Ernst Lubitsch never discussed what let to his audacious decision to adapt Oscar Wilde’s famously talky stage play Lady Windermere’s Fan as a silent film in 1925. Personally, I would like to think it was a gift to Irene Rich, the actress whose sublime performance as the tolerant queen to a … [Read more...] about Lady Windermere’s Fan
The Divine Voyage
Julien Duvivier is the forgotten man of French cinema. Prolific and bad-tempered, nicknamed “Julien-le-mal-aimé” (Julien the unloved), he careened from genre to genre, making thrillers, noirs, comedies, melodramas, and religious films during an almost fifty-year career of nonstop film production, … [Read more...] about The Divine Voyage
Salt for Svanetia
For more than forty years Mikhail Kalatozov (Mikheil Kalatozishvili) had a film career marked by the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. From his work in the early 1930s that earned him a place in the doghouse of Soviet officialdom to the glorious achievement of winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes … [Read more...] about Salt for Svanetia
Smouldering Fires
Having been greatly impressed by Clarence Brown’s The Goose Woman, which I found in 1962 in a British film library, I searched for more silent films by this remarkable director. Thanks to the British Film Institute’s John Huntley, Smouldering Fires came from overseas (an ostrich farm outside … [Read more...] about Smouldering Fires
The History of the Civil War
It’s easy to forget that Dziga Vertov started his career, well before the other founders of Soviet cinema, as a chronicler of the Civil War precipitated by the Bolshevik coup of October 1917. The films that have kept his reputation alive, and indeed raised it above most others of his generation, … [Read more...] about The History of the Civil War
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Carl Laemmle, the founder and president of Universal Pictures, built his success on short, cheap but profitable films that could be packaged and sold to distributors at a modest price. Production costs on Universal’s silent features rarely topped $100,000 and many cost significantly less. The 1923 … [Read more...] about The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Street of Forgotten Men
Herbert Brenon is among the first great names behind the camera, a gifted director once spoken of alongside Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith. He is also among the early directors who can be considered an auteur, as he controlled many of the creative and technical components in crafting his … [Read more...] about The Street of Forgotten Men
A Sister of Six
The box office is a weekly popularity contest. And in Britain in the 1920s, the winner of that contest was very often Betty Balfour. She won the other kind, too, being regularly voted the nation’s favorite film star. A dimple-cheeked petite blonde with a smile just the right side of naughtiness, … [Read more...] about A Sister of Six