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silent film
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Silent Film
in issue 60
Looking at Charlie — The Circus: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin — Life in the ring
in issue 58
Looking at Charlie — The Gold Rush: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin — Hats off, dudes! A masterpiece!
Colleen Moore Comes Back: On the Rediscovered, Restored 1927 Rarity Her Wild Oat — "Go sit on a flagpole!"
in issue 55
Looking at Charlie: The Idle Class, Payday, The Pilgrim, and A Woman of Paris: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin — “Now, Goliath was a big man.”
The Reckless Art of Erich von Stroheim: Part One: The Pinnacle — “Like every other skilled fabulist on earth there would forever be a part of Stroheim that truly believed his own fantasies.”
in issue 54
The Sweet Smell of Asphalt: Discovering Joe May’s 1929 Masterwork — “Amann’s sexuality in Asphalt has little in common with the chilled porcelain passivity of stars like Dietrich and Garbo . . .”
in issue 53
Looking at Charlie — First National, Shoulder Arms, and The Kid: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin — “LOST CHILD WANTED — Last seen with a little man with large flat feet and a small moustache”
in issue 52
Getting It Right the Second Time: Adapting Ben-Hur for the Screen — Bigger is better this time — though Wyler and Rozsa helped
in issue 51
Blossom in the Dust: Lillian Gish, The Wind, and Mr. Griffith —
“I was never young, and if you were never young, how can you ever feel old?”
“Step Right Up and Call Me Speedy!” Harold Lloyd — Almost All Isn't Enough — The last of the great silent clowns now on DVD
A Tale of Two Kings: DeMille’s Silent Classic on DVD — in Both Versions — Faith meets flamboyance in DeMille’s Jesus epic, beautifully restore
in issue 50
Beautiful Dead Girl: The Olive Thomas Collection on DVD — “She’s got the eyes of a great one, putting over something incalculable . . .”
in issue 49
Looking at Charlie — the Mutuals: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin — “Love backed by force, forgiveness sweet, brings hope and peace to Easy Street”
in issue 48
Tears for Queers: Different from the Others, Michael, and Sex in Chains on DVD — Kino’s unusual series spotlights German silent gay-themed cinema
in issue 45
Looking at Charlie: Keystone and Essanay Days — The first in an occasional series of articles on the life and work of Charlie Chaplin
in issue 44
Distribute This! The Woman Men Yearn For (Germany, 1929) — Lust in translation
The Great Marriage Debate of 1924: Lubitsch's Masterful Silent on DVD — In which Lubitsch pioneers the screwball comedy of manners
in issue 37
"Why Are They All Ugly Little Men?" — Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon: the great silent clowns reformatted
in issue 34
Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher — Poe's favorite story dressed to kill by a legendary surrealist auteur
in issue 33
Shaddup! The 2001 San Francisco Silent Film Festival — All’s quiet on the cinematic front in this seductive survey of the artful ‘20s
in issue 31
Masterpieces of Japanese Silent Cinema — Japanese silent films are no longer silent in this fabulous — and expensive — DVD-ROM
in issue 30
Tokuko Nagai Takagi (1891 – 1919), Japan's first film actress — This forgotten star was caught up — and perhaps crushed — by larger historical forces
in issue 27
The Passion of Joan of Arc on DVD — Carl Dreyer's 1928 masterpiece about the trial and death of France's fifteenth-century warrior-maiden.
in issue 23
Thanhouser Classics: Long-Lost Pleasures from the Dawn of Cinema — Silent studio Thanhouser Company produced over 1,000 titles between 1909 and 1917. Thanhouser, based in New Rochelle, New York, was known for its attempts to bring quality to an artform still in its creaky infancy. Edwin Thanhouser was the first American studio head who came from legitimate theater, which may explain the company's attention to detail, narrative verisimilitude, and the building of a stock company of the kind that existed in the theater. Subjects were extremely varied, from period melodramas, mysteries, and social reform films to horror movies and fairy tales.
in issue 17
Angel in Exile: An Interview with Silent Movie Pioneer Allan Dwan — A 1980 interview with silent movie pioneer Allan Dwan. His thoughts on Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, and all the "pansies and poseurs of Hollywood." No one was safe from the cruel barbs of the Great Auteur!
in issue 16
Asta Nielsen — Asta Nielsen, the Danish silent movie actress who is often called "the first great international star," made 74 films between 1910 and 1932. At first glance she seems an unlikely diva. Her enormous dark eyes, thin lips, masklike face, and slender, boyish figure contrast starkly with prevailing female body norms, which tended toward the Rubensesque. But Asta, who started her own production company in 1921, became the model of the self-made, self-possessed androgynous artiste. Garbo herself acknowledged the woman who co-starred with her in The Joyless Street, saying "she taught me everything I know."
in issue 15
Lon Chaney, Sr. — Supermasochist! — With his lacerations, deformities, faux stump legs, and shaved head, Chaney was the original Modern Primitive. He made his first films in the mid-1910s, and by 1920 was already creating roles that required him to be armless, legless, crippled, or otherwise deformed.
