’s weird – the email was correct in draft view, but was just linking to gmail.com in the published version. I’ve now edited – thanks for letting me know about that!
The blogathon sounds fab, but I’ve just come off an ridiculous workweek and a bit braindead. I would love to join, but can I confirm closer to the time? Thank you for thinking of me.
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Certainly, take all the time you need! I can sympathize with the busy workweek, that’s for sure.
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