The worldwide call for the proletariat to lose its collective chains was answered not just by the Russian people. The German communists, too, shed blood on their country’s streets and scaffolds, mostly the highly politicized vanguard, fighting for ideals and bread on behalf of workers too deeply … [Read more...] about Harbor Drift
The Good Bad Man
Made early in Douglas Fairbanks’s film career, The Good Bad Man is the fifth of his 12 feature-length films made for the Fine Arts division of the Triangle Film Corporation, and the second of ten collaborations between Fairbanks and director Allan Dwan. It is also among his earliest films to explore … [Read more...] about The Good Bad Man
The Gold Rush
After the public disappointment of A Woman of Paris (1923), a dramatic film in which Chaplin appears only briefly, he was anxious to begin work on his first comedy to be distributed by United Artists. Chaplin was determined to top the phenomenal success of The Kid. By any measure, he succeeded. The … [Read more...] about The Gold Rush
The Girl in Tails
Between the late 1910s and the mid-1920s, Swedish films earned worldwide acclaim for their artistic production values, epic or literary themes, and spectacular imagery. Made by directors such as Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjöström, these big-budget prestige pictures are the reason that the era … [Read more...] about The Girl in Tails
The General
No silent moviemaker ever engaged with the machinery of modern life as resourcefully as Buster Keaton did. From One Week (1920), his debut as a solo director after his apprenticeship with Fatty Arbuckle, to The Cameraman (1928), his final masterpiece, Keaton routinely sparred with the mechanized … [Read more...] about The General
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
You can read the program essay for our 2004 screening of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse here APOCALYPSE THEN: 15 THINGS ABOUT FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE 1. In studying the movies (not least the silent variety), we owe it to the medium and to ourselves to come prepared as … [Read more...] about The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
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
The Epic of Everest
The idea of the filmmaker as a modern-day explorer is as old as cinema itself. As soon as the Lumière brothers introduced their lightweight motion picture cameras in 1895, operators began setting out around the globe to produce actuality films. Within 20 years, enterprising filmmakers like Herbert … [Read more...] about The Epic of Everest