Silent

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
This structuralist dissection, enumeration, decomposition and reconstruction of a 1905 Biograph film of the same title provides a painstaking metaphysical exploration of the nature of cinema. Practically every shot and scene of the original 10-minute film is ominously “analyzed” and re-interpreted into a feature-length work by manipulation of image, introduction of slow motion, repetition, freeze-frames, abstracting, and other “subversions” of the original. Shades of Vertov!Read More »

Quote:
Skater musical from Buenos Aires suburb. In this silent black-and-white 4:3 format film, the hypnotising soundtrack drives the images. Love, desire, drama, faces. Perrone, the godfather of Argentine independent cinema, reinvents it in his 35th film.

Argentinian director Raúl Perrone calls P3ND3JO5 (‘pendejos’: slang for teen, but also idiot or worse epithets) a ‘cumbia opera in three acts with coda’. Cumbia is rhythmic Columbian music that became immensely popular in Latin America during the 1940s.
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Plot:
The little Agenore (Ferdinande Guillaume) combines a lot of trouble to family friend Ilario Mentecatti (Natale Guillaume).(European Film Gateway)Read More »

Plot
Disappointed by love, Tontolini consults a doctor about the sadness he feels. The doctor prescribes distractions and entertainment as a cure. Tontolini accepts the doctor’s advice and begins the cure by going to café chantants and theaters, where he finds nothing but moving performances that make him even sadder. (European Film Gateway)Read More »

Plot
A young Flemish peasant experiences the brutal side of war after his father has left to fight at the battle front of the Yser, his mother has been executed by German soldiers and his grandfather has been sent to an internment camp. He decides to take up arms and joins the Belgian army to avenge his mother’s death… (EFG)Read More »

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader wrote:
Charles Chaplin’s best-loved film, with the tramp down-and-out (as usual) in Alaska, where he looks for gold, falls in love with a dance-hall girl (Georgia Hale), eats his shoes for Thanksgiving dinner, and ends up a millionaire. The blend of slapstick and pathos is seamless, although the cynicism of the final scene is still surprising. Chaplin’s later films are quirkier and more personal, but this is quintessential Charlie, and unmissable. The film has been issued in several different forms with different sound tracks and cuts, including a 72-minute version butchered by Chaplin himself in the 40s. Hold out for the 1925 original, which runs 82 minutes.Read More »

Sandra Brennan at allmovie.com wrote:
This compelling and exceptionally well-executed silent drama, from new MGM studio executives Irving Thalburg and producer Louis B. Mayer is based on a highly-regarded Russian play and features the studio’s biggest stars, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. Directed by noted Swedish filmmmaker Victor Sjostrom, it is the story of a scientific genius who is humiliated by his philandering wife and a major career set-back. To express his pain, bitterness and anger he becomes a circus clown who seems to enjoy the frequently cruel slapstick antics of his new colleagues. While in the circus, he finds a chance at renewal when he falls for a lovely bareback rider. But will he at last find happiness? Or will tragedy continue to be his closest companion?Read More »

Quote:
Krazy Kat and Ignatz set out for the wilds on Krazy’s bike; Krazy’s promises to teach Ignatz about bugology. After crashing the bike into a tree, they come upon a bee (Krazy says it’s sleeping, Ignatz says it’s dead) and an elephant. Krazy works his magic on one of them, Ignatz on the other. Hearts swell inside the animals’ chests.
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The Saphead is a 1920 comedy film featuring Buster Keaton. It was the actor’s first starring role in a full-length feature and the film that launched his career.

The plot was a merging of two stories, Bronson Howard’s play The Henrietta and the novel The New Henrietta by Victor Mapes and Winchell Smith, which was meant to be an adaption of Howard’s play.
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