Too Much Johnson: Recovering Orson Welles’s Dream of Early Cinema
Orson Welles’s Too Much Johnson is a youthful tribute to low comedy and reflects of his obsession with bygone times, cultural mores & means of expression.
Category: Silents
Tokuko Nagai Takagi (1891-1919): Japan’s First Actress
Aaron Cohen’s profile of the obscure Japanese silent star Tokuko Takagi (also known as Taku Takagi), who came to America in 1906 and made a few films for Thanhouser Studios, first[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews · Silents
Easter 2014, Part Un: A Tale of Two Kings: DeMille’s Silent Classic on DVD — in Both Versions
For many of us, cinema long ago replaced religion, but why not combine the two by celebrating Easter with a reading of Gordon Thomas’s study of King of Kings, part “un” of[…]
There’s Something About Mary: Misdeeds and Maneuvers on the Set of Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Following up on the author’s previous Phantom piece, here he discusses Mary Philbin’s innocence, Lon Chaney’s dedication, and the larger implications of Norman Kerry’s “roving hands.” Written by Philip J.[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews · Silents
Blu-ray Review: The BFI’s The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925, and silent film reissue, 1929)
“Erik, like Darth Vader, is much more interesting with as little backstory as possible.” — Mike Gebert, Nitrateville, site administrator1 When fairy tales, literature, and the movies hand us a[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
The Man Who Had Everything: The Curious Case of Jack Pickford and the New York Times
INTRODUCTION Jack Pickford – actor, director, and alleged womaniser, alcoholic, drug-user, bootlegger and all-around scoundrel. Born in 1896, Jack was the brother of Mary Pickford, the Queen of Hollywood during[…]
Historical & Epic · Reviews · Silents
What Becomes a Legend Most: Fritz Lang Adapts the Nibelungenlied
“If head and heart are united, harmony can exist even in the midst of strife. Let them come into opposition, however, and chaos enters from which there is no escape and no conclusion possible except a tragic one.” — Francis G. Gentry. “Triuwe and Vriunt in the Nibelungenlied.” Amsterdam: Rodopi: 1975. p. 45.”Perception is everything. It turns villains into heroes and victims into collaborators.” — Hilary Mantel. “A Change of Climate.” New York: Henry Holt and Company: 1997. p. 317.
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Producers & Studios · Silents
Who Was the Real James Young Deer? The Mysterious Identity of the Pathè Producer Finally Comes to Light
“With his acting experience and technical know-how, Young Deer soon advanced to one of Pathé’s leading filmmakers. His Indian identity served him well: no one in the cast or crew at that time would have taken orders from a black man.”
From La Fille to Dr. Cordelier: Character and Environment in the (Mostly) Early Works of Jean Renoir
“Renoir’s static images contain a great deal of emotional intensity — like that last lyrical shot of the sun setting in La Fille — and the sheer beauty of his two-dimensional compositions generates an emotional in volvement within the viewer (like that in the viewer of a painting) and a sense of emotional treatment of the romantic material within the frame, yet preserves an awareness of the existence of a larger world beyond the borders of the frame.”
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Silents
Looking at Charlie — Limelight: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“I have ideas!” If only that were true!
More Than Just Another Day Underground: Anthony Asquith’s First Feature Gets the Deluxe Treatment
“It is a much starker contrast than, say, in Hitchcock’s London films of the same period, where the humorous grace notes of the urban everyday and a happy ending are balanced throughout by a recognition of the inherent instability and all-out terror of the same modernity that produces those grace notes.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Strike, Red Psalm, The Phantom Carriage, Meek’s Cutoff, Go West, Battling Butler
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Forgotten Fathers – Maurice Tourneur, Richard Oswald
The Frenchman, Maurice Tourneur, and the Austrian, Richard Oswald, were major producer/directors during cinema’s Silent Era, but are hardly remembered today. These days, movie lovers are more likely to know the films and[…]
Metropolis, the Reconstructed Original Cut: Does It Make Sense? Does It Need To?
“The resurrection of Fritz Lang’s original cut has revealed how well this film functions with its associative network of image layered onto an adventure/SF thriller, but the reasons for its mysterious pull coalesce into an x-factor that resists analysis.”
The Sound of Silence: The 2010 San Francisco Silent Film Festival
“Even the most obscure titles drew impressive crowds, and the premiere events boasted sold-out houses.”
Dreamtime – Inception vs. Secrets of a Soul (G.W. Pabst 1926)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df1CGxqS1MA] Nine out of ten bloggers agree – the dreams in Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION are not particularly dream-like, at least, not much more so than the action sequences in your average[…]
Metropolis: Restored, Reborn, and Rolling Out
In his nonfiction text On Writing, Stephen King describes the artist’s work as telepathy. Hardly the new-age type, King is referring to how thoughts can transmit though a quiet practice[…]
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