Silent

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It perhaps comes as no surprise, given Carl Theodor Dreyer’s lifelong, idealized melancholy over his own unresolved parentage, that the scenario selected for his first film, The President would involve three generations of children conceived out of wedlock, and thematically crystallize on the legacy of their unreconciled paternity in the resolution of their own disparate lives. For Dreyer, this expurgation of such deep-seated trauma was not only manifested in the naïve idea of restoring the virtue and honor of a “fallen” woman (an archetypal surrogate for his own idealized, unwed, biological mother) through transcendence, but also in confronting the innate cruelty of the very institutions that socially (and inequitably) stigmatized such human transgressions through codified notions of morality and class division. Read More »

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Once upon a Time (a.k.a. Der var engang) is an atypical film for the Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer, a departure from his more usual realistic dramas into the realm of fantasy and fairytale. It was the only film that Dreyer made for the independent film producer Sophus Madsen, a Danish film enthusiast whose only other production was Laurids Skands’s all but forgotten Livets Karneval (1923). The film was adapted from a play by Holger Drachmann, written in 1885, that was itself based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale Svinedrengen and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the
Shrew. From the outset, this was conceived as a lavish production, but it soon ran into financial difficulties. Even though some scenes were cut – including an extravagant market sequence – the film still ended up with a 150 per cent overspend on its 90,000
kroner budget.Read More »

Restored by “La Cinémathèque Française” in 1988

Plot :
A ghost has been seen during the night in the Louvre Museum (Paris), and a guard is found dying near the statue of Belphégor, a god of Moabites and Ammonites. A young reporter, Jacques Bellegarde, begin to investigate but soon he’s being threatened by some letters sent by … Belphégor

It’s a silent mini-serie in 4 parts, after a popular book of Arthur Bernède, in the style of the 1st Fantômas (in fact, René Navarre was Fantômas in the Louis Feuillade’s movie)

Nearly 40 years later, a remake of this serie was made with Juliette Greco and met a great success in France, and is much better known that this one.Read More »

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In Coeur Fidèle’s accompanying 44-page booklet, Jean Epstein, at a 1924 address, argues his film as “romantic” rather than”realist”, the label with which Italian poet Ricciotto Canudo assigned it before his death. The truth is that Epstein’s largely unknown masterpiece provides a fascinating agreement of the two styles, oscillating with seamless precision between reverie and sincerity. Marie (Gina Manès) is in love with Jean (Léon Mathot), a kind-hearted man who works on the Marseille docklands, but Marie’s adoptive parents want to marry her off to the obnoxious and unemployed drunk Petit Paul (Edmond Van Daële), and the scene is set for a sensational melodrama to unfold.Read More »

A lonely young woman lives with her strict father who forbids her to wear make-up. One day at an ice cream social, she meets a young man you seems interested in her. However, unknown to her, he is a burglar who is only interested in breaking into her father’s house. One night she is awakened by a noise. Grabbing a pistol, she enters her father’s downstairs office where she confronts a masked intruder . . . Read More »

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A rough criminal gets into an argument over a girl in a dance hall. The argument turns into a fight…Read More »

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It is windy at a bathing resort. After fighting with one of the two husbands, Charlie approaches Edna while the two husbands themselves fight over ice cream. Driven away by her husband, Charlie turns to the other’s wife.Read More »

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The Little Fellow finds the girl of his dreams and works on a family farm.Read More »

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Directed by Monta Bell, who deserves to be remembered alongside Von Stroheim and other directorial giants of the era, the picture stars Bell’s favorite actress, Norma Shearer, in a dual role. She plays a rich girl, Florence, and a poor girl named Molly, a gangster’s moll.

Having the same actress play both roles is the brilliant touch. The women, of course, look alike, yet no one in the film notices. In the eyes of the world they’re totally different people. The audience, however, sees them as through the eyes of an omniscient observer — recognizing plainly that these women are, essentially, the same.Read More »