IMDb user comments for
Forgotten Silver (1995) (TV)

advertisement

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 5:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Index

49 comments in total

---

19 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
A wonderful movie about the movies, 10 June 1999

Author: Michael Szczuka (michael.szczuka@mch.sni.de) from Germany

This film could've been made only by someone with a deep love of cinema : an homage to movies, coming from the heart. It's just too bad that Colin McKenzie didn't live to see his work being appreciated ...

Come to tink of it: it's just too bad that Colin didn't live at all. What a loss!

---

12 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Fascinating beyond belief, 12 January 2001

Author: el_monty_BCN from Barcelona, Spain

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

When I first saw this on Spanish TV years ago, I didn't know it was fake. In fact I didn't find out for some time, even after I had taped it and rewatched over and over and marvelled at this amazing story and even retold it with childlike enthusiasm and wonder to my less cinephile friends. It was such an overwhelming tragedy, a story that just went upwards in emotion all the time and ended with an inimaginable bang. And I couldn't help myself but think "My God, why didn't Peter Jackson make a movie with this material, instead of just a documentary? There's a drama of epic proportions here just waiting to be filmed!"

And then, months afterwards, I found out. It was too good a story to be true, of course. But I was still thankful to Jackson and Botes for making me believe it and making me feel that fascination. I'm sure Spinal Tap must be a lot funnier and Blair Witch a lot scarier if you watch them not knowing they are fake.

I still treasure Forgotten Silver in my video collection as the best documentary I have ever seen. Even if what it tells is not true.

---

13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Fabulous hoax, 21 August 2005

Author: tomimt from Finland

Peter Jackson and Costa Boeates decided to make this great mockumentary about a man called Colin McKenzie, a man who invented such things as color film, audio film and above all, made the first full length feature movie.

Apparently it was quite a successful hoax in New Zealand, people really did buy it. And I really can't blame them, as most of the fabricated film material really looks like almost hundred years old, almost destroyed film.

And there are some very convincing famous film people, like Sam Neil, telling their knowledge of this McKenzie.

Even the tone of the film isn't actually very funny, even thought there are some things in it that are so absurd, that they make you laugh.

Over all well made mockumentary.

---

12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
What is real anyway?, 16 December 2004

Author: Chris Peterson from A loungeroom in Melbourne

Documentary is all about taking real life and shaping it into a story. 'Forgotten Silver' suggests that real part doesn't even have to be real, as long as the story's good.

I watched this again tonight - probably the 4th or 5th time I've seen it since it was first screened as an (allegedly) true doco back in 1996. Despite knowing the whole thing was cod, I was quite surprised to find tears in my eyes as NZ pioneer film-maker Colin McKenzie accidentally filmed his own death in Spain, so drawn was I into the story.

Once you strip away the hype over the hoax factor, what's left is just a great story about a struggling film maker facing and almost overcoming insurmountable obstacles to create a work of mad genius. Anyone expecting belly laughs from 'Forgotten Silver' is probably going to be disappointed, because viewed as a story, this isn't a comedy - it's a tragedy. It's no wonder so many people were sucked into believing it when it first screened - the Colin McKenzie saga has an emotional depth which is heartbreaking.

Bonus points for a brilliant musical score, some superb technical effects (especially the corroded, bubbling, self-destructing nitrate film; most filmmakers would have settled for a couple of cliché tramlines to make the footage look old), and the gorgeous Thomas Robbins as Colin McKenzie.

---

11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Truly a masterful work, 27 January 2003

Author: Mika Pykäläaho (bygis80@hotmail.com) from Järvenpää, Finland

After the notorious splatter period and of course massively praised "Heavenly creatures" - his very first motion picture with a slightly more serious look and feel, the insane New Zealander Peter Jackson directed "Forgotten silver" with Costa Botes. So far it is definitely one of the most ingenious projects of his whole career.

"Forgotten silver" (just like Woody Allen's classic "Zelig") is filled with silly, senseless and absurd ideas and details to make it all sound a bit too suspicious to be actually true but not enough to make it completely unbelievable either. Actually I've seen real-life documentaries that are even harder to swallow than this. The big joke is that even if it sounds unbelievable it's a documentary and you have to believe it because documentaries always tells you the truth. If you can't trust a documentary then what is there left to trust in the world?

So Peter Jackson once again did something highly forbidden and un-ethical and made a documentary that's only a one big, dirty lie. The dedication Jackson and Botes had just to tell a story of a fictional person is certainly something incredible and respectable. Swindle it may be, but nevertheless from the opening scene when Peter Jackson tells about his amazing discovery of Colin McKenzie's lost film footage to that last picture of McKenzie filming himself using a mirror "Forgotten silver" is a terrific and fascinating story and truly a first-rate documentary. 10/10.

