It's nothing short of scandalous how poorly treated Ernst Lubitsch’s American silent period has been. Fortunately that has begun to change with the Museum of Modern Art’s recent restorations of Rosita (1923) and Forbidden Paradise (1924), the fourth film he made in Hollywood. Lubitsch came to … [Read more...] about Forbidden Paradise
A Billion-Dollar Cast
This historical reprint was published in conjunction with the screening of Foolish Wives at SFSFF 2022. Erich von Stroheim, clad in the bemedaled uniform of His Grace, Count Sergius Karamzin, and with the California sunshine bringing beads of uncountly perspiration to his brow, stood on a bench … [Read more...] about A Billion-Dollar Cast
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Ernst Lubitsch never discussed what let to his audacious decision to adapt Oscar Wilde’s famously talky stage play Lady Windermere’s Fan as a silent film in 1925. Personally, I would like to think it was a gift to Irene Rich, the actress whose sublime performance as the tolerant queen to a … [Read more...] about Lady Windermere’s Fan
The Divine Voyage
Julien Duvivier is the forgotten man of French cinema. Prolific and bad-tempered, nicknamed “Julien-le-mal-aimé” (Julien the unloved), he careened from genre to genre, making thrillers, noirs, comedies, melodramas, and religious films during an almost fifty-year career of nonstop film production, … [Read more...] about The Divine Voyage
Salt for Svanetia
For more than forty years Mikhail Kalatozov (Mikheil Kalatozishvili) had a film career marked by the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. From his work in the early 1930s that earned him a place in the doghouse of Soviet officialdom to the glorious achievement of winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes … [Read more...] about Salt for Svanetia
Smouldering Fires
Having been greatly impressed by Clarence Brown’s The Goose Woman, which I found in 1962 in a British film library, I searched for more silent films by this remarkable director. Thanks to the British Film Institute’s John Huntley, Smouldering Fires came from overseas (an ostrich farm outside … [Read more...] about Smouldering Fires
The History of the Civil War
It’s easy to forget that Dziga Vertov started his career, well before the other founders of Soviet cinema, as a chronicler of the Civil War precipitated by the Bolshevik coup of October 1917. The films that have kept his reputation alive, and indeed raised it above most others of his generation, … [Read more...] about The History of the Civil War
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Carl Laemmle, the founder and president of Universal Pictures, built his success on short, cheap but profitable films that could be packaged and sold to distributors at a modest price. Production costs on Universal’s silent features rarely topped $100,000 and many cost significantly less. The 1923 … [Read more...] about The Hunchback of Notre Dame