Alternative Film Guide

Allan R. Ellenberger discusses the death of silent-film actress Gladys Brockwell:
"Today is the 79th anniversary of the tragic death of actress Gladys Brockwell. Though virtually unknown today, Brockwell was a popular actress in the teens and 1920s. The Brooklyn-born daughter of a struggling chorus girl, Brockwell entered show business on stage at the age of [...]

© Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung
 
At GreenCine Daily, David Hudson mentions the discovery of long-lost sequences from the 1927 silent science-fiction classic Metropolis:
"For film historians and cinephiles in general, this could easily be the story of the year. The ZEITmagazin has just posted at its site a preview of a piece running in tomorrow’s edition that confirms the existence [...]

The screening of a digitally restored 35mm print of Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) and a look at rare behind-the-scenes photographs revealing the techniques used in creating the film’s special effects will be the focus of "Techno Chaplin," an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ program hosted by visual effects supervisor Craig Barron and [...]

The Dutch government has allocated €154 million for the restoration of motion pictures rotting in vaults across The Netherlands. Among the titles to be restored is the 1919 Olive Thomas vehicle The Glorious Lady, which was thought lost for a number of years.
A former Ziegfeld Girl, Thomas died from "accidental poisoning" (some have claimed she [...]

Thursday, June 5, highlights on Turner Classic Movies:
Love Me or Leave Me is a competent biopic, with Doris Day giving a capable performance as torch singer Ruth Etting, while Johnny Belinda is an underrated psychological drama — one that features a then scandalous rape scene — that boasts an excellent star turn by Jane Wyman, [...]

At 8pm on Thursday, June 5, the Echo Park Film Center will screen the rare silent melodrama The Untameable, billed as "The Most Shocking Film of 1923!"
Long before The Three Faces of Eve, The Untameable tackled the then sensational issue of split personality disorder. Directed by Herbert Blaché and adapted by Hugh Hoffman from Gelett [...]

World Cinema Clips: The 1959 MGM version of Ben-Hur is best remembered for its chariot race, which happens to be an imitation of the superior 1925 race for that studio’s mammoth — and highly problematic — production of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Ramon Novarro, soon to become a superstar, and Francis X. Bushman, [...]

Mr. Wu (1927)
Direction: William Nigh. Screenplay: Lorna Moon; from Henry Maurice Vernon and Harold Owen’s play. Titles: Lotta Woods. Cast: Lon Chaney, Louise Dresser, Renée Adorée, Ralph Forbes, Gertrude Olmstead, Holmes Herbert, Mrs. Wong Wing, Claude King, Anna May Wong
 
"A maiden defiled must be put to death by the hand of her father," so reads [...]

Shadows (1922)
Direction: Tom Forman. Screenplay: Hope Loring, Harry Perry, and Eve Unsell; from Wilbur Daniel Steele’s story "Ching, Ching, Chinaman." Cast: Lon Chaney, Marguerite De La Motte, Harrison Ford, John St. Polis, Walter Long, Buddy Messinger, Priscilla Bonner, Frances Raymond
 
In the 1922 melodrama Shadows, the shipwrecked Chinese cook Yen Sin (Lon Chaney) washes up onto [...]

The Kid (1921)
Direction and Screenplay: Charles Chaplin. Cast: Charles Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Edna Purviance, Carl Miller
 

 
Although I have never been much of a Charles Chaplin fan, The Kid is one sweet picture. In fact, it is the only Chaplin vehicle I would want to see over again.
The story, also penned by Chaplin, is simple: a [...]

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)
Direction: Fred Niblo. Directorial Associates: Alfred L. Raboch and B. Reeves Eason (and Christy Cabanne, uncredited). Screenplay: Carey Wilson and Bess Meredyth, based on June Mathis’s adaptation of General Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel. Titles: Katherine Hilliker and H. H. Caldwell. Cast: Ramon Novarro, May McAvoy, Francis X. Bushman, Betty [...]

The Penalty (1920)
Direction: Wallace Worsley. Screenplay: Charles Kenyon and Philip Lonergan; from Gouverneur Morris’ novel. Cast: Lon Chaney, Kenneth Harlan, Ethel Grey Terry, Doris Pawn, Charles Clary, Jim Mason, Milton Ross, Claire Adams
 

 
Lon Chaney was more than just an actor. He was a magician. Like a chameleon, he could morph into a character.
In the gruesome [...]

Dave Graham reports in Reuters that later this year what appears to be the first biography of silent-film actor Max Schreck, in my view the most effective movie vampire of them all, will be published in Germany.
Schreck starred in F.W. Murnau’s excellent 1922 horror drama Nosferatu, presumably the first feature film based on Bram Stoker’s [...]

