“This is in. It has Doug,” trumpeted Film Daily in March 1926, “its pirates are as terrible as anyone ever pictured and it is the finest specimen of the all-color feature yet produced.” Which is pretty much all you needed to know to get you to the box office to see The Black Pirate: a star (the … [Read more...] about The Black Pirate
Vampyr, the Score
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Vampyr on January 12, 2024 Ever since he saw Vampyr back in the mid-1980s, composer and conductor Timothy Brock has wanted to play the score live. He had been impressed in particular with the “fragility of the strings” and how German … [Read more...] about Vampyr, the Score
Vampyr, the Restoration
This article was published in conjunction with the screening of Vampyr on January 12, 2024 Almost every time one takes a closer look at a film that is world-famous one has to face the sad fact that the film does not really exist in a form that seems acceptable. This is true also for Dreyer’s … [Read more...] about Vampyr, the Restoration
Dreyer’s Waking Dream
A good many years ago, while I was watching a videotape of Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), my eight-year-old daughter came into the room and glanced at the screen for a few moments. What she saw unsettled her so much that she quickly walked away. She was disturbed not by any of the film’s more … [Read more...] about Dreyer’s Waking Dream
Schertzinger Trots Out a Few New Ideas in Shots
This historical reprint was published in conjunction with the screening of Forgotten Faces at A Day of Silents 2023 Except where cuts are used to increase tempo, there should be as few of them in a picture as possible. That is something so obvious that it always should have been part of the … [Read more...] about Schertzinger Trots Out a Few New Ideas in Shots
Forgotten Faces
Whatever became of the gentleman thief? The silk-hatted crook, who brought such debonair gallantry to his work that it would be a pleasure to be relieved of your jewelry by him, was once common on the silver screen—Raymond Griffith in Paths to Paradise(1925), HerbertMarshall in Trouble in Paradise … [Read more...] about Forgotten Faces
Height-Defying Thrills
This feature was published in conjunction with the centennial celebration of Safety Last! at A Day of Silents 2023 During the early 20th century, as fresh skyscrapers carved vertical skylines into America’s cities and more and more airplanes were flying overhead, there was a palpable sense of … [Read more...] about Height-Defying Thrills
Safety Last!
Harold Lloyd will forever be associated with Safety Last! because of a single image. Even people who have never seen a Lloyd film are familiar with the iconography of a bespectacled man hanging off the hands of a collapsing clock on the side of a skyscraper high above teeming city streets. It is one … [Read more...] about Safety Last!