Starring the German Mary Pickford, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Doll movie is a satirical fantasy featuring inventive art direction and jabs at the Catholic Church.
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Amazing Tales from the Archives: SFSFF spotlights unusual movie audio system, pioneering female documentarian and memorably inventive comedy fantasies.
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Remarkable women’s suffrage movie Mothers of Men dismisses the notion that the female right to vote would destroy American families and society.
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The first feature (co-)directed by Alf Sjöberg, The Strongest is a visually splendid Arctic adventure. On the downside, the narrative moves at glacial speed.
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Fritz Lang’s two-part semi-historical epic tragedy Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge is a cinematic masterpiece.
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Films such as those seen in the British Film Institute’s compilation Around China with a Movie Camera offer a magical window into the past.
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Featuring modernistic sets and costumes, L’Inhumaine mixes sex melodrama, revenge thriller and science fiction. Marcel L’Herbier directed.
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Long thought lost Chinese blockbuster The Cave of the Silken Web
remains intriguing due to its focus on fierce women with supernatural powers. -
Frank Capra’s first all-talkie, The Donovan Affair is now a silent once again. In-house actors were thus needed to voice Jack Holt, Agnes Ayres et al.
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SFSFF’s ‘Avant-Garde Paris’ movies Ménilmontant and the wholly abstract Emak-Bakia were offered to those willing to take a chance.
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Ivor Novello and Fay Compton star in Basil Dean’s romantic drama Autumn Crocus, featuring a wistful glimpse into middle-aged longing.
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The San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s ‘A Night at the Cinema in 1914’ was the second best thing to a time machine. World War I and Charles Chaplin featured.
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1 hour of pure fluff, Midnight Madness doesn’t in any way whatsoever do justice to its titillating title. Clive Brook and Jacqueline Logan star.
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In the social/family drama Song of the Fishermen, filmmaker Cai Chusheng portrays the dehumanizing results of China’s stratified class system.
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Topics at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s Amazing Tales from the Archives included Fred Ott’s seminal ‘sneeze face’ and the technological Charles Chaplin.
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The SFSFF’s Amazing Tales from the Archives featured two fascinating topics: Finding Douglas Fairbanks’ The Half-Breed and early movie sound technology.
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With its focus on digital technologies and the restoration of a 1964 Best Picture Oscar nominee, this year’s Amazing Tales from the Archives weren’t all that great.
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Ernst Lubitsch’s last German film The Loves of Pharaoh disappoints as an epic. Future Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings stars.
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The landmark Antarctic expedition of explorer Ernest Shackleton is depicted in beautiful and harrowing detail in the 1919 documentary South.
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The Goose Woman with Louise Dresser and Jack Pickford. The Goose Woman (1925) movie review: The Goose Woman movie review: Great Louise Dresser in Clarence Brown silent classic At the…
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Huckleberry Finn movie: Lewis Sargent toplines sentimental William Desmond Taylor effort. Huckleberry Finn (1920) movie review: Huckleberry Finn movie review: Sentimental Fare Directed by Eventual Murder Victim Directed by William…
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The Sadist with Arch Hall Jr. The Sadist (1963) movie review: The Sadist movie review: Curious B flick Say what you will about Arch Hall Jr. (and I know many…
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Beulah Bondi, Victor Moore, Make Way for Tomorrow The main conflict in Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow revolves around an elderly couple, Barkley and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore and…
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The Beast with a Million Eyes: Hardly truth in advertising as Roger Corman’s micro-budget sci-fi thriller is no “monster movie.” ‘The Beast with a Million Eyes’: Alien invasion movie predates…
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The Love of Jeanne Ney with Uno Henning and Edith Jehanne. G.W. Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney / Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney is a real mystery. And I mean…
San Francisco Silent Film Festival highlights include hand-tinted color fantasies by Segundo de Chomón and Louis Feuillade in the days before Technicolor.
Abandoned in post-production and long-forgotten, Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day is a rare early movie about the lives of black people anywhere.
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival program ‘Amazing Tales from the Archives’ discussed the discovery of the 1916 Sherlock Holmes.
Karin Swanström and Hjalmar Bergman’s The Girl in Tails shows that women must fight and scandalize in order to remove the weight of social oppression.
Marred by a middling second half, William Beaudine’s The Canadian is notable for its inhospitable setting and as a star vehicle for Thomas Meighan.
Swampland race relations: Old indie mixes reactionary ideas about interracial love with vengeance and voodoo in tragic actress’ final little-seen film.
Blood and Sand with Rudolph Valentino and Nita Naldi Blood and Sand (1922) movie review: Dominating Rudolph Valentino. Blood and Sand movie review: Rudolph Valentino star vehicle Bullfighting has never…