Sparrows (1926)
Direction: William Beaudine. Screenplay: C. Gardner Sullivan (adaptation); George Marion Jr. (titles); from a story by Winifred Dunn. Cast: Mary Pickford, Roy Stewart, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Spec O’Donnell, Billy Butts
 

 
Molly is the role Mary Pickford was born to play. In Sparrows, Molly is the oldest among the ten orphans being kept as slaves [...]

The 1913 melodrama Ma l’amor mio non muore / Love Everlasting, starring super-diva Lyda Borelli, will be screened on Tuesday, May 13 at 7pm at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
Why a silent movie screening at an academy of music, of all places?
Well, perhaps because Lyda Borelli (1884–1959) plays a singer in the [...]

La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Direction: Carl Theodor Dreyer. Screenplay: Carl Theodor Dreyer and Joseph Delteil. Cast: Maria Falconetti, Eugene Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz, Antonin Artaud, Michel Simon, Jean d’Yd
 

 
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s late silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / The Passion of Joan of Arc [...]

"Important international stars from the silent era of filmmaking are undeservedly forgotten today because of the unavailability of their motion pictures, which are often considered lost."
Thus begins the press release for the seventh "Meet the Makers: Silent Film Accompanists" series, which will attempt to rectify that problem by screening five little-seen star vehicles of the [...]

"There is cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso."
That’s none other than Jean Cocteau, referring to the mammoth 1923 drama (original running time: nearly 8 hours) directed and written by Abel Gance — he of Napoleon.
Gance worked for three years on La Roue / The Wheel, which revolves [...]

A Fool There Was (1915)
Direction: Frank Powell. Screenplay: Roy L. McCardell, adaptation by Frank Powell; from Porter Emerson Browne’s 1909 play and inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 poem “The Vampire.” Cast: Theda Bara, Edward José, May Allison, Mabel Fremyear, Frank Powell, Victor Benoit, Clifford Bruce
 

 
A Fool There Was. This creaky old relic introduced the earliest [...]

The Godless Girl (1929)
Direction: Cecil B. DeMille. Screenplay: Jeanie Macpherson; titles by Macpherson and Beulah Marie Dix. Cast: Lina Basquette, George Duryea (aka Tom Keene), Marie Prevost, Noah Beery, Eddie Quillan, Clarence Burton, Hedwiga Reicher, Kate Price, Julia Faye, Dick Alexander, Mary Jane Irving
 

 
This one took me totally by surprise! Cecil B. DeMille’s last silent [...]

World Cinema Clips: A bit of Communist propaganda, courtesy of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 classic Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin. Considered by many one of the greatest — if not the greatest — film ever made, Battleship Potemkin is best remembered for the "Odessa Steps" expressionist montage sequence.
The propaganda is so effective that the film was, [...]

The Volga Boatman (1926)
Direction: Cecil B. DeMille. Screenplay: Lenore J. Coffee; from Konrad Bercovici’s novel. Cast: William Boyd, Elinor Fair, Victor Varconi, Robert Edeson, Julia Faye
 
The Cecil B. DeMille epic The Volga Boatman should be book-ended with DeMille’s 1929 drama The Godless Girl. Both tell compelling stories without a clear, definite point of view.
Picture [...]

Stella Maris (1918)
Direction: Marshall Neilan. Screenplay: Frances Marion; from William J. Locke’s novel. Cast: Mary Pickford, Conway Tearle, Marcia Manon, Herbert Standing, Ida Waterman, Josephine Crowell
 
Poor Stella Maris. She’s a rich crippled girl who lives her life under the generous protection of her wealthy aunt and uncle. They keep her propped up in bed in [...]

In Alfred Schirokauer and Reinhold Schünzel’s 1927 silent comedy Der Himmel auf Erden / Heaven on Earth, Schünzel plays a moralistic city councilor who "is forced by his brother’s will to take a legacy of 500,000 marks on condition that he takes over the running of notorious nightclub Heaven on Earth. Initial disdain gives way [...]

The Single Standard (1929)
Direction: John R. Robertson. Screenplay: Josephine Lovett (adaptation), Marian Ainslee (titles); from a novel by Adela Rogers St. Johns. Cast: Greta Garbo, Nils Asther, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian, Lane Chandler, Mahlon Hamilton, Kathlyn Williams
 

 
Johnny Mack Brown or Nils Asther? Nils Asther or Johnny Mack Brown? Conventional love or hot sex? That [...]