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: [...]
by Andre Soares | April 2, 2009
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Tags: A Woman of Paris, Alice Terry, Best Films, Cameo Kirby, Charles Chaplin, Classic Movies, D. W. Griffith, Edna Purviance, Eleanor Boardman, G. W. Bitzer, John F. Seitz, John Ford, John Gilbert, Karl Brown, Lewis Stone, Mae Marsh, Nita Naldi, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Scaramouche, Silent Films, Souls for Sale, The Covered Wagon, The Ten Commandments, The White Rose, Willis Goldbeck
Best Films – 1921
A sensation in its day, Rex Ingram’s film adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from a screenplay by June Mathis, catapulted Mathis’ protégé Rudolph Valentino to superstardom. Ingram’s wife, the highly capable Alice Terry, played the romantic interest. More than 80 years after its initial release, The Four Horsemen remains a powerful cinematic experience.
FILM
The Conquering Power
d: Rex Ingram; scr: June Mathis
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
d: Rex Ingram; scr: June Mathis
Nobody
d: Roland West; scr: Roland West, Charles H. Smith
Wallace Reid, Bebe Daniels in The Affairs of Anatol
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The Affairs of Anatol
d: Cecil B. DeMille; scr: Jeanie Macpherson
Richard Barthelmess in Tol’able David
ACTOR
Richard Barthelmess
Tol’able David
Jackie Coogan
The Kid
Ralph Lewis
The Conquering Power
Kenneth Harlan, [...]
by Andre Soares | April 2, 2009
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Tags: Agnes Ayres, Alice Terry, Best Films, Charles Rosher, Classic Movies, Jewel Carmen, John F. Seitz, June Mathis, Karl Struss, Nobody, Rex Ingram, Richard Barthelmess, Roland West, Rudolph Valentino, Silent Films, The Affairs of Anatol, The Conquering Power, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Tol'able David, Wanda Hawley
Rex Ingram Remembered
Since it’s still Jan. 15 in large chunks of the Pacific Ocean, I have enough time to briefly mention film director Rex Ingram (top right), whose birth — as Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock — took place in Dublin exactly 113 years ago. (Some sources claim Ingram was born in 1892, but in Rex Ingram: Master of the Silent Cinema author Liam O’Leary clearly states that 1893 is the right date.)
While writing Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro, I often became more intrigued with two of the story’s top supporting players than with the biographical subject himself. One was Novarro’s lover in the mid-1920s, columnist Herbert Howe, quite likely the wittiest writer to ever cover the Hollywood scene. [...]
by Andre Soares | January 16, 2006
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Tags: Alice Terry, Barbara La Marr, Classic Movies, Herbert Howe, John F. Seitz, June Mathis, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Rudolph Valentino, Silent Films, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Trifling Women
Best Films – 1943
Set in a 17th-century Danish village, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s masterful Vredens dag / Day of Wrath is a stark, but deeply felt indictment against religious fanaticism and intolerance. Moving performances by ingénue Lisbeth Modin and accused witch Anna Svierkier add a touch of humanity to the horrors shown on screen. It is not a coincidence that Vredens Dag was made in 1943, a time when Denmark was under Nazi occupation. The parallels — and the interconnectedness — between political and religious control are made quite clear in this harrowing masterwork.
FILM
Northern Pursuit
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Frank Gruber, Alvah Bessie
This Land Is Mine
d: Jean Renoir; scr: Dudley Nichols
Vredens dag / Day of Wrath
d: Carl Theodor Dreyer; scr: Carl Dreyer, [...]
by Andre Soares | August 31, 2004
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Tags: Akim Tamiroff, Alvah Bessie, Anna Svierkier, Arthur C. Miller, Best Films, Busby Berkeley, Carl Andersson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Carmen Miranda, Charles Coburn, Charles Laughton, Charles Van Enger, Classic Movies, Curt Siodmak, Dame May Whitty, Dashiell Hammett, Day of Wrath, Dudley Nichols, Edward Cronjager, Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, Five Graves to Cairo, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Frank Gruber, Gary Cooper, Gene Tierney, George Seaton, Greer Garson, Harry Stradling, Heaven Can Wait, Helmut Dantine, Henry King, Herbert Selpin, Herbert Stothart, Herman Shumlin, I Walked with a Zombie, Ingrid Bergman, J. Carroll Naish, Jacques Tourneur, Jean Arthur, Jean Renoir, Jennifer Jones, Joel McCrea, John F. Seitz, Joseph A. Valentine, Joseph Ruttenberg, Katina Paxinou, Kim Hunter, L'Eternel Retour, Laird Cregar, Lassie Come Home, Lisbeth Modin, Madame Curie, Max Steiner, Northern Pursuit, Patricia Collinge, Paul Lukas, Raoul Walsh, Rex Ingram (actor), Roger Hubert, Sahara, Samson Raphaelson, Shadow of a Doubt, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, So Proudly We Hail, Teresa Wright, The Eternal Return, The Gang's All Here, The Human Comedy, The Lady Takes a Chance, The More the Merrier, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Seventh Victim, The Song of Bernadette, This Land Is Mine, Titanic, Una O'Connor, Veronica Lake, Vredens Dag, Walter Bullock, Watch on the Rhine, Werner Klingler
