Essay

Live DJ remix and silent films would appear to sit at opposite ends of the media landscape, but in the hands of DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller), the interplay between the historical and the contemporary is a chance to reveal the intricacies of both. In this remix of The Birth of a Nation, images and … [Read more...] about Rebirth of a Nation

Apart from You (Kimi to Wakarete) is Mikio Naruse’s third surviving silent film—one of only five we have left. Like many of his most celebrated works, it is an ode to the working class, the downtrodden and the disrespected, particularly women. Yet the man himself was no radical. Naruse, creator of … [Read more...] about Apart from You

In a way, Buster Keaton’s fall—the big, metaphorical one, the first in his life he couldn’t bounce right back from—began when that housefront collapsed over him in Steamboat Bill, Jr. In what is now his most famous stunt, Buster remains unharmed, framed in an open attic window just wide enough to … [Read more...] about Steamboat Bill, Jr.

The past, like a moving picture, looks different depending where you are standing in relation to it; it is a matter of distance, scale, and clarity. In 1893, in the earliest days of moving pictures, viewing was a solitary activity, seen on a machine for one person at a time—and small—as small as the … [Read more...] about The Great Victorian Moving Picture Show

In Max Linder’s final film, he indulged a common childhood fantasy. Expectations had been seeded in his childhood that he would grow up to take over the family business, a vineyard. However, he later wrote that “nothing was more distasteful to me than the thought of a life among the grapes.” What … [Read more...] about King of the Circus

Horror movies, or at least their progenitors, have been haunting audiences since the silent era, and the best ones can still make us shriek a hundred years later. With their sinister killers, hazy nightmares, and pointy-fingered vampires, all wrapped up in the menacing mise-en-scène that came to … [Read more...] about Waxworks

"If we are not very much mistaken, Blind Husbands will introduce to the industry a new ‘super director’—Eric von Stroheim. Unlike many other directors who aspire to the ranks of the fortunate, he is not a near-Griffith, a near-De Mille, or a near-Tourneur. His work is quite in a class by itself.” — … [Read more...] about Blind Husbands

The Primrose Path gives us a blueprint of Jazz Age rendering of cinematic crime. Diamonds are the currency. In its event-packed screenplay, the bosses frame the foot soldiers when the authorities start snooping. There’s a hierarchy of big-time cheats and small-time hustlers, feds and nightclub … [Read more...] about The Primrose Path