Feature

January 1 For her Harvard fellowship, twenty-four-year-old English-born astrophysicist Cecilia Payne publishes data revealing the universe’s most abundant element by far is hydrogen, upending bedrock science. She is obliged to insert a line that her results are “almost certainly not real” by an … [Read more...] about 1925

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Unknown at SFSFF 2025 Trauma haunted the screen in the early decades of silent cinema, often adapted from melodramatic subject matter dripping with sentimentality and victimhood, particularly for women. Gothic tales featured … [Read more...] about Damsels: The Drama of Trauma

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Song at SFSFF 2025 FOOLS FOR LOVE There’s one born every minute and in 1911’s Across the Mexican Line, Romaine Fielding plays an American Army telegraphist who is seduced by Frances Gibson, a spy for the Mexican forces. She has a … [Read more...] about The Honey Trap: Fall Guys, Patsies, and Saps

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Affairs of Anatol at SFSFF 2025 DeMille’s film transposes the original Viennese setting of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1893 play to contemporary New York, with nods to some design trends of the early 1920s. The framing episode starts … [Read more...] about The Affairs of Anatol: Footnotes on Design

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Beau Geste at SFSFF 2025 UNDERCOVER LOVERS The allure of blood, sun, sand, and war drew Hollywood to North and Northeast Africa like flappers to Rudolph Valentino. One popular subject was the Rif War (1921–1926), an attempt by the … [Read more...] about Africa, North by Northeast