Best Films – 1924
Erich von Stroheim’s masterpiece and one of the best silent films ever made, Greed remains a powerful indictment against the deadly sin of the title. Based on Frank Norris‘ McTeague, the film revolves around the misdeeds of a California dentist (Gibson Gowland, center), his miserly wife (ZaSu Pitts, left), and her former lover (Jean Hersholt, not in the above picture), all of whom sacrifice their selves to the all-powerful God of Dollar Bills. Stroheim’s initial cut had 47 reels, though eventually Greed was pared down to 10 reels (approximately 2h15m). That is all that is known to survive from the original film. But in spite of the drastic cuts, many of Stroheim’s magnificently perverted excesses are very much [...]
by Andre Soares | April 2, 2009
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Best Films, Classic Movies, Conrad Veidt, Douglas Fairbanks, Eleanor Boardman, Emil Jannings, Enid Bennett, Erich von Stroheim, George Hackathorne, Gibson Gowland, Greed, He Who Gets Slapped, Laura La Plante, Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, Richard Barthelmess, Silent Films, The Enchanted Cottage, The Last Laugh, The Sea Hawk, The Thief of Bagdad, The Turmoil, Victor Sjöström, ZaSu Pitts
Buster Keaton, SUNRISE, THE CAT AND THE CANARY: San Francisco Silent Film Festival Screenings
Martha Mattox, Laura La Plante in The Cat and the Canary (top); Buster Keaton in Our Hospitality (bottom)
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival will present a special series of screenings on Valentine’s Day, Saturday, February 14, at the Castro Theatre. The screening films are the Buster Keaton vehicle Our Hospitality (1923), the Russian comedy A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927), F. W. Murnau’s Academy Award winner (for "Best Unique and Artistic Quality of Production") Sunrise (1927), and the haunted-house caper The Cat and the Canary (1927).
I haven’t seen either Our Hospitality or A Kiss from Mary Pickford. I’m not a silent-comedy fan, so Keaton films are usually a low priority (though I’ve stone-facedly sat through quite a few [...]
