anita

Nothing guarantees immortality for a murderer quite like getting away with it, as Lizzie Borden could have told you. And so could Beulah Annan, the woman who, in 1924, shot a lover foolish enough to announce he was leaving her. Despite, or perhaps because of sensational press coverage nationwide, … [Read more...] about Chicago

The ink had barely dried on Owen Johnson’s novel Children of Divorce when Paramount bought the rights. Its transfer to film was fraught, and the script was tinkered over by no less than five writers. The resulting plot stayed faithful to the novel while transforming it into a quintessential silent … [Read more...] about Children of Divorce

The films of Yasujiro Ozu are rooted in a particular time and place—his own. But they bring to mind core elements of the human condition. Jealousy and desire, sacrifice, the family bond: elements that persist across cultures and the march of years, through changes in technology and outlook. We … [Read more...] about A Story of Floating Weeds

By now, the world has come around: the decades and decades of Chaplin domination have finally receded, and we’re all newly-born Keatonians. Why exactly this has happened is harder to parse—perhaps Buster Keaton appeals to a savvier, mass-media-educated culture, less naïve than the more guileless … [Read more...] about The Navigator