David Bordwell wrote:
In 1913, the popular novelist Bernhard Kellermann published Der Tunnel. It’s not quite science-fiction, more a prophetic fiction or realist fantasy in the vein of Things to Come. The book became a best-seller and the basis of a 1915 film directed by William Wauer.Read More »
Quote:
Wildly inventive and effortlessly enchanting, Maurice Tourneur’s legendary 1918 fantasy The Blue Bird combines spectacular costumes, lavish sets, ingenious camera effects and disarmingly naturalistic performances in a wholly original American silent film masterpiece. Tourneur’s extravagant vision anticipates the spellbinding German Expressionism of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, made the following year, while affectionately evoking the whimsical theatricality of Georges Méliès’s pioneering cinematic genius.Read More »
Quote:
“The rule of coal is gone. The bios plants will provide power to the world from today!” In this rediscovery of Weimar cinema, a dystopian vision of unfettered capitalism that is eerily contemporary, a coal miner makes a Faustian pact with the otherworldly Algol, an alien who teaches him how to harness the energy of his home star and become the most powerful man on earth. Together they become megalomaniacal CEOs of the “Bios-Werke,” lording over the nations of the world by monopolizing renewable energy and by turning workers into slaves.Read More »
Quote:
English doctor Professor Gesellius is in China researching the effects of opium. He frees a young woman named Sin from a den of inequity run by Nung Chiang. When he sails for home with the girl, Chiang swears vengeance. In England, it emerges that Sin is the illegitimate daughter of one of Gesellius’ colleagues, whose son is having an affair with the doctor’s wife. The son is poisoned and Gesellius becomes a murder suspect. He flees to India with Sin, pursued by the vengeful Nung Chiang … Read More »
Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. It is the annual fair in Holstenwall. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep. When Alan asks Cesare about his future, Cesare answers that he will die before dawn. The next morning Alan is found dead. Francis suspects Cesare of being the murderer, and starts spying on him and Dr. Caligari. The following night Cesare is going to stab Jane in her bed, but softens when he sees the beautiful woman, and instead of committing another murder, he abducts her. Read More »
Quote:
I topi grigi, an eight-part serial produced by Tiber Film in Rome, is part of the complex saga of Za la Mort, an apache and outlaw who was the protagonist of 12 films, four serials, three novels and various theatrical shows created between 1914 and 1930 by Emilio Ghione (1879-1930).
Thanks to his alter ego Za, Ghione would eventually become a genuinely popular star. On one hand he incarnated the role of fearless hero and was the emblem of muscular masculinity. On the other he was also a natural performer in the role of a dandy in several melodramas set in the salons of the decadent, contemporary nobility – a setting reflecting the D’Annunzio-inspired atmosphere of the period.Read More »
The cooper’s daughter, Zsuzsi, is getting wooed by Peter. Her father doesn’t want a word of it because Peter is an alcoholic. Peter vows never to drink again and thus wins the hand of Zsuzsi. Peter becomes a hard working man, earning the envy of the whole village. A conspiracy ensues, they get him drunk and his wife leaves him. So Peter gets into the service of the landlord…Read More »
Quote:
The scenes of “Life as it is” resemble nothing of what has been done so far by the various film producers in the world. They are an attemp at realism carried for the first time to the screen as it was taken before to literature, theater and the arts.Read More »
Judit kills her first child because the father left them. She returns to a previous suitor, Simon. Each year their child dies. The rabbi says this happens because she killed her first child and forbids her to kiss her baby till it gets married.Read More »