In 1926, when Lillian Gish went in search of a new contract, a bidding war ensued between MGM and United Artists. She was not a major moneymaker but having trained on the sets of D.W. Griffith’s Biograph, she had a reputation as a great actress. A veteran of Griffith’s stock company since 1912, Gish … [Read more...] about La Bohème
Body and Soul
Handsome, dynamic stage actor Paul Robeson appeared on the screen for the first time in Body and Soul, a 1925 silent film that showcased his versatility and charisma in a dual role. A stepping stone for Robeson from the theater to the movies, it is treated as a footnote in the career of this … [Read more...] about Body and Soul
The Blue Bird
With its fairy-tale setting, The Blue Bird is generally considered a children’s fantasy, and the 1918 film version was presented as one. Yet the original play by Maurice Maeterlinck has roots in the French Symbolist literary movement, and the film has the visual sophistication that marks the work of … [Read more...] about The Blue Bird
The Blot
In 1908, the newly married Lois Weber, a woman steeped in Victorian mores, gave up the stage to play the good wife to Phillips Smalley, an actor traveling with the same theater company where the young couple had met one year earlier. Unaccustomed to sitting idle, she soon began a new career writing … [Read more...] about The Blot
The Blizzard
Without the writings of Selma Lagerlöf, Sweden might not have experienced its first Golden Age of cinema, which lasted from 1917 to 1924. The first woman and first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1909), Lagerlöf wrote novels suffused with a respect for nature and deeply rooted … [Read more...] about The Blizzard
Blackmail
Hitchcock’s silent Blackmail is one of the best British films, if not the best, of the late 1920s. Made in 1929, during the transition to the sound era, it was commissioned as both a silent and as a part-talkie with music and some dialogue scenes. With remarkable skill (and an eye to building a … [Read more...] about Blackmail
The Black Pirate
The Black Pirate is the epitome of motion picture art and science in the Hollywood of the 1920s. Whereas previous Douglas Fairbanks productions such as Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924) employed size and scope to push the limits of cinema production, The Black … [Read more...] about The Black Pirate
The Big Parade
In 1924, three companies merged to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The new studio’s first original production was He Who Gets Slapped (1924), starring Lon Chancy and two actors who soon became bright MGM stars: John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. That same year, director King Vidor made two films for MGM … [Read more...] about The Big Parade