Essay

Every film buff and scholar has a Holy Grail, a “lost” movie he or she would give anything to see. The Battle of the Century has been at the top of my wish list since I was seven years old. I was already a Laurel and Hardy fan. I watched their talkie shorts and features every single day on local … [Read more...] about The Battle of the Century and Other Comedy Restorations

Sooner or later, nearly all silent clowns found themselves in the ring: looking pitiful in boxing shorts, making a mockery of the Marquess of Queensbury. Buster Keaton, who liked to say that he’d been “brought up being knocked down” in his family’s roughhouse vaudeville act, took the fight game more … [Read more...] about Battling Butler

Few films have made an impact on the history of cinema like Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin). In 2016 it was ranked the eleventh best film of all time in a Sight and Sound magazine critics poll, one of only a handful of silent-era films to make the … [Read more...] about Battleship Potemkin

EMAK-BAKIA Directed by Man Ray, France, 1926 | Print Source Cohen Film Collection Live Musical Accompaniment by Earplay from an Original Score by Nicolas Tzortzis MÉNILMONTANT Directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff, France, 1926 | Print Source Cinémathèque française Live Musical Accompaniment by … [Read more...] about Avant-Garde Paris

Soaring camerawork, luminous decor, and stylish montage sequences make Au bonheur des dames (“Ladies’ paradise”) appear strikingly modern, yet it can be seen as an elegy to silent filmmaking. Directed by Julien Duvivier, the film was shot in the autumn of 1929, just as the first French sound films … [Read more...] about Au Bonheur des Dames

A MODERN MOTHER GOOSE (Issue #1 of Fleischer Fun Shop series, 1924) KOKO PACKS UP (Directed by Dave Fleischer; Out of the Inkwell Films, 1925) KOKO’S EARTH CONTROL (Directed by Dave Fleischer, Inkwell Studios, 1928) Max Fleischer was a New York cartoonist whose interest in mechanics led to … [Read more...] about Animation Rarities, 1917-1928

Animated cartoons were a regular attraction at movie theaters in the silent era, yet they were appreciated for the most part as disposable novelty items of little artistic value. The vast majority of animated films produced in the first 30 years of the 20th century have been lost because of … [Read more...] about Animation Rarities