Best films of 1923: Movies get bigger and not infrequently more technically and artistically accomplished
Among the most notable releases of 1923 are John Ford’s Western Cameo Kirby (also notable for marking the big-screen debut of future Columbia Pictures star Jean Arthur); Rex Ingram’s epic of the French Revolution Scaramouche, starring Ramon Novarro as the title character and featuring future Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stalwart Lewis Stone in a surprisingly effective villainous role; and director (but not actor) Charles Chaplin’s sophisticated A Woman of Paris, which turned out to be his first and last dramatic feature film.
Also, Cecil B. DeMille’s handsome mix of modern-day melodrama and biblical epic, The Ten Commandments; James Cruze’s blockbuster Western The Covered Wagon, a precursor to talkie era titles like Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail and the multi-narrative How the West Was Won; and Rupert Hughes’ Hollywood-set Souls for Sale, based on his own (vastly different) novel and featuring Eleanor Boardman as a runaway young wife turned movie star and numerous big-screen luminaries in cameos. (In the novel, Boardman’s character is both single and pregnant; hence the need to go “abroad” to the American West.)
Best Film
Cameo Kirby – Dir.: John Ford; Scr.: Robert N. Lee
Scaramouche – Dir.: Rex Ingram; Scr.: Willis Goldbeck
Souls for Sale – dir. & Scr.: Rupert Hughes
The White Rose – dir. & Scr.: D.W. Griffith
A Woman of Paris – dir. & Scr.: Charles Chaplin
Best Actor
John Gilbert – Cameo Kirby
Ramon Novarro – Scaramouche
Best Actress
Renée Adorée – The Eternal Struggle
Eleanor Boardman – Souls for Sale
Mae Marsh – The White Rose
Edna Purviance – A Woman of Paris
Alice Terry – Scaramouche
Best Supporting Actor
Lon Chaney – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Lewis Stone – Scaramouche
Best Supporting Actress
Nita Naldi – The Ten Commandments
Best Cinematography
G.W. Bitzer, Hendrik Sartov & Harold S. Sintzenich, The White Rose
Karl Brown, The Covered Wagon
William H. Daniels, Charles E. Kaufman & Ben F. Reynolds, Merry-Go-Round
George J. Folsey, The Fighting Blade
Bert Glennon, Peverell Marley, Archie Stout & J.F. Westerberg, The Ten Commandments
Tony Kornman & Robert Newhard, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
George Schneiderman, Cameo Kirby
John F. Seitz, Scaramouche
Charles Van Enger, Salome