Essay

You can read the program essay for our 2014 screening of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse here In the 1921 film version of Vicente Blasco Ibañez’s epic novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Rudolph Valentino became an overnight star. Valentino’s smoldering good looks and untimely death … [Read more...] about The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

You can read the program essay for our 2004 screening of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse here APOCALYPSE THEN: 15 THINGS ABOUT FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE 1. In studying the movies (not least the silent variety), we owe it to the medium and to ourselves to come prepared as … [Read more...] about The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Harold Lloyd’s everyman persona, replete with his too-tight suit and thick-rimmed glasses, made him one of the silent era’s most famous and beloved characters. But what is less well known is that Lloyd was also one of Hollywood’s most astute businessmen. Long before he landed in movies, his early … [Read more...] about For Heaven’s Sake

African-Americans were not allowed to serve as pilots in the United States Armed Forces until 1940, but that didn’t stop Richard Norman from making a black fighter pilot the hero of The Flying Ace. In this 1926 film, Captain Billy Stokes returns home victorious after World War I to resume his … [Read more...] about The Flying Ace

You can read the program essay for our 2007 screening of Flesh and the Devil here Flesh and the Devil is one of the very best examples of the palpable romantic eroticism that can often be found in silent films. A huge hit in its own day, it is still remarkably sexy and entertaining, a great … [Read more...] about Flesh and the Devil

A sexually provocative melodrama of upper-class decadence with surprisingly sophisticated stylistic flourishes, The First Born is the collaboration of two key players in the British film industry of the 1920s and ’30s whose work has largely fallen into obscurity, Miles Mander and Alma … [Read more...] about The First Born

“No other crime thriller compares to Filibus!” trumpeted a double-page ad in the April 1915 edition of Italian film magazine La Vita Cinematografica. For once, studio PR was no exaggeration. Filibus, which follows the exploits of a futuristic female super-villain who pounces on her prey from a … [Read more...] about Filibus