silver nitrate notes
a personal log of classic black and white cinema
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currently watching
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Dreyer). second viewing this month, on the Norwegian-print restoration.
recent updates
14 apr · published Toland piece
09 apr · archive tidied
02 apr · april watch log added
27 mar · fixed broken Murnau link
14 mar · new guestbook entries
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welcome
08 may 2026
Eighteen years in. One hundred and eight posts. Three pieces went up over the last fortnight: a longer essay on Subrata Mitra and the bedsheet that lit Pather Panchali (1955), a piece on John Alton and the noir cycle that T-Men (1947) effectively launched, and the newest, on Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932) and the door that stays closed. Kurosawa's Stray Dog (1949) is still on the list and may make it up before winter.
If you are new here, the site's focus is the classic cinema of the monochrome era, silent films through the late 1950s, with occasional forays into the early New Wave. There is more about the project on the about page. The full archive is there, and so is the rolling watch log for anyone curious about what I am actually putting on the projector.
recent posts
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Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise and the Door That Stays Closed
08 may 2026
Comedy is for the door that stays closed. Comedy is for the audience trusted to imagine what is on the other side. -
John Alton, T-Men, and the Black That Was Not a Mistake
03 may 2026
The look of postwar American film noir was figured out by a poverty-row cameraman trying to expose negative film with three quarters of the lights he was promised. -
Subrata Mitra and the Bedsheet that Lit Pather Panchali
22 apr 2026
He was twenty-one, had never operated a film camera, and figured out, on his first picture, how to fill a mud-brick room with the sun. -
Gregg Toland's Deep Focus Was an Accident
12 apr 2026
The technique on display in Kane arrives there fully developed because Toland had already developed it. -
Wild Strawberries and Victor Sjöström's Last Face
18 aug 2025
Bergman cast a seventy-seven-year-old founding figure of Swedish silent cinema. Fischer photographed what he got. -
Godard's Breathless and the Jump Cut as Declaration
30 may 2025
The rough cut was too long. Godard cut within shots. The jump cut was an accident that became a declaration.
» full archive (108 posts since 2008)
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