2008

When they made The Unknown in 1927, star Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning were among the biggest names in Hollywood. Joan Crawford was a starlet on the rise, striving for recognition. The Unknown gave it to her, and the following year she got her breakout starring role. Crawford would have … [Read more...] about The Unknown

In the first decade of the 20th century, close to 6 million American children were not attending school (U.S. population at the time was 76 million). Many of these were juvenile delinquents who needed a place to go, a place to learn, and the newly established picture houses became home away from … [Read more...] about The Soul of Youth

Like most so-called ethnographic films, The Silent Enemy owed as much to museum exhibits as to Hollywood studios. Early ethnographic films were shown as companions to natural history lectures concerned with exotic corners of the world, but quickly grew into self-contained film exhibits shot on … [Read more...] about The Silent Enemy

You can read the program essay for our 2013 screening of The Patsy here Ever since Orson Welles made Citizen Kane in 1941, Marion Davies has been persistently and erroneously identified with the character of Susan Alexander, Charles Foster Kane’s shrill second wife. In fact, Marion Davies and … [Read more...] about The Patsy

When Mikaël was released in the United States in 1926, the New York Daily News wondered if “the censors were too unsophisticated to know what it was all about.” Many viewers, the critic speculated, “could watch the entire unreeling of this film without discerning its ‘psychological’ theme.” The New … [Read more...] about Mikaël

You can read the program essay for our 2018 screening of The Man Who Laughs here Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle had a fascination with French literature that resulted from a combination of his first-generation immigrant status, his intuitive marketing savvy, and his assimilation of 19th … [Read more...] about The Man Who Laughs

You can read the program essay for our 2016 screening of Les Deux Timides here A talented batch of new directors redefined the French film scene in the 1920s. Artists like Jean Gremillon, Jean Renoir and Luis Bunuel combined avant-garde and commercial film techniques during the post-war years. In … [Read more...] about Les Deux Timides

In the 1960s and 1970s, the only exposure to silent films available to most Americans was on syndicated television programs like Fractured Flickers, which played the films at a faster-than-normal speed and featured narration that mocked the films and the actors. The Harold Lloyd Show, which … [Read more...] about The Kid Brother