If cinema came to be the troubled, fanciful, sensual, neurotic unconscious of human culture in the 20th century, feeding us lurid, wild images and scenarios in response to our twisted inner hungers and greatest fears as we simultaneously feed it history, phobias, narcissism, prejudices, and lust—if … [Read more...] about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Bucking Broadway
John Ford’s name is inextricable from the myth of the American West. The caustic grand old man with an eye patch made classic westerns such as My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Searchers (1956), shooting in the iconic Monument Valley and helping create the larger-than-life personas of actors such … [Read more...] about Bucking Broadway
The Brothers Who Filmed the Earthquake
A Collection of San Francisco Shorts A TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET (filmed April 14, 2006) Producer Miles Brothers Cinematographer Harry J. Miles Print Source The Library of Congress SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE, APRIL 18, 1906 Producer Unknown Cinematographer Unknown Lubin Film Company … [Read more...] about The Brothers Who Filmed the Earthquake
La Bohème
In 1926, when Lillian Gish went in search of a new contract, a bidding war ensued between MGM and United Artists. She was not a major moneymaker but having trained on the sets of D.W. Griffith’s Biograph, she had a reputation as a great actress. A veteran of Griffith’s stock company since 1912, Gish … [Read more...] about La Bohème
Body and Soul
Handsome, dynamic stage actor Paul Robeson appeared on the screen for the first time in Body and Soul, a 1925 silent film that showcased his versatility and charisma in a dual role. A stepping stone for Robeson from the theater to the movies, it is treated as a footnote in the career of this … [Read more...] about Body and Soul
The Blue Bird
With its fairy-tale setting, The Blue Bird is generally considered a children’s fantasy, and the 1918 film version was presented as one. Yet the original play by Maurice Maeterlinck has roots in the French Symbolist literary movement, and the film has the visual sophistication that marks the work of … [Read more...] about The Blue Bird
The Blot
In 1908, the newly married Lois Weber, a woman steeped in Victorian mores, gave up the stage to play the good wife to Phillips Smalley, an actor traveling with the same theater company where the young couple had met one year earlier. Unaccustomed to sitting idle, she soon began a new career writing … [Read more...] about The Blot
The Blizzard
Without the writings of Selma Lagerlöf, Sweden might not have experienced its first Golden Age of cinema, which lasted from 1917 to 1924. The first woman and first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1909), Lagerlöf wrote novels suffused with a respect for nature and deeply rooted … [Read more...] about The Blizzard