1921-1930

  • Georg Wilhelm Pabst – Westfront 1918 (1930)

    1921-1930DramaGeorg Wilhelm PabstGermanyWarWorld War One

    Plot synopsis
    Westfront 1918 (aka Comrades of 1918) was the first talkie effort from German filmmaker G. W. Pabst, which he made for Nero Films, a production company headed up by Seymour Nebenzahl. Like the contemporary Hollywood production All Quiet on the Western Front, Pabst’s film is a bitter, melancholy antiwar statement. The story concentrates on four German soldiers, sent to the front in the waning days of World War 1. The futility of killing an enemy who is already dead spiritually, and of being killed for a cause that has for all intents and purposes been resolved, is brought home to the viewer with both barrels. The astonishingly fluid camerawork of Fritz Arno puts the spectator in the thick of the battle, and the effect is both terrifying and heartbreaking To watch only a few moments of Westfront 1918, one might think that Pabst had been making sound pictures all his life, rather than a mere couple of months. – by Hal Erickson.Read More »

  • Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor – Hot Water (1924)

    1921-1930ComedyFred C. NewmeyerSam TaylorSilentUSA

    Harold Lloyd silent film. Episodic in nature (effectively three short films merged into one), the first episode features Hubby winning a live turkey in a raffle and taking it home on a crowded streetcar, much to the chagrin of the other passengers. The second features Hubby grudgingly taking the family en masse out on his brand new Butterfly Six automobile, and the third is an escapade with his sleepwalking mother-in-law. The third segment almost qualifies the film as a horror movie, as in it, Hubby mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law, and when she starts sleepwalking later, he thinks she’s a ghost haunting him.Read More »

  • Fred C. Newmeyer – Grandma’s Boy (1922)

    1921-1930Fred C. NewmeyerSilentUSA

    Grandma’s Boy is a 1922 family comedy film starring Harold Lloyd. The film was highly influential, helping to pioneer feature-length comedies which combined gags with character development. This film was also an immensely popular, commercially successful film in its time.Read More »

  • Fred C. Newmeyer & Hal Roach – Now or Never (1921)

    1921-1930ComedyFred C. NewmeyerHal RoachSilentUSA

    Harold Lloyd silent comedy. A young man, unaccustomed to children, must accompany a young girl on a train trip.Read More »

  • Fred C. Newmeyer – A Sailor-Made Man (1921)

    1921-1930ComedyFred C. NewmeyerSilentUSA

    Harold Lloyd’s first feature film. Silent comedy.
    An idle, wealthy playboy foolishly joins the Navy when the father of the girl he wants to marry tells him to get a job to prove himself worthy.Read More »

  • Hal Roach – I Do (1921)

    1921-1930ComedyHal RoachSilentUSA

    A Harold Lloyd two-reeler that was planned as a three-reeler; after an unsuccessful preview, the first reel was axed.Read More »

  • Charles Reisner – Chasing Rainbows (1930)

    1921-1930Charles ReisnerComedyMusicalUSA

    Synopsis:
    The road-show troupe of a top Broadway show go cross-country while taking the audience along on the on-stage scenes as well as what happens and is happening back stage of the production. The spectacular dancing ensembles and colorful costumes and pulchritude on-stage offers a contrasting background to the drabness of the backstage, where joy, sorrow, tragedies, deception, and romance are intertwined.
    — Les Adams.Read More »

  • ? – Messe noire aka Black Mass (1928)

    ?1921-1930EroticaSilent

    PLOT SUMMARY
    Vintage porn from the silent era in which the initiation of a neophyte into a satanic cult turns into an orgy.Read More »

  • Jean Epstein – La chute de la maison Usher AKA The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

    1921-1930ArthouseFranceJean EpsteinSilent

    Quote:
    A leading member of the French cinema’s avant-garde movement and the director of the Impressionist classic Coeur fidèle (1923), Jean Epstein broke with his more modernist colleagues in the late 1920s to make documentaries and fiction films grounded in the realities of everyday life. Before that evolution, however, Epstein filmed this adaptation of two Edgar Allan Poe stories: “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) and “The Oval Portrait” (1850). The film’s significance lies not so much in its fidelity to Poe’s stories as in its atmospheric evocation of the author’s gothic sensibility. Read More »

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