I WATCHED HUGO

   I finally watched Martin Scorsese's film "Hugo" the other day. For those of you who haven't seen it, don't worry, I won't be spoiling much here. Oh, and I recommend watching it.

   The film made me think back to my film history days when we were learning about the rocky transition from silent to talking pictures. The silent movies were really becoming quite astounding (with a few exceptions) in their visual storytelling, and the talking pictures were (with a few exceptions) a huge step backward as far as the art of movie making was concerned. One of the main reasons for the loss in quality was the restrictions of the new camera and audio set up. Cameras of the day were noisy, and so had to be placed in a large soundproofed room with a glass wall to film through. The actors couldn't move around or turn their heads or else the audio recording would become useless.

   These restrictions frustrated most of the great silent film era film makers and, sadly, most of their careers didn't survive the transition. It took a couple of decades before movies could claw their way back to the quality of storytelling they had before the advent of sound.

   So go watch some late era silent films and early era talking films and let me know what you think. And while I always recommend watching "The Jazz Singer", it doesn't count for this exercise because it's mostly a silent movie with a few talking/singing scenes.