Silent

  • Marcel L’Herbier – Rose-France (1918)

    1911-1920ClassicsFranceMarcel L'HerbierSilentWorld War One

    Quote:
    A few months later, (L’Herbier) directed Rose-France, an excessive and disturbing poem, filmed in the form of a weird symbolist collage. In this movie he started to experiment with special effects and celebrated the young actor Jaque Catelain, an expressive beauty, a true Dorian Gray, whose presence would mark almost all of his silent films. His mastery of the medium earned him a two-year contract at the Gaumont Film Company.Read More »

  • Fritz Lang – Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler – Ein Bild der Zeit (1922)

    1921-1930Fritz LangGermanySilentWeimar Republic cinema

    Quote:
    One of the legendary epics of the silent cinema – and the first part of a trilogy that Fritz Lang developed up to the very end of his career – Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. [Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler.] is a masterpiece of conspiracy that, even as it precedes the mind – blowing Spione from the close of Lang’s silent cycle, constructs its own dark labyrinth from the base materials of human fear and paranoia. Rudolf Klein – Rogge plays Dr. Mabuse, the criminal mastermind whose nefarious machinations provide the cover for – or describe the result of – the economic upheaval and social bacchanalia at the heart of Weimar – era Berlin. Read More »

  • Marcel L’Herbier – Le Bercail (1919)

    1911-1920FranceMarcel L'HerbierRomanceSilent

    Adapted from Bernstein’s Le Bercail, the film follows Evelyne’s attempt to reconnect with her family after a traumatizing experience with a young writer.

    Evelyne Landry, intellectuelle et passionnée, a épousé un homme bon et droit, mais fermé à tout ce qui intéresse la jeune femme. Jacques, écrivain secondaire et arriviste, la persuade de son amour. Elle s’enfuit avec lui abandonnant mari et enfant. Sa liaison ne lui apporte que déception, elle rompt avec Jacques et, repentante, demande son pardon à Etienne Landry qui finit par le lui accorder.Read More »

  • Léonce Perret – L’enfant de Paris (1913)

    1911-1920FranceLéonce PerretSilent

    A film shot as a serial, searching for a real cinematographic form, far from its fairy origins. Beautiful trip to Nice where you can feel Perret’s joy to film. The walk of Bosco-Maurice Lagrénée in the city and on the Promenade des Anglais, the triumph of the return of Captain de Valen-Emile Keppens from the colonies, the poor orphan Marie-Laure, every thing recalls the poetic realism that will be in fashion later in the French cinema, even if there is a reactionnary background in L’enfant de Paris. It makes us think of Duvivier, Carné, Vigo already…Read More »

  • Alexandre Volkoff – Kean (141-minute version) (1924)

    Drama1921-1930Alexandre VolkoffFranceSilent

    Quote:
    This is a biopic of the 19th Century actor, Edmund Kean.

    You may remember him for his famous last words: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

    Made some 90 years after his death, the film tells of the greatest actor of his time, a man toasted as the greatest actor of all time.

    Great though he may have been on the stage, his personal life was a wreck.

    He was hounded by creditors, had a problem with alcohol, and to make matters worse, had fallen in love with the wife of an ambassador.Read More »

  • Kote Mardjanishvili – Komunaris chibukhi aka Trubka komunara aka Pipe of Communard (1929)

    1921-1930DramaKote MardjanishviliSilentUSSR

    After the defaet in the Prussian war, famine and riots exploded in Paris. The wife of Lui Ru, a carpenter, could no longer stand proverty, left her son with his father and eloped to Versailles with a butcher. Lui died on the barricades. His comrades got executed. Lui’s son was among those executed. For the sake of his own entertainment the officer aimed at the pipe that Lui’s son was holding in his mouth and shot him to death.Read More »

  • Oleg Frelikh – Prostitutka aka Prostitute (1927)

    1921-1930DramaOleg FrelikhSilentUSSR

    From Imdb:
    Prostitution, Statistics And Harangues, 13 November 2009
    5/10
    Author: FerdinandVonGalitzien
    “Prostitutka” (1927) is a Bolshevist silent rarity, unusual because of its subject matter, that being prostitution in the U.S.S.R. The world’s oldest profession requires a treatment both delicate and balanced, not an easy topic for a first time director like Herr Oleg Frelikh. Actually, this little known work was Frelikh’s only film as a director (prior to this, he had been an actor) and it’s a flawed but interesting effort.Read More »

  • F. Richard Jones – The Gaucho (1927)

    1921-1930ActionF. Richard JonesSilentUSA

    Douglas Fairbanks as The Gaucho
    A girl is saved by a miracle after she falls from a cliff in the Argentine Andes, and is blessed with healing powers. A shrine is built on the site, and a whole city grows around it, rich with gold from the grateful worshipers. Ruiz, an evil and sadistic general, captures the city, confiscates the gold, and closes the shrine. But the Gaucho, the charismatic leader of a band of outlaws, comes to the rescue.Read More »

  • Charles Chaplin – Those Love Pangs (1914)

    1911-1920Charles ChaplinShort FilmSilentUSA

    Quote:
    Charlie and a rival vie for the favors of their landlady. In the park they each fall for different girls, though Charlie’s has a male friend already. Charlie considers suicide, is talked out of it by a policeman, and later throws his girl’s friend into the lake. Frightened, the girls go off to a movie. Charlie shows up there and flirts with them. Later both rivals substitute themselves for the girls and attack the unwitting Charlie. In an audience-wide fight, Charlie is tossed from the screen.Read More »

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