prokopetz:

With respect to the whole sex-scenes-in-movies discourse, I think that nearly any comedy of the silent film era would in fact be greatly improved by the addition of a gratuitous sex scene, provided that it was shot and edited with the exact sensibilities of the era’s slapstick chase sequences, complete with flailing limbs, jangly piano score, frenetic undercranked film speed, and – this is key – that obligatory moment where the protagonist abruptly pauses to wipe their brow and give the camera a pointed Look before getting back to it.

At Cornell once I went to a showing of early black and white silent porn films and you realize that just like they didn’t reliably get the angles right until professionalization in the 1970s and 80s (and have kind of lost that with recent amateurism), “use attractive casts” was not at first obvious