---

11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Best kept secret, 3 January 2002

Author: taita from Wellington New Zealand

I vividly remember the first time I watched this movie. The lead up to the finding of the old films was without any obvious clues, so it wasn't 'til the Richard Pearse footage that we became seriously suspicious. My husband is a forensic photographer so the digital imaging to get the date off the newspaper was a dead giveaway to us. The eleventy seven dozen eggs was another big pointer. From then on we treated the whole thing as a lark and just revelled in the imagination that is Peter Jackson's trade mark.

We were of course, greatly impressed with the enormity of the project and could only surmise that the actors in the "Salome" movie were also conned into thinking they were filming a real movie and didn't know the truth until the 'doco' came out. Either that or Peter Jackson has a loyal entourage that kept a secret which could never have survived in any Hollywood arena.

I look forward to even more of Peters work.....

---

5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Very clever (Beware - spoilers), 29 October 2003

Author: Katie from New Zealand

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Peter Jackson is amazing. I know mockumetaries have been done before but never has one fooled so many so easily. I swear 80% of NZ fell for it, and I admit it, I fell for this one hard and fast too. It really makes you take a look at this country . This was such a clever way to laugh the ways of New Zealander's and the blind belief in documentary:

Kiwi's are obsessed at being best and first at as many things as possible. This may be due to the fact we have less worldwide status and we desire to be recognised for something.

Documentary is a strange genre because we are told to believe something, often without real evidence (or with altered and misconstrued evidence). Jackson captures this unfounded faith in the documentary by making you believe something completely false. It teaches you to take everything in film and television that is supposedly 'real', with a big grain of salt.

Overall, very provocative

---

5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
A loving and comic tribute to the Silent Screen, 2 September 1999

Author: George R. Willeman from Dayton, Ohio

Peter Jackson has a big heart, I think. Even for all the gore and grossness of his films (i.e.; Dead Alive aka Braindead) he always has a very heartfelt moment of sentiment. In this film, it's the loving way McKenzie is treated and the seriousness of his death scene, captured on film. While much of the film has very tongue in cheek chuckles, this part is played very seriously.

Also, as someone who works every day with "forgotten silver", I admire his treatment of the whole subject. For, while McKenzie and his films may be bogus, the plight of old movies is not. I'm amazed at how much footage shows up in attics and basements and garden sheds every year. In just the eight months so far of 1999, we have received at least 30 "new" films; rare and unique items all. And we have films done by people very much like Colin McKenzie. Private, personal projects, most of which never saw the light of day or vanished quickly after their initial release. So much "forgotten silver."

---

6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Borovnia, 7 October 2003
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Spoilers herein.

In 1988, Peter Greenaway made a little film called `Death in the Seine.' Filmmakers have long played with notions of created reality, but this was a clever take: real people drowned in the Seine during a period that by political accidents was erased from the calendar. But we have the reports of the coroner for these anonymous people. By `showing' them, Greenaway was reinvesting their lives with reality. An amazing idea, made sweeter by having the `corpses' obviously be alive.

In 1994, film enthusiast Peter Jackson did much the same thing with `Heavenly Creatures.' He took a real story about a famous but now forgotten case and turned it into an essay on constructed film reality. In his case, this involved Orson Welles and an ersatz Camelot named Borovnia (borrow nvia).

To judge from that film, he took the matter seriously. To judge from this one, he took it personally. The `creatures' weren't the girls, instead the fictitious beings they animated.

The next year he made this film with himself as the animator. In both cases, he plays with the nature of writing. He references Welles, of course, and `Picnic at Hanging Rock,' of course. But most of all he plays under the kiwi skin with all sorts of inside jokes to exploit the national foible.

But there's enough for the rest of us, especially if you love movies. He says this is just a joke, and he may even believe it. But there's plenty of intelligent foolery here: just in the `Salome' section. This is a recreation using exclusively modern idioms. This is post- 'Battleship Potemkin' and more obviously post- `Godfather.'

It is as if we were given a Shakespeare play that mentioned watergate.

The one really big goof is Harvey Weinstein (combined with industry shill Leonard Maltin). They could as easily have been talking about `Lord of the Rings:' huge marvelous cities in New Zealand, stock that steals 2000 eggs, deliberate pies in the face, and even the soap opera about our poor sojourner. Rings or films, it is all magic.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

---

3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Damn good hoax, 20 June 2002

Author: arminio from Croatia

Jackson pull this one great! It is not so believeable as some other mockumentaries (like "Curse of the Blair Witch") but this one is so funny and soo well done !

Some scenes are obviously fake but made me laugh well :) and some are so impressive especially fake silent movies that really looks like 90 years old copies (Jackson himself can be seen as extra in some scenes in "Saloma" oD )! They really did excelent job - I admire all efforts that was put to shoot it.

Relly great and funny movie that just must be seen!

10/10

---

---

Page 1 of 5:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Amazon.com summary	Ratings
Awards	Newsgroup reviews	External reviews
Parents Guide	Plot keywords	Main details
Your user comments	Your vote history