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D.W. Griffith in California

Los Angeles Filmforum will present "D.W. Griffith in California," on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7:30 pm. at the Echo Park Film Center. At the screening, film scholar Tom Gunning will discuss D. W. Griffith and his early Californian films.
Six of those Griffith productions will be screened: Man’s Genesis (1912, 17 min); The New Dress (1911, 17 min.); The Massacre (1914, 20 min); The Unchanging Sea  (below right, 1910, 14 min.); The Sands of Dee (1912, 17 min); and The Female of the Species (1912, 17 min).
All in 16mm, with live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick.
Among the early stars featured in those shorts are Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Arthur Johnson, Wilfred Lucas, and, [...]

D. W. Griffith, Emile Cohl – A Century Ago: The Films of 1908

“A Century Ago: The Films of 1908,” showcasing filmmaking highlights of 1908, will be the next presentation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ series “Monday Nights with Oscar.” The screenings will be held on Monday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City. Hosted by the Academy’s Director of Educational Programs and Special Projects Randy Haberkamp, the evening will feature live musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla.
Among the shorts included in the “A Century Ago: The Films of 1908” presentation are Biograph’s After Many Years, in which new director D. W. Griffith (above) experiments with parallel cutting and camera movement; Vitagraph’s trick film The Thieving [...]

Best Films – 1923

I must admit that I’m not a fan of Charles Chaplin’s comedies. Heresies aside, I did very much enjoy Chaplin’s dramatic A Woman of Paris, an attempt to turn his frequent leading lady Edna Purviance into a star. The film was a box-office success (despite rumors to the contrary), but Purviance’s career never took off. That is unfortunate, as she gives a moving performance in this tale of lost love and single motherhood. She is with Carl Miller in the photo. Things are obviously not going very well for the couple, but Purviance is surely suffering in style.
 
FILM
Cameo Kirby
d: John Ford; scr: Robert N. Lee
Scaramouche
d: Rex Ingram; scr: Willis Goldbeck
The White Rose
d, scr: D. W. Griffith
A Woman of Paris
d, scr: [...]

Best Films – 1919

Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess in Broken Blossoms
FILM
Broken Blossoms
d, scr: D. W. Griffith
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari / The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
d: Robert Wiene; scr: Carl Mayer, Hans Janowitz
The Hoodlum
d: Sidney Franklin; scr: Frances Marion
 
CHECK THESE OUT
The False Faces
d, scr: Irvin Willat
The Sentimental Bloke
d: Raymond Longford; scr: Raymond Longford and (possibly) Lottie Lyell
 
ACTOR
Richard Barthelmess
Broken Blossoms
Werner Krauss
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Thomas Meighan
Male and Female
Arthur Tauchert
The Sentimental Bloke
 
ACTRESS
Lillian Gish
Broken Blossoms
Lillian Gish
The Greatest Question
Mary Johnson
Herr Arnes pengar / Sir Arne’s Treasure
Mary Pickford
Heart o’ the Hills
Mary Pickford
The Hoodlum
Gloria Swanson
Male and Female
 
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Lon Chaney
Victory
Conrad Veidt
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
 
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Josephine Crowell
The Greatest Question
Lila Lee
Male and Female
Clarine Seymour
The Girl Who Stayed at Home
 
CINEMATOGRAPHY
G. W. Bitzer
Broken Blossoms
G. W. Bitzer
The Greatest Question
René [...]

Best Films – 1914

Giovanni Pastrone’s epic Cabiria is considered a landmark in motion picture history, inspiring the scope of D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916).
 
CHECK THESE OUT
Cabiria
d: Giovanni Pastrone; scr: Giovanni Pastrone, Gabriele D’Annunzio
The Wrath of the Gods
d: Reginald Barker; scr: William H. Clifford, Thomas H. Ince, C. Gardner Sullivan
 

Harold Lockwood, Mary Pickford in Tess of the Storm Country
ACTRESS
Mary Pickford
Tess of the Storm Country
 
SHORT FILM
The Battle at Elderbush Gulch
d: D.W. Griffith
 
"Best Films of …" Annual List

1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919
1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929
1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949
1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975
1980 [...]

