When Marie St. Clair believes she has been jilted by her artist fiance Jean, she decides to leave for Paris on her own. After spending a year in the city as a mistress of the wealthy Pierre Revel, she is reunited with Jean by chance. This leaves her with the choice between a glamorous life in Paris, and the true love she left behind.

A.Woman.of.Paris.1923.Charles.Chaplin.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 21 min
Size: 	2.06 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	766x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 392 kb/s
BPP: 	0.320
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/0CD34633A1864D3/A.Woman.of.Paris.1923.Charles.Chaplin.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264.mkv

Language(s):English [intertitles]
Subtitles:French, German

The post Charles Chaplin – A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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.

Mayer’s next move was to absorb Cosmopolitan Productions headed by publishing titan William Randolph Hearst, who used it primarily as an outlet for his mistress, former Ziegfeld chorine Marion Davies. It was a cozy arrangement among giants, as Hearst’s many papers throughout the country acted as direct media pipelines not only for Cosmopolitan, but also for MGM’s entire roster.

In March of 1925, MGM bought the film rights to Laurence Eyre’s recent Broadway play, Merry Wives of Gotham, as a vehicle for Davies. Set in Old New York, primarily in 1880, it laces historical drama with comedy, with a plucky heroine at its center. By the time Lights of Old Broadway was made, Davies had proven herself both a talented actress and savvy businesswoman, basically running Cosmopolitan, securing a percentage of the film’s profits, and collecting a $10,000 a week salary. Just before production began in late May, Davies, Hearst, and Mayer approved the former journalist and actor Monta Bell as director. Bell had only been directing for a year but had already demonstrated a facility for comedy, with Broadway After Dark (1924) and Pretty Ladies (1925), and for drama, with The Snob (1924) and Lady of the Night (1925).

The setup for Lights of Old Broadway is ripe. Two infant girls are found abandoned on a ship crossing the Atlantic to America. Baby Anne is adopted by the wealthy De Rhondes of fashionable Washington Square, while her twin Fely is adopted by the O’Tandys, immigrants to Upper Manhattan’s Irish shantytown. Anne grows up to be the very essence of a genteel silver-spooned young lady, while gap-toothed Fely is all rough-and-tumble vivacity. Their lives are destined to intersect when Anne’s brother (Conrad Nagel, well cast as a sensitive, handsome scion) falls in love with Fely. Before complications are resolved in the seventh reel, there are class and ethnic conflicts, a brilliantly realized street riot, romance, noble sacrifice, reversal of fortunes, and ample comedy and drama for the gifted Davies. To further burnish the entertainment value, famous names of show business, politics, and science from the era are woven into the plot, including vaudevillians Joe Weber and Lew Fields, impresario Tony Pastor, Thomas Edison, and a spunky young Teddy Roosevelt.

Lights of Old Broadway was supervised by the overworked Thalberg, in charge of no less than seventeen of MGM’s thirty-three productions that year. Neither Mayer nor Hearst made his job easier. During production, Hearst sent multitudinous telegraphs with suggestions on how to proceed. Thalberg didn’t appreciate the meddling, going so far as to issue an ultimatum to Mayer: either Hearst desists with such intrusions, or he (Thalberg) won’t produce any more Cosmopolitan films. To pacify Thalberg, Mayer predicted Hearst would be grateful once the film was released to public approval. Mayer was at least successful in preventing Thalberg’s wholesale defection from Cosmopolitan’s productions.

Mayer and Hearst meanwhile devised a massive publicity campaign. In April of 1925, Hearst’s New York American announced a “Coast-to-Coast party,” a train excursion from New York to California, with sightseeing layovers in Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. Passengers would disembark in Hollywood, with party guests “guided through the vast studios, but [also], through the courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer unit, an invitation has been extended to the American’s party to witness the ‘shooting’ of actual scenes!” The trainload of passengers arrived in Hollywood that July to observe Lights of Old Broadway in production on the Culver City lot. Some reportedly appear as extras.

Lights of Old Broadway was made for a princely $321,000 on a thirty-five day schedule, with a good portion of its budget devoted to two expensive color sequences. Reel two features vaudeville acts filmed in two-strip Technicolor, with inserts of the audience tinted in amber. It’s an early example in American cinema of color used to enhance not just visual mood but storytelling as well, the vibrancy of the stage contrasting with the monochrome audience. The second scene features the historic 1880 lighting of New York’s electric streetlamps, with a crowd looking on in awe and delight. The large American flag in this scene is finished in the Max Handschiegl process, a kind of spot coloring wherein color was painstakingly added to film prints.

