Tag: silent
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No not that one, the other one
NAPOLEON, ABEL GANCE, GAUMONT, 1927, 330 MINUTES. — I’m publishing the occasional post from my newsletter about the history of film here on the blog. This one concerns the biggest…
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Chaps in trouble
We’ve got to 1919. The officer class over-reaches itself and gets stuck on the ice. It’s a disaster but it all works out in the end. — Every year’s top-grossing…
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A fairytale, a comedy, a fantasy – and a Disney princess 20 years before Snow White
Mary Pickford was famed for playing childlike parts, flighty young women with spirit. In 1917’s The Poor Little Rich Girl, she broke new ground by playing an actual child. —…
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This review turned into a disquisition on underwater storytelling
This adaptation of Jules Verne’s great submarine romance was the top-grossing film of 1916 – and it wasn’t even the first movie version — 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, STUART…
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A visionary work of art, a hateful apologia for slavery and Jim Crow… and a really bad film
The Birth of a Nation was the top-grossing film of 1915… — THE BIRTH OF A NATION, D.W. GRIFFITHS, DAVID W. GRIFFITH CORP., 1915 So I did it, I watched…
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An organised crime drama with a dramatic police raid and an ultra-modern remote surveillance storyline
It’s called Traffic in Souls and it’s an extraordinarily modern movie – a prototype for a whole new category — TRAFFIC IN SOULS: WHILE NEW YORK SLEEPS, GEORGE LOANE TUCKER,…