Ah, the boiling pitch and emotive wildfires of melodrama, one of cinema’s foundational modes without which movies would’ve for years been almost entirely comedies or westerns. (Or newsreels.) Commonly defined as hyperbolic dramas heavy on tragic plot and light on complex characterization—indeed, … [Read more...] about The Devil’s Circus
The Affairs of Anatol: Footnotes on Design
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Affairs of Anatol at SFSFF 2025 DeMille’s film transposes the original Viennese setting of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1893 play to contemporary New York, with nods to some design trends of the early 1920s. The framing episode starts … [Read more...] about The Affairs of Anatol: Footnotes on Design
The Affairs of Anatol
When producer Jesse Lasky suggested to Cecil B. DeMille that his next project should be based on Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s Anatol, the director was unenthused. Borderline scandalous upon its Vienna unveiling in 1893, and still pretty hot stuff when John Barrymore starred in the title … [Read more...] about The Affairs of Anatol
My Son
For decades, the silent films of Evgenii Cherviakov were but a legend. Raving contemporary reviews from the 1920s (including those by Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Asta Nielsen) and poetic memoirs about “the father of lyrical cinema” whetted the appetite of scholars and cinephiles, yet the films … [Read more...] about My Son
Island Fisherman
Primarily set in a small Breton village, with a cruise to the high seas off Iceland and a visit to Indochina, Island Fisherman showcases the distinctive blend of naturalism, melodrama, and experimentation that emerged in France after World War I. The atmospheric story of Yann, a hunky Breton … [Read more...] about Island Fisherman
The New Klondike
“What’s it going to be—baseball or real estate?” asks The New Klondike, a 1926 Paramount feature that brings together two American obsessions of the time: Major League baseball and the Florida land boom. The original Klondike rush of prospectors to Alaska in the late 1890s is reimagined as epic … [Read more...] about The New Klondike
Africa, North by Northeast
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Beau Geste at SFSFF 2025 UNDERCOVER LOVERS The allure of blood, sun, sand, and war drew Hollywood to North and Northeast Africa like flappers to Rudolph Valentino. One popular subject was the Rif War (1921–1926), an attempt by the … [Read more...] about Africa, North by Northeast
Beau Geste
The love of a man for a woman waxes and wanes like The moon…but the love of brother for brother is steadfast as the stars, and endures like the Word of the Prophet. — Arabian Proverb The title that opens Beau Geste is neither an Arabian proverb nor does it come from Percival Christopher Wren’s … [Read more...] about Beau Geste