Lights of Old Broadway opened in November 1925 to positive reviews. Not surprisingly, much of the glow came from the Hearst newspaper syndicate. “Not only is Marion Davies’s Lights of Old Broadway the finest cinema achievement of the month; it is also a safe bet for a place among the best of the year,” noted the Chicago American. “Marion Davies returns to the field in which she has proved herself – the bright, particular light-historical and romantic comedy drama … Miss Davies is superb as Fely,” noted the Baltimore News. Even a paper not owned by Hearst, the Chicago Tribune, loved her: “Marion Davies is adorable … if I know you at all, you’re going to come out of the theater mightily satisfied.”

To everyone’s stunned disappointment, Lights of Old Broadway failed to garner much early business, with Hearst laying the blame at Thalberg’s feet. In his defense, Thalberg told Davies the problem was with Hearst, who he claimed over-hyped the film and ran an ill-conceived ad campaign. True to character, Hearst shot back with a telegram to Davies, distancing himself from production decisions: “THINK WE MUST REALIZE PICTURE WASN’T BEST EVER PRODUCED … MY FUNCTION IN COMBINATION ARRANGEMENT WITH COMPANY IS FIRST TO PROVIDE GOOD STORY AND LATER TO PROMOTE THE PICTURE. I DIDN’T SELECT THIS STORY OR LIKE IT. THE PLAY HAD BEEN A FAILURE. PICTURE WAS NOT A STAR VEHICLE IN MY HUMBLE OPINION.”

While Hearst and Thalberg traded accusations, something fortuitous happened. Word of mouth, not Hearst’s heavy-handed marketing, turned Lights of Old Broadway into a hit. Mayer wisely stayed above the Hearst-Thalberg fracas, swooping in just as the film began making its eventual $109,000 profit. “Mayer moved quickly to congratulate Hearst and Thalberg for getting off to such an excellent start in their mutual endeavors,” remembered MGM story editor Samuel Marx. “Hearst wired his appreciation and Thalberg went to work preparing a half-dozen new Davies films.”

Despite her abundant charm here and in other films like Little Old New York (1923), The Patsy (1928), and Show People (1928), memory of Davies is tainted with the notion she had no talent, that her career is due entirely to Hearst’s intervention. That reputation was solidified with Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), in which a Hearst-like figure cruelly pushes mistress and third-rate singer Susan Alexander into the limelight. But Davies didn’t help her own legacy by maintaining large amounts of humility and insecurity throughout her life. She retired in 1937 and came to believe she wasn’t very good. In her memoirs The Times We Had, published posthumously in 1975, she wrote, “I couldn’t act, but the idea of silent pictures appealed to me, because I couldn’t talk either.” Her self-assessment is just plain wrong. Fortunately for us, there are numerous surviving films demonstrating the sublime and enduring artistry of Marion Davies.

Lights.of.Old.Broadway.1925.1080p.BluRay.x264.DTS-FGT.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 12 min
Size: 	6.57 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1420x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	11.5 Mb/s
BPP: 	0.312
Audio
#1:  	English 5.1ch DTS @ 1 509 kb/s (Surround 5.1)

https://nitro.download/view/13F1E3B4BA8C4DE/Lights.of.Old.Broadway.1925.1080p.BluRay.x264.DTS-FGT.mkv

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:English Intertitles

The post Monta Bell – Lights of Old Broadway (1925) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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.

The.Strong.Man.1926.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264-Slope.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 16 min
Size: 	3.43 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	772x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	6 212 kb/s
BPP: 	0.582
Audio
#1:  	zxx 2.0ch AAC LC @ 232 kb/s (Score by John William Griffith II)

https://nitro.download/view/375EE187F27C48B/The.Strong.Man.1926.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264-Slope.mkv

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:English [intertitles], French

The post Frank Capra – The Strong Man (1926) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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

Queen Kelly (1929) Erich von Stroheim a.avi

General
Container:  	AVI
Runtime: 	1 h 40 min
Size: 	1.07 GiB
Video
Codec: 	XviD
Resolution: 	704x528 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 340 kb/s
BPP: 	0.150
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch MP3 @ 172 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/4D054F6438CB2A2/Queen_Kelly_(1929)_Erich_von_Stroheim_a.avi

