1920s

Synopsis
Often described as “the first American independent film”, von Sternberg’s The Salvation Hunters is an austere and obscurely naturalist drama about “humans who crawl near the floor.”

“It’s hard now to appreciate the bomb-shell that Sternberg’s first feature must have been in Hollywood at the time: its slow pace, its lyrical pessimism, and its strong emphasis on the psychological over the physical set it far apart from anything that the American cinema had produced” (Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide). Shot for less than five thousand dollars in the span of three weeks, the groundbreaking Salvation Hunters announced the emergence of a major new talent, even if audiences of the day didn’t quite know what to make of its grimy settings, glum tone, and overt symbolizing.Read More »

Buster Keaton plays a young lawyer who will inherit $7 million at 7 o’clock on his 27th birthday–provided he is married. Long before discovering this, Keaton has pursued a lifelong courtship of Ruth Dwyer, whose refusals have become ritualistic over the years (the passage of time is amusingly conveyed by showing a puppy grow to adulthood). He proposes again, but this time she turns him down because she thinks (mistakenly) that he wants her only so that he can claim his inheritance. The doleful Keaton is thus obliged to spend the few hours left before the 7 PM deadline in search of a bride–any bride. He has no luck whatsoever until his pal T. Roy Barnes prints the story of Keaton’s incoming legacy in the local newspaper.Read More »

Plot:
An eccentric millionaire brings together four men who, under different circumstances, wanted to commit suicide. The proposal made to them is the following: they will travel to an islet that, according to legend, emerged from the sea when Atlantis sank and that houses a fabulous treasure buried by the Incas. But that territory is populated by the worst band of pirates and evildoers the world has ever known.Read More »

Pandora’s Box (German: Die Büchse der Pandora) is a 1929 German silent film based on Frank Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904). Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner and Francis Lederer. Brooks’ portrayal of a seductive, thoughtless young woman whose raw sexuality and uninhibited nature bring ruin to herself and those who love her, although initially unappreciated, eventually made the actress a star.Read More »

Plot Synopsis from allmovie:
Based on a Pushkin novel, The Eagle stars Rudolph Valentino as a Russian cossack who is the special favorite of the formidable Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser). He spurns her attentions, preferring not to be a kept consort. When his lands are stolen from him, Valentino transforms into a Robin-Hood-like masked avenger. Vilma Banky plays the daughter of the man who killed Valentino’s own father. Despite his thirst for revenge, our hero falls in love with Vilma, who goes the “Lois Lane” route of adoring the masked-avenger Valentino but disdaining the unmasked Rudy, little guessing that the two are one in the same. Watch quickly for Gary Cooper as one of Valentino’s masked minionsRead More »

This is the movie that gave Clara Bow, the film world’s first sex symbol, her lasting nickname. She will allways be “The It Girl”. “IT” is roughly sex appeal, or in the words of novellist Elinor Glyn: “‘IT’ is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With ‘IT’ you will win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man. ‘IT’ can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.”Read More »

Quote:
Bargeman Louveau finds an abandoned boy, Victor, and with the authorities permission takes him back to his own family where he raises him. 10 years later Victor and Louveau’s daughter Clara have fallen in love, and it is then that Louveau is called to Paris, where it has been discovered that Victor is really the son of Maugendré, a charcoal shipper on the Nivernaise canal.Read More »

Synopsis:
Juan is the son of a poor widow in Seville. Against his mother’s wishes he pursues a career as toreador. He rapidly gains national prominence, and takes his childhood sweetheart Carmen as his bride. He meets the Marquis’ daughter Dona Sol, and finds himself in the awkward position of being in love with two women, which threatens the stability of his family and his position in society. He finds interesting parallels in the life of the infamous bandit Plumitas when they eventually meet by chance.Read More »

Quote:
Fictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in modern Europe. Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen’s legendary silent film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages and early modern era suffered from the same ills as psychiatric patients diagnosed with hysteria in the film’s own time. Far from a dry dissertation on the topic, the film itself is a witches’ brew of the scary, the gross, and the darkly humorous. Christensen’s mix-and-match approach to genre anticipates gothic horror, documentary re-creation, and the essay film, making for an experience unlike anything else in the history of cinema.Read More »