Essay

Go West was an unusual film for Buster Keaton. With its portrayal of a down-and-out wanderer who becomes a reluctant hero, Go West could have been a vehicle for Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. While the film wasn’t one of Keaton’s personal favorites, it was praised by critics and did well at the box … [Read more...] about Go West

This program contains the following two films: I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAN Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Germany, 1918 Cast Ossi Oswalda, Kurt Götz, Ferry Sikla, Margarete Kupfer, and Victor Janson Production Produktions-AG Union Print Source George Eastman Museum WHAT'S THE WORLD COMING … [Read more...] about Girls Will Be Boys

Today, Russian cinema of the 1920s is best remembered for its epic and revolutionary themes, socialist propaganda, and avant-garde experimentation. Boris Barnet’s The Girl with the Hatbox, however, is a charming example of the era’s popular entertainment.  The film is a lighthearted romantic comedy … [Read more...] about The Girl with the Hatbox

Most people are familiar with the famous photograph of a bespectacled young man hanging precariously from the hands of a giant clock high above a city street. But how many are familiar with the comedian in the photo? Few modern moviegoers have had the chance to enjoy Harold Lloyd’s distinctively … [Read more...] about Girl Shy

Between the late 1910s and the mid-1920s, Swedish films earned worldwide acclaim for their artistic production values, epic or literary themes, and spectacular imagery. Made by directors such as Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjöström, these big-budget prestige pictures are the reason that the era … [Read more...] about The Girl in Tails

It’s one of those old-school, hypnotizing, daydreamy places very old movies can bring you—an occasion to think of movies “as places,” meta-locales, landscapes and rooms you enter into and loiter around inside: the haunted (or faux-haunted) house in a rain storm. It speaks to some primal pretend-play … [Read more...] about The Ghost Train

Preceded by surviving fragments of Paramount’s 1927 comedy Now We're in the Air, restored by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. How lucky are we to get to see the newly restored 1927 comedy Get Your Man? Starring the utterly delicious Clara Bow paired with the handsome Charles “Buddy” Rogers … [Read more...] about Get Your Man