You can read the program essay for our 2009 screening of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans here Historian William K. Everson dubbed 1927 “the absolute zenith of the art of the silent film.” Metropolis, from Germany, and Napoleon, from France, are noteworthy enough to mark the year as significant. But … [Read more...] about Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
You can read the program essay for our 2011 screening of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans here Sunrise sits at the rare intersection of great art and great commerce. Perhaps the film could only have been made through an unlikely alliance between two opposing personalities: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, … [Read more...] about Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
When they made The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, the director and leading stars all had something to prove. Ernst Lubitsch was already a famous director by the time he came to MGM, and was known for his sophisticated, stylish and satirical films. The Student Prince, based on the Wilhelm … [Read more...] about The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
The Strongest
For a brief period between the late 1910s and early 1920s, Swedish cinema challenged the supremacy of Hollywood in the production of sophisticated, mature, and visually majestic films. Filmmakers Victor Sjöstrom, Mauritz Stiller, and the lesser known outside Sweden Gustaf Molander led the way, … [Read more...] about The Strongest
The Strong Man
Harry Langdon’s movie career peaked in 1926, the year two of his best films were released. He had come to Hollywood after nearly 30 years in vaudeville and refined his gently bumbling stage persona into a unique child-man character referred to as “The Little Elf.” Having graduated from two-reel … [Read more...] about The Strong Man
A Strong Man
One of the few surviving silent films made in Poland, A Strong Man (Mocny Człowiek) is also one of the most stylistically advanced. It opens with a stately pan along the riverfront of Warsaw—capital of the nation’s film production—blending into a montage of majestic old buildings. But something … [Read more...] about A Strong Man
Strike
Once considered one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived, and whose Battleship Potemkin (1925) was once judged by critics and directors to be the greatest film ever made, Sergei Eisenstein has seen his canonization come and go. Now merely a film school requirement, the name never attains front … [Read more...] about Strike
Stella Dallas
Despite being condemned for her vulgarity and criticized in the New York Times as “vain and selfish,” Stella Dallas has lived a long and profitable life. She first appeared in 1922, when author Olive Higgins Prouty published the popular novel. A stage version followed, then two film versions (the … [Read more...] about Stella Dallas