Essay

You can read the program essay for our 1996 screening of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ here Moviemaking might makes right in Fred Niblo’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It marries a rip-roaring saga of vengeance in ancient Antioch and Jerusalem to a reverent vision of Christianity bringing faith, … [Read more...] about Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

You can read the program essay for our 2015 screening of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ here The filming of Ben-Hur began in 1923 when the Goldwyn studio sent cast and crew to historic locations in Italy. But labor strikes and political tension between Fascist and socialist workers soon led to … [Read more...] about Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Although it’s been more than one hundred years since World War I began, the sacrifice, sorrow, fear, and divisions of that great period of unrest are still evident today. When America finally entered the conflict in 1917, three years after it had begun in Europe, the whole nation rallied behind the … [Read more...] about Behind the Door

You can read the program essay for our 2016 screening of Beggars of Life here For today’s viewers, the “hobohemia” so vividly portrayed in Beggars of Life conjures an image of the vagabonds set adrift during the Great Depression. Yet, the movie was released more than a year before the cataclysmic … [Read more...] about Beggars of Life

You can read the program essay for our 2007 screening of Beggars of Life here Louise Brooks has become a legend of cinema  who continues to fascinate and Beggars of Life showcases her timeless beauty, her striking modernity, and the depth of her talent. While costar Wallace Beery receives top … [Read more...] about Beggars of Life

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