1920s

A beautiful showgirl, nicknamed ‘the Canary’, is a scheming nightclub singer. Blackmailing is her game and soon ends up dead. But who killed ‘the Canary’. All the suspects who knew her had been used by her. The only witness to the crime was also killed. Only one man, debonair detective, Philo Vance, might be able to figure out who silenced ‘the Canary’.Read More »

Lights of Old Broadway
Essay by Matthew Kennedy
By 1924, Metro Pictures was ailing. Founded in 1915 it had major successes with child star Jackie Coogan, “Great Stone Face” Buster Keaton, and sensational Rudolph Valentino in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). But Metro lost Valentino to Paramount and was also in need of more theaters to better control exhibition. Goldwyn Pictures was in trouble, too, thanks to internecine fights between management and board. A merger could mitigate their respective business worries. When Metro and Goldwyn united on April 17, 1924, with the manipulative, canny, and robust Louis B. Mayer in charge, it became the nascent film empire Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer. Twenty-four-year-old “Boy Wonder” Irving Thalberg, formerly at Universal, was signed as supervisor of production.Read More »

AMG wrote:
In this drama, an impoverished Irishman decides to turn an IRA colleague into the cops to receive a desperately needed reward that will allow him to escape to America with his mistress. Unfortunately his plans go awry and the young man is filled with guilt by his friends who once held his high ideals. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie GuideRead More »

Quote:
Here’s the trailer from Ernst Lubitsch’s long lost silent film The Patriot, which is the only film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar that is now lost. Emil Jannings, Florence Vidor, and Lewis Stone star.

The trailer is fairly tantalizing, I mean who wouldn’t want to hear Jannings’ “Agonized Roar”, and the fact that it’s a Lubitsch film makes it doubly so. But sadly this is all we have left of the film save for some crowd footage that ended up in Josef von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress. Here’s hoping someday this one turns up.Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
A meek Belgian soldier (Harry Langdon) fighting in World War I receives penpal letters and a photo from “Mary Brown”, an American girl he has never met. He becomes infatuated with her by long distance. After the war, the young Belgian journeys to America as assistant to a theatrical “strong man”, Zandow the Great (Arthur Thalasso). While in America, he searches for Mary Brown… and he finds her, just as word comes that Zandow is incapacitated and the little nebbish must go on stage in his place.Read More »

Prince Wolfram is the betrothed of mad Queen Regina V of Kronberg. Supreme ruler, her word is law and he is a playboy…Read More »

Although Cops is one of the all-time great two-reelers, its creator, Buster Keaton, never thought much of it. He felt it was just a run-of-the-mill chase film, which suggests that perhaps Keaton was his own worst critic — the chase is what gives the film its brilliance. The film’s beginning is a portent of things to come: Keaton longingly looks at his girl Virginia Fox through what appear to be prison bars. In reality, it’s the gate to the mansion where she lives. The girl sends Keaton away, telling him not to return until he is a success in business. Keaton attempts to do so, acquiring, through convoluted means, a horse, wagon, and a load of stolen furniture.Read More »

Summary:
Harold Bledsoe, a botany student, is called back home to San Francisco, where his late father had been police chief, to help investigate a crime wave in Chinatown.Read More »

Womanizer Don Mateo helps a girl in a train when attacked by a other woman. This girl, Conchita – a cigarette maker, soon visits the rich Don Mateo at his palace in Sevillia. He falls for her, but she likes to play with him.Read More »