Essay

Released in 1926, smack in the middle of the Jazz Age—the time of Bohemian free love and high-living, high-society flappers, of Bessie Smith’s earthy blues artistry, and the popular embrace of female suffrage—Mantrap celebrates woman’s sexuality as a life force. It also established its star Clara … [Read more...] about Mantrap

The spinning of a child’s toy top or the whir of a film strip running through the wheel of an editing table—differing legends explain the inspiration for David Kaufman to adopt the alias that history immortalized: Dziga Vertov. In the new Soviet state, the onomatopoetic nom de plume of the … [Read more...] about Man With A Movie Camera

You can read the program essay for our 2018 screening of The Man Who Laughs here Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle had a fascination with French literature that resulted from a combination of his first-generation immigrant status, his intuitive marketing savvy, and his assimilation of 19th … [Read more...] about The Man Who Laughs

You can read the program essay for our 2008 screening of The Man Who Laughs here At one point in King of Jazz—Universal’s all talking! all singing! all dancing! extravaganza of 1930—an unbelievably young Bing Crosby asks the Rhythm Boys “Just what kind of production is this?” “A Super-Super … [Read more...] about The Man Who Laughs

What’s immediately striking about Terje Vigen, released in the U.S. as A Man There Was, is the power of its imagery. Stripped to its bare essence, the film is a visual encomium to the sea, or rather, to a Romantic understanding of the sea’s might as wedded to man’s emotional state. Based on a poem … [Read more...] about A Man There Was

Between 1909 and 1914, the Italian film industry produced an average of 500 films per year. In contrast to the self-made moguls of American studios, Italian production companies were headed by cultivated members of the aristocracy, who made films based on historical, biblical, or mythological … [Read more...] about Maciste all’inferno

The phenomenon known as Maciste was first introduced in the film Cabiria (1914), the most famous of all the early Italian epics. This immensely popular blockbuster was nearly upstaged by one character, Maciste the Nubian slave, portrayed by Bartolomeo Pagano. Maciste proved so popular and … [Read more...] about Maciste

Male and Female, based on Sir James M. Barrie’s comedy of manners The Admirable Crichton, is notable as one of the biggest hits for two Hollywood film legends—the first superstar, Gloria Swanson, and director Cecil B. DeMille. Swanson entered films in 1914 at the age of 15 after a chance visit to … [Read more...] about Male and Female