Kevin Brownlow Quotations

Silent pictures show us how we lived and what our attitudes were. And as an art form, they can be wonderfully entertaining and often inspirational.

I realised that you could easily turn any room into a cinema with a projector, so I went on and on at my parents for one. They eventually got me a projector for Christmas when I was ten, and I realised I'd made a ridiculous mistake - I'd forgotten to say 'movie' projector; I got a still one.

I was sent to boarding school - a grim place. The only good thing the headmaster did for us was every Sunday evening in the winter he would show us films in the chapel. He couldn't afford a sound projector, so we saw silent films, which you could then still rent from photographic shops.

Some directors were brilliant in the silent era but never felt at home in sound. It's like a sculptor being forced to take up painting.

To me, film is a religion. I don't expect to get paid to make it, but I do expect total dedication.

Friends told me not to bother with the silents - they're jerky, poorly photographed and ludicrously badly acted. But I was immediately struck by the freshness and vitality of these films.

Napoleon is pure cinema, and cinema was designed for sharing.

It was 1953, and I was still at school. I'd borrowed a silent French film from the library for my 9.5mm projector. It was by Jean Epstein, and it was awful. So I rang the library and asked if they had anything else. They said they had 'Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution.'

My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.

Somebody said that part of my reaction to British cinema is actually, paradoxically, a patriotic one. I'm so disappointed that we're not better.

I decided to restore 'Napoleon' after a widescreen festival at the Odeon Leicester Square in 1968. It was run by Richard Arnell and George Dunning, who animated and directed 'Yellow Submarine,' and they'd got their hands on the last scene, the triptychs. They just showed that part, without music and with the projectors misaligned.

The reason I put so much energy into it at the beginning was that while there were plenty of people looking after the talkies, almost nobody was doing the same for the silents. Now there are plenty of very good historians and restorers.

She was so completely herself. That was the woman Green knew and the woman the family knew. I wish I knew that woman. She seems glowing and humorous and down to earth.

She never gives a bad performance. There are one or two disappointing films, like Mata Hari, but it's still full of fabulous imagery.

The silent film was not only a vigorous popular art; it was a universal language - Esperanto for the eyes

rare actresses who was able to become the person she was playing and experience the emotions that that person was having. It was incredibly painful, almost psychic and quite devastating for her.

They felt a lot of Garbo myths were wrong. It was unfair to her they hadn't been corrected. It would have been very interesting to do a documentary with the family alone.

There was Garbo coming home with her shopping from the supermarket. So we were turned into pillars of salt, ... she would have fled.

I tried hard to meet her, but when I saw her in the street, I turned to a pillar of salt.

In a sense those tests conveyed more of her personality than anything else we've seen. . . . You suddenly see what it must have been like just to sit next to her.

My first restoration was on Napoleon, trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.

I thought Michael Mortilla was an orchestra unto himself!