1920s

Film restored by Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana (Spain)

At a chancery a lawyer helps his female customers, predominantly with his member. Watch how even back in silent-movie times girls expressed themselves freely on camera. By the way, back in those days, women with ‘Rubens’ figures were considered beauty-queens, but the sex was similar to what’s happening today! There’s merry threesomes, lesbian games and a priest off the straight and narrow! Porn-fodder of the rare kind: A movie from 1920!Read More »

Paul Muni’s film debut. Muni earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance, the first of six in his long career.
A drifter with a clouded past accidentally kills the key witness to a crime, then sacrifices himself to the law under an assumed name rather than disgrace his family. In this manner, Muni is certain that he’s redeemed himself for his previous misdeeds–but a curious police inspector tries to probe his past. The Valiant was remade in 1940 as THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T TALK, with Lloyd Nolan in the Muni role.Read More »

Somewhere in Southern Bavaria Xaver wants to marry Gretel, but her father Kohlhiesel wants his elder daughter Liesel to marry first. The problem is, nobody wants to marry her, because she’s too brutal. Seppel suggests, that he should marry Liesel first, get rid of her and then he can marry Gretel…Read More »

A more than pleasant, funny and touching short(ened) burlesque comedy of young Y. Ozu.
Two friends provide shelter to an orphan girl they have accidentally knocked down.Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader wrote:
Except for The Saga of Anatahan, this 1929 release is probably the most underrated of Josef von Sternberg’s sound pictures, and it’s underrated for the same reason: Sternberg is known almost exclusively as a visual stylist, but the most exciting thing here is the highly creative sound track. It’s Sternberg’s first talkie–a near remake of Underworld, a spiritual romance about a doomed gangster, with the same lead (George Bancroft) and Fay Wray–and although this is a minority opinion, I find it better than the original in many ways. With Richard Arlen and Tully Marshall.Read More »

Synopsis:Factory owner Pardon, meets Olga, daughter of clairvoyant Stefanie Lesczynska at a ball. Their brief acquaintance is interrupted when Olga and her mother have to leave. Fifi Hrazánková has her sights set on the elligible Pardon. Pardon asks his Uncle Cyril Ponděliček if the girl could take over his position at work so that she may be dissuaded of her amorous intentions. Fifi seduces Pondělíček. In the meantime, Pardon meets Olga and Stefanie again by chance and offers them a place to stay at Ponděliček’s while Pondělíček passes himself off as Pardon. Ponděliček recognises Stefanie as his former lover, Olga is their daughter. Stefanie also recognises him, but Pondělíček declares that he is the thief named Kanibal whom the newspapers are all writing about. He locks Pardon, Stefanie and Olga in the cellar and, together with Fifi, he escapes. In the inn they happen to come across the real Kanibal who is being pursued by the police. The police mistakenly arrest Pondělíček. Pardon explains to the Police who Pondělíček really is. The real Kanibal is then apprehended. Pondělíček then marries Stefanie and they wish their daughter luck with the factory owner, Pardon. Fifi is thus finally cured of her romantic notions.Read More »

Imdb:
Extraordinary Soap Opera
12 August 2009 | by GManfred (Ramsey, NJ)

I am not a fan of Soaps. Too often they are predictable and boring and descend into bathos -‘Womens’ Pictures’. But this picture was so spectacular in all respects that I was taken aback by its sheer accomplishment. Critic Kenneth Tynan said that one must ‘suspend one’s disbelief’ to take part in the movie experience. If that is the case, this picture became real; it was not a play on the screen performed by mere actors.

The story is familiar but the production is not. Direction is skillful and the photography is perfect. The picture moves quickly and the acting is superb. Francis Lederer was good, Brigitte Helm was even better, and Warwick Ward, who plays Col. Beranoff, spit and polish and bent on revenge, was outstanding. He was the glue that held the cast together and was a riveting presence whenever he was on screen.Read More »

In Puritan Boston, seamstress Hester Prynne is punished for playing on the Sabbath day; but kindly minister Arthur Dimmesdale takes pity on her. The two fall in love, but their relationship cannot be: Hester is already married to Roger Prynne, a physician who has been missing seven years. Dimmesdale has to go away to England; when he returns, he finds Hester pregnant with their child, and the focus of the town’s censure. In a humiliating public ceremony, she is forced to don the scarlet letter A – for adultery – and wear it the rest of her life. Dimmesdale is encouraged by the church fathers to demand of Hester the person with whom she sinned.Read More »

Plot: The story of the famous battle between the Scots clans of Macdonald and Campbell, and the young woman who comes between them, Annie Laurie.Read More »