You can read the program essay for our 2000 screening of The Wedding March here Few people in the history of Hollywood have been as revered and reviled as Erich von Stroheim. Among studio magnates like Irving Thalberg, Stroheim’s inability or unwillingness to deliver a film at a usable length … [Read more...] about The Wedding March
Seventh Heaven
You can read the program essay for our 2006 screening of Seventh Heaven here Our own age usually prefers its film romances to play out between people who are rich, or at least comfortably well off. Silent film, on the other hand, loved its poor people; and the ethereal, peerlessly … [Read more...] about Seventh Heaven
You Never Know Women
You Never Know Women brings multiple gifts to lovers of silent film: the serene beauty of Florence Vidor (“the orchid lady of the screen”); two leading men, the handsome Clive Brook and the wryly sophisticated Lowell Sherman; character actors El Brendel and Eugene Pallette; performances from key … [Read more...] about You Never Know Women
The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna
A clock strikes 12. Whether noon or midnight is not yet known. Meanwhile in another room, a large bathtub filling with hot water nears to overflowing. As a servant girl closes the faucets in the nick of time, the camera begins to track backward, out of the steamy bathroom to the side of an unmade … [Read more...] about The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna
A Woman of the World
“I am a woman of the world, not the world’s woman,” states “Elnora Natatorini,” as played by Pola Negri in the 1925 A Woman of the World. She has just found the man she adores holding another woman in his arms. Despite her diamond earrings, her stylish bobbed hair, her lengthy fur train, her … [Read more...] about A Woman of the World
The Woman Men Yearn For
Two decades after Marlene Dietrich’s death, her legend still retains its allure. One persistent myth is that Josef von Sternberg created Dietrich the Seductress in Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930), when in fact Dietrich herself had been carefully crafting her public persona long before von … [Read more...] about The Woman Men Yearn For
The Woman Disputed
“The thing that makes Talmadge a star is the look in her eyes,” MGM studio head and star-maker Louis B. Mayer once said of actress Norma Talmadge. One of the most popular stars of the silents, her career ended after two poorly received talkies, and she is nearly forgotten today. If Talmadge is … [Read more...] about The Woman Disputed
Wolf Song
“A gorgeous portrayal of the lives and loves of big outdoorsmen and big-eyed senoritas in the days when a beaver’s pelt was the people’s currency.” That’s how Paramount promoted Victor Fleming’s Wolf Song in 1929—and for once there was truth in advertising. Fleming based his shoot at the just-opened … [Read more...] about Wolf Song