Outsiders and Outcasts of Silent Cinema From Chaplin’s Tramp to Hart’s good-bad man, from Pickford’s ragamuffins to Brooks’s lost girls, many of silent cinema’s most enduring images were of outcasts and outsiders. Whether portrayed with slapstick humor, grim realism, or experimental lyricism, … [Read more...] about Silent but not Silenced
Silent Avant-Garde
Selections from the touring retrospective Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894–1941, a collaborative film preservation and restoration project by Anthology Film Archives, New York; and Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main; in collaboration with sixty of the world’s leading film … [Read more...] about Silent Avant-Garde
Silence
The 1920s were booming times for the American theater, with more than 200 new plays being produced on Broadway each year, peaking at 264 in the 1927–1928 season. Among the top playwrights of the time, Max Marcin, the author of the 1924 hit Broadway crime drama Silence, is largely forgotten today. … [Read more...] about Silence
The Signal Tower
Universal Pictures was the sausage factory of Hollywood, churning out westerns and melodramas for rural audiences in the Midwest. But once in a while, they came out with a Special—they called them Universal-Jewels. Clarence Brown made three of the best, Smouldering Fires, The Goose Woman, and The … [Read more...] about The Signal Tower
The Sign of Four
Each generation has its own screen Sherlock Holmes. Today it is Benedict Cumberbatch; in the ’80s Jeremy Brett; in the ’40s (and for all time) Basil Rathbone—Holmeses who define the look and manner of the master detective. For the silent era, the great cinematic Holmes was Eille Norwood. Although by … [Read more...] about The Sign of Four
The Sideshow
Even before the term “B-movie” was coined, theaters relied on a steady stream of cheaply produced films like The Sideshow. While city movie palaces could bank on a Charlie Chaplin feature filling its seats for a month or more, neighborhood theaters would change “programmers” three or more times … [Read more...] about The Sideshow
Show People
Marion Davies and William Haines were two of the most popular stars of the late 1920s, and Show People, directed by King Vidor and loosely based on the life of Gloria Swanson, spotlights both stars at their creative peak. Yet unknown to their fans, both lived “alternative lifestyles” in a time when … [Read more...] about Show People
Shooting Stars
Near the beginning of Shooting Stars, Anthony Asquith’s directorial debut, he boldly declares his infatuation with the movies in an astonishing sequence. It begins with a tender love scene between a cowboy on a horse and a golden-haired beauty perched in a blossom-laden tree. As he rides off into … [Read more...] about Shooting Stars