Best Films – 1939

The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir
FILM
Gone with the Wind
d: Victor Fleming; scr: Sidney Howard
Le Jour se lève / Daybreak
d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Viot, Jacques Prévert
Midnight
d: Mitchell Leisen; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
d: Frank Capra; scr: Sidney Buchman
Ninotchka
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch
The Old Maid
d: Edmund Goulding; scr: Casey Robinson
The Rains Came
d: Clarence Brown; scr: Philip Dunne, Julien Josephson
La Règle du jeu / The Rules of the Game
d: Jean Renoir; scr: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch
The Roaring Twenties
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay, Robert Rossen
The Women
d: George Cukor; scr: Anita Loos, Jane Murfin
Wuthering Heights
d: William Wyler; scr: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
 
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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 [...]

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, [...]

Best Films – 1920

Though no masterpiece, The Mollycoddle is a surprisingly enjoyable romp starring Douglas Fairbanks as an effete, upper-class nonentity who discovers both his manhood and his red-white-and-blue Americanness before the final fadeout. His leading lady is a minor actress named Ruth Renick, but one barely notices her. The director is Victor Fleming, best known for Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, but The Mollycoddle is truly all Fairbanks’.
 
FILM
The Last of the Mohicans
d: Maurice Tourneur, Clarence Brown; scr: Robert Dillon
The Mollycoddle
d: Victor Fleming; scr: Douglas Fairbanks, Thomas J. Geraghty
What Happened to Rosa?
d: Victor Schertzinger; scr: Gerald C. Duffy
 
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Conrad in Quest of His Youth
d: William C. de Mille; scr: Olga Printzlau
Outside the Law
d: Tod Browning; scr: Lucien Hubbard; [...]

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
 
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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 [...]

SCARLET SEAS and Richard Barthelmess at Vitaphone Varieties

"As you may have guessed by now, Scarlet Seas is a lost film — a double loss really, as it not only seems to have been an absolute corker of a film that would boast the best of both worlds of silent and sound cinema, but it’s also probably a film that [Richard] Barthelmess would have much wanted to survive long past his career and life. Given that Richard Barthelmess died in 1963, it’s disturbing to realize that chances are that as he was entering his final decade of life, the film elements for Scarlet Seas were busily destroying themselves, aided by neglect and profound lack of interest from the company that owned it."
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That’s Jeff Cohen in Vitaphone Varieties, in [...]