An inspired, indefatigable, and shameless self-promoter and, not coincidentally, one of the most famous people in the world in the early decades of the twentieth century, Harry Houdini was a natural for the movies. Both he and the new medium trafficked in illusions. Sometimes that worked in … [Read more...] about The Grim Game
Gribiche
Article condensed from the notes accompanying Flicker Alley’s release of French Masterworks: Russian Émigrés in Paris (1923–1929). Belgian-born director Jacques Feyder became an overnight sensation with L’Atlantide, his film of Pierre Benoit’s postwar escapist bestseller about the mythical … [Read more...] about Gribiche
Gretchen the Greenhorn
Also presented in this program: Original coming attraction trailers from the lost films The Patriot (1928), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Emil Jannings, which won the 1929 Academy Award for Best Screenplay; Beau Sabreur (1928), which starred Gary Cooper, a sequel to the 1927 version … [Read more...] about Gretchen the Greenhorn
Greed
"In an era devoted to escapism and the happy ending," writes film historian Kevin Brownlow, "Stroheim's obsession with realism must have seemed insane." The director abandoned the studio to shoot on the actual locations evoked in Frank Norris's novel McTeague, so that Greed, among many other things, … [Read more...] about Greed
The Great White Silence
When rescuers found the frozen bodies of three members of the 1910–1914 British Antarctic Expedition camped eleven miles from the nearest food depot, it had been almost a year since the explorers had died. Outside the tent, all that remained of the sledge they had man-hauled for the 850-mile journey … [Read more...] about The Great White Silence
The Goose Woman
It could have been a lurid, “ripped from the headlines” melodrama from a studio known for its cheap genre films. Instead, The Goose Woman (1925) became one of Universal’s “Jewels,” a prestige production with a better than average script, an excellent cast and production values, and an up-and-coming … [Read more...] about The Goose Woman
Goona Goona: An Authentic Melodrama of the Isle of Bali
However neglected, perhaps correctly, the history of independent exploitation films is as long as any other varietal of film—the nudie, the sensational barnstormer, the adults-only “if you dare” faux-exposé have always been with us. How we might approach this kind of film, beyond any sort of … [Read more...] about Goona Goona: An Authentic Melodrama of the Isle of Bali
Good References
Good References, a 1920 “lost” film recently discovered in a Prague archive and restored by UCLA, is a classic example of the type of movie the silent film business learned was a sure-fire way to make money. Directed by R. William Neill, with a scenario by Dorothy Farnum from an E.J. Rath novel, … [Read more...] about Good References