Essay

Tired of the “detective stories, royal dramas, Indian hunts, and Oriental fables” glutting German movie houses in the early 1920s, writer Bela Balázs called to replace them with the “heroic legends” of revolutionary struggle “whose tempestuous movement, monumental visuals, surprising entanglements … … [Read more...] about Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness

In February of 1920, Wisconsin author Zona Gale published her sixth novel Miss Lulu Bett to great acclaim and popularity. Critics praised the book’s naturalistic dialogue, its critique of small-town conformity, and its relevance. At a time when the women’s suffrage amendment was marching toward its … [Read more...] about Miss Lulu Bett

When Mikaël was released in the United States in 1926, the New York Daily News wondered if “the censors were too unsophisticated to know what it was all about.” Many viewers, the critic speculated, “could watch the entire unreeling of this film without discerning its ‘psychological’ theme.” The New … [Read more...] about Mikaël

The title Midnight Madness might conjure images of frothy, sophisticated high comedy, but the Cecil B. DeMille production is part of a cycle of city-woman-in-the-wilderness films released in the late silent era. Of Paramount’s The Canadian (1926) and Mantrap (1926), DeMille Pictures’ White … [Read more...] about Midnight Madness

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