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:English Intertitles

The post Erich von Stroheim – Queen Kelly (1929) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Light Industry wrote:
In 1926, André Gide set sail from Bordeaux to French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo with Marc Allégret, his 25-year-old former student and lover of nearly a decade, who was brought on the trip officially as Gide’s “secretary.” Gide had been inspired to visit Africa by reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and planned his itinerary with Allégret as something of a recapitulation of Conrad’s fictional expedition. Travelling for thousands of miles by railway, river, and foot, through areas that today comprise the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Chad, and Cameroon, the pair spent time with colonial agents and indigenous communities. Both Gide and Allégret produced important records of their epic journey. Gide kept diaries that he quickly published in two volumes, Voyage au Congo (1927) and Le Retour du Tchad (1928), while Allégret took some seven hundred photographs and shot the film Voyage au Congo: Scènes de la Vie Indigène en Afrique Équatoriale, one of the earliest feature-length ethnographic documentaries to be made on the continent.

Voyage.au.Congo.AKA.Travels.in.the.Congo.1927.1080p.AAC.2.0-SaL.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 55mn
Size: 	4.21 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 999 Kbps
BPP: 	0.100
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 192 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/787826FA8F2BB5E/Voyage.au.Congo.AKA.Travels.in.the.Congo.1927.1080p.AAC.2.0-SaL.mkv

Language(s):None (Music Only)
Subtitles:English (hardcoded translation of intertitles)

The post Marc Allégret – Voyage au Congo AKA Travels in the Congo (1927) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Navy captain Avanti Planetaros is inspired by his astronomer-father to travel through outer space to reach other worlds. He becomes an aviator, and, along with the young scientist Dr. Krafft, the driving force behind the construction of a spaceship. Despite opposition from the mocking Professor Dubius, Planetaros gathers a crew of fearless men and takes off. During the long voyage, the crew becomes restless; a mutiny is narrowly avoided. Finally they reach Mars, and discover that the planet is inhabited by a people who have reached a higher stage of development, free of disease, sorrow, violence, covetousness, sexual urges, and the fear of death. Avanti falls in love with Marya, daughter of the Prince of Wisdom, the head of the Martians. Marya shares his feelings, and decides to return with him in order to bring the wisdom of the Martians to the backward Earthlings.

This lavishly produced space-travel picture is something of a milestone in the science-fiction genre. The contemporary fascination with aviation is evident: the spaceship has wings and a propeller, and the members of the crew are clad in leather aviator outfits. While the druid-like Martians may seem unintentionally comic, the film’s ideas of a utopian ideal world are quite fascinating from the viewpoint of cultural history. Ole Olsen was credited as co-author of the screenplay, and both he and the well-known writer Sophus Michaëlis hoped that the film would speak to the hearts of spectators and inspire them with “ideal sentiments”, particularly pacifism.

Himmelskibet - A Trip to Mars (1918) Holger-Madsen - 1080p.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 20 min
Size: 	2.62 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1476x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 420 kb/s
BPP: 	0.111
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/A1AF8DCC8AFFEC8/Himmelskibet_-_A_Trip_to_Mars_(1918)_Holger-Madsen_-_1080p.mkv

Language(s):Danish / English intertitles
Subtitles:none

Many thanks to @Marcio for this copy

The post Holger-Madsen – Himmelskibet AKA A Trip to Mars (1918) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

CinemaSerf, IMDB wrote:
Bruno Decarli (“Count Greven”) is quite good here, as the nobleman who likes to collect works of art. When in Java, he alights on a mystical totem and decides he has to have it – despite the objections of the local priest (Conrad Veidt) whom he swiftly despatches. That’s not the end of our holy man, however, as he haunts his killer with portents of impeding doom… Veidt looks superb as the spirit; his (heavily made up) facial features – always hugely effective – are lit with added poignancy and the direction from Robert Wiene builds a good degree of tension as the denouement, quite literally, looms.

Der Kinematograph, 29 September 1917 wrote:
These four acts … are quite beyond the usual standard. One is really pleased, not only by the rich, deep thoughts, but also by the courage of a film factory to put aside thoughts of pure business for the sake of art, for the sake of refining taste… Wiene has crafted a great, soulful picture and he has proved that psychology — the most difficult subject for the screen, does not have to be excluded from the art of film…

Furcht.1917.WEB.1080p.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 13 min
Size: 	2.19 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 256 kb/s
BPP: 	0.086
Audio

https://nitro.download/view/17FABB74CAAB0A3/Furcht.1917.WEB.1080p.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/DA137826232F168/Furcht.1917.WEB.1080p.srt

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:English, Danish intertitles, German (hardcoded)

The post Robert Wiene – Furcht AKA Fear (1917) first appeared on Cinema of the World.