“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
Faust
Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, known forever to gods and mortals as F.W. Murnau, is a towering figure in cinema’s pantheon. Unfortunately, Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), and Sunrise (1927)—the masterpiece he made upon his arrival in Hollywood—have come to overshadow the rest of the director’s … [Read more...] about Faust
The Farmer’s Wife
A widowed landowner decides to marry again. With the aid of his faithful housekeeper he draws up a list of all the eligible women in the neighborhood, and goes wooing each in turn, with disastrous results. A romantic comedy in a rural setting is about as far as you can get from a typical … [Read more...] about The Farmer’s Wife
Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema
“Old black-and-white movies” is a phrase that trips easily off the tongue but, like many common beliefs about silent cinema, it is inaccurate. Color has accompanied motion pictures since the beginning with some of the earliest public screenings featuring hand-colored films in their programs. Because … [Read more...] about Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema
The Fall of the House of Usher
One evening in the mid-1930s Henri Langlois took Georges Franju to Montmartre’s Studio 28, where a few years earlier the first Surrealist films had played to riotous crowds. The program included screenings of Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) and Buñuel and … [Read more...] about The Fall of the House of Usher
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
It’s 1924 and the kindly, well-meaning Mr. West, a director of the YMCA, decides to undertake an international mission to civilize the Bolsheviks whom he has been told are a pack of wild savages who dress up in animal skins and arm themselves with hammers and sickles. For protection, he brings along … [Read more...] about The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
Exit Smiling
In 1926 Beatrice Lillie was a catch, and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio had sufficient line to reel her in. A hit on the British stage, the Toronto-born Lillie had been called “the Charlie Chaplin of London” and hailed for being able not only to “raise her eyebrow and get a laugh” but also “turn … [Read more...] about Exit Smiling
Erotikon
Czech cinema is nearly as old as cinema itself. Yet with one dramatic exception, it did not gain international attention until the Czech New Wave dazzled the world in the 1960s. The exception, 1933’s Ecstase (Ecstasy), was part of an earlier modernist movement encompassing art, literature, and film … [Read more...] about Erotikon