Harold Lloyd will forever be associated with Safety Last! because of a single image. Even people who have never seen a Lloyd film are familiar with the iconography of a bespectacled man hanging off the hands of a collapsing clock on the side of a skyscraper high above teeming city streets. It is one … [Read more...] about Safety Last!
Pavement Butterfly
Born into the steam and starch of her father’s Chinese laundry in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong gained a toehold in Hollywood after her debut as an uncredited extra in the 1919 silent film, The Red Lantern, starring Alla Nazimova. Wong’s striking beauty and talent immediately drew the attentionof the … [Read more...] about Pavement Butterfly
The Eagle
In Silent Stars, Jeanine Basinger notes that for modern audiences Rudolph Valentino has “become an image frozen in time, a still photograph emblematic of the world of the 1920s, that crazy outmoded world of sheiks and flappers.” This static—even fossilized—image robs us of the very elements that … [Read more...] about The Eagle
The Wildcat
A few years ago Bob Dylan released an album entitledRough and Rowdy Ways, a title that reminded me of Ernst Lubitsch. (Apologies—it’s the way my mind works.) To be specific, it reminded me of Ernst Lubitsch’s German comedies. Case in point: Die Bergkatze (The Wildcat). The Wildcat isbasically a … [Read more...] about The Wildcat
Of Mice and Men (and Cats and Clowns)
FANTASMAGORIE (1908) Directed by Émile Cohl, HOW A MOSQUITO OPERATES (1912) Directed by Winsor McKay, ADAM RAISES CAIN (1922) Directed by Tony Sarg, AMATEUR NIGHT ON THE ARK (1923) Directed by Paul Terry, BED TIME(1923) Directed by Dave and Max Fleischer, FELIX GRABS HIS GRUB(1924) Directed by Pat … [Read more...] about Of Mice and Men (and Cats and Clowns)
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow was Erich von Stroheim’s greatest commercial success, but throughout his career he expressed nothing but contempt for the film. “When you ask me why I do such pictures I am not ashamed to tell you the true reason: only because I do not want my family to starve,” he said at the time. … [Read more...] about The Merry Widow
A Daughter of Destiny
“God, she was beautiful!” That was Fritz Lang to an interviewer, decades after casting teenage Brigitte Helm in a double role in Metropolis: both the virginal worker Maria and Maria’s evil robot duplicate. Helm’s dual performance is one of the most famous in all silent drama. Just eighteen when … [Read more...] about A Daughter of Destiny
Voglio a tte!
Before temporarily retiring from film acting in 1922, Italian diva Francesca Bertini completed one last film for her most trusted director, Roberto Roberti. Variously entitled, in Neapolitan vernacular, Voglio a tte! (“I Want You!”) or, in Italian, La fanciulla di Amalfi (“The Maiden from Amalfi”), … [Read more...] about Voglio a tte!