Essay

The stunning resurrection of Fritz Lang’s futuristic fable Metropolis to its epic original cut, a version believed forever lost, began in a modest Buenos Aires cinema museum in the spring of 2008, when a rusted film can turned out to contain a 16mm negative of the entire 150-minute silent film. The … [Read more...] about Metropolis

When MGM producer Irving Thalberg agreed to give The Merry Widow to director Erich von Stroheim, he knew the director’s famed extravagance and continental experience would serve the rich, frothy story well. He made one stipulation: that both the Maxim’s nightclub and waltz scenes were to be retained … [Read more...] about The Merry Widow

Those in the audience expecting a difficult film by a gloomy Scandinavian director are bound to be disappointed by Carl Th. Dreyer’s Master of the House. This deft tale of domestic tyranny and subsequent insurgency is characterized by wry humor and bell-like clarity. From its exquisite attention to … [Read more...] about Master of the House

“Suddenly he whirled the captain forward, darted into the darkness, and started toward his horse with the whole pack at his heels and pistol flashes splitting the blackness of night …. His laughter came back to them on the stiffening breeze that blew in from the distant sea.” This description of the … [Read more...] about The Mark of Zorro

Dublin-born director Rex Ingram had his biggest success with 1921’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez novel, which made a star of Valentino, saved the Metro company from bankruptcy, and earned the director the undying gratitude of the head of Metro, Marcus Loew. … [Read more...] about Mare Nostrum

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