1921-1930

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Flicker Alley, in partnership with the Blackhawk Films® Collection, Lobster Films and Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Pordenone, Italy) is honored to present this newly restored edition Casanova (1927), with a new orchestral score by Günter A. Buchwald, performed by the San Marco Orchestra.

The iconic French historical drama Casanova, directed by Alexandre Volkoff, and set in 1760s Venice, stars renowned silent film actor Ivan Mosjoukine as the famous philanderer Giacomo Casanova in a flamboyant spectacle of romance, comedy, and intrigue. Shot on location in the Austrian Alps and in Venice, Casanova portrays its dashing central player enjoying a sumptuous and flirtatious existence, until his precarious behavior alerts his rivals and forces him into a life-or-death scenario. Produced by Films Albatros, the film also features Diana Karenne, Suzanne Bianchetti and Rudolf Klein-Rogge.Read More »

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Based on Herman Bang’s 1902 novel of the same name, Dreyer’s film is a fascinating fin-de-siècle study of a “decadent” elderly artist (Benjamin Christensen) driven to despair by his relationship with his young protégé and former model, Michael (Walter Slezak). With suffocatingly sumptuous production design by renowned architect Hugo Häring (his only film work), this Kammerspiel, or “intimate theatre”, foreshadows Dreyer’s magnificent final film Gertrud, by forty years with its “Now I may die content, for I have seen great love” epigraph.Read More »

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Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim is structured around competing and contradictory narratives. While notes taken during an interview with a right-wing journalist – a convenient device in a silent film – tell of economic and cultural decline, of the very great damage that the empowerment of the workers has done to ‘das schone alte Wien’ [beautiful old Vienna], this account and its nostalgia for ‘das goldene Wienerherz’ [the golden heart of Vienna] are repeatedly juxtaposed with images of capitalist exploitation, militarism, extreme poverty and grim living conditions in the pre-1918 period. The charges against the Socialist administration are then refuted, almost point by point, as Phyllis and her fiance show their visitor (who, like that other American archetype, Homer Simpson, hails from Springfield, USA!) around the new Vienna, notably taking him to Karl-Marx-Hof in order to disprove the claim that the showpiece of the municipal housebuilding programme is already in need of repair…….Read More »

Denise, an orphaned girl, moves to Paris where she hopes to find work at her uncle’s store. But the glamorous department store ‘Aux Bonheur des Dames’ across the street crunches all the little businesses around. She finds a position there.Read More »

One of two circus twins is cheated of an inheritance by his double, who sets himself up in a chateau.Only to be threatened by a sinister black hooded sect. Rollicking adventures follow, culminating with a big chase on the Eiffel Tower.Read More »

Lord Asano Takumi-no-Kami Naganori was charged with receiving a group of envoys from the Imperial Court in Kyoto. He was young and slightly inexperienced, so he was given the task of instructing Lord Asano in the customs of the ceremony.Read More »

A wealthy man sends his crew sailing on an old tub ;The men realize there’s money to be made with the alcohol they transport.The ship sinks but the shipowner’s daughter, who is in love with the captain of the missing boat, go in search of the lost crew survivors with a handful of sailor men.God Himself intervenes and “shows the way” across the “way of gold” .Read More »

A family saga in which three sons of a Bavarian widow go to war for Germany and the fourth goes to America, Germany’s eventual opponent. One of John Ford’s most important silent films, made very much under the influence of his Fox studio mate, F.W. Murnau.Read More »

A classic melodramatic love tragedy addressing social inequality in feudal Japan, depicted in Kenji Mizoguchi’s typical style. The nostalgic scenes of 1920s Tokyo provides a valuable visual experience set against the background of the title song, “Tokyo March.”Read More »