SOLD FOR MARRIAGE – Lillian Gish

Sold for Marriage (1916)
Direction: Christy Cabanne
Screenplay: William E. Wing
Cast: Lillian Gish, Frank Bennett, Walter Long, Allan Sears, Pearl Elmore, Curt Rehfeld
 

Though all but completely forgotten today, Christy Cabanne (at times billed as William Christy Cabanne) was a respected name in the 1910s and 1920s. Among his credits are the1916 Douglas Fairbanks vehicle The Mystery of the Leaping Fish, considered by some Fairbanks’ best film of the 1910s; the highly successful 1925 actioner The Midshipman, which helped to seal Ramon Novarro’s stardom; and several key scenes in the mammoth 1925 version of Ben-Hur, also starring Novarro.
An apprentice to D. W. Griffith, Cabanne seems to have not only learned a good deal from the (now all but insufferable) Master, but [...]

BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT at the Kansas Silent Film Festival 2009

Eleanor Boardman, John Gilbert in Bardelys the Magnificent

Kansas Silent Film Festival 2009: Feb. 27
Rudolph Valentino at the Kansas Silent Film Festival 2009
5:15 to 6:45pm
The first ever KANSAS SILENT FILM FESTIVALCINEMA-DINNER
Bradbury Thompson Alumni Center (17th & Jewell) – Washburn University campus
This special Dinner Event will begin with a reception followed by a buffet. Guests will be seated and have dinner in the Thompson Center’s banquet room on the main floor.
Special guest David Shepard – film restoration expert will be speaking about his recent film projects including our main feature for the evening – the previously ‘lost’ BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT. Attendees will receive a special gift before departing for White Concert Hall and the Cinema [...]

Griffith Masterworks 2: SALLY OF THE SAWDUST

W. C. Fields, Carol Dempster in Sally of the Sawdust

Griffith Masterworks 2: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE STRUGGLE
The final disc of the set contains Sally of the Sawdust (1925), a rare comedy feature starring Griffith protegee Carol Dempster and W. C. Fields. The Sally of the title (played by Dempster) performs in the circus with her "pop," Professor McGargle (Fields). Little does she know that McGargle came to be her guardian through an unlikely set of circumstances, and is not in fact her real father. As Sally nears adulthood, McGargle decides to bring her to her old hometown so that she might know the truth about her family; wacky hijinks ensue.
Sally of the Sawdust is a [...]

Griffith Masterworks 2: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE STRUGGLE

Walter Huston in Abraham Lincoln

Griffith Masterworks 2: WAY DOWN EAST, THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE
The most anticipated (by me anyway) part of this set is the twofer disc of Abraham Lincoln and The Struggle. Long overshadowed by Griffith’s earlier work, these have the distinction of being his final two films (from 1930 and 1931, respectively), and his only attempts at talkies. By this point, Griffith’s career had been in decline for several years, as newer and, frankly, greater talents eclipsed his trailblazing innovations of a decade earlier. These two films were his last shots at securing a place in the emerging film industry.
For the son of a Confederate soldier, Griffith was surprisingly [...]

Griffith Masterworks 2: WAY DOWN EAST, THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE

It may not have been terribly original of Kino to include in their 2005 Griffith Masterworks boxed set the only four D. W. Griffith features that most people could name (let alone claim to have seen), but it would have been downright perverse to pass over The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, and Orphans of the Storm (the fifth and sixth discs were made up of several Biograph shorts).
With their second set, Griffith Masterworks 2, released this month, Kino has selected some genuine curiosities; each of the five films on offer here has novelty value in addition to being the work of cinema’s first genius.
Way Down East (1920), the first film [...]

Ivor Novello Remembered

"No Cardiff-born screen actor has ever been remotely as popular at the British box office as Ivor Novello," says author Dave Berry (Wales and Cinema: The First 100 Years) in the article "Novello Could Have Been a Hollywood Star."
A leading star on the London stage, Ivor Novello was brought to Hollywood by D. W. Griffith for the leading romantic role in the 1923 drama The White Rose, starring one of Griffith’s favorites, Mae Marsh. Unfortunately, things didn’t go too well between the Father of the American Cinema and his Welsh import even though The White Rose is one of the best — possibly the best — Griffith film of the 1920s.
Among Novello’s best-known British vehicles are The Rat [...]

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