MoMA’s Silent Film Week 2026 Is Major
MoMA’s Silent Film Week indulges our pleasure in viewing silents with live music and in good company, and there’s a special treat for silent film fans in 2026.
Michael Barrett
Michael Barrett works in a public library. For more than 20 years, he wrote a monthly video column in the San Antonio Express News stressing classic and foreign films. His national publications include Video Watchdog, Nostalgia Digest and Retro Cinema. He's also written scripts that still await their destiny.
The Man Who Reclaimed His Head’s Quasi-Horror, Proto-Noir, Anti-War Message
The Man Who Reclaimed His Head belongs to its early 1930s era, when the last war and the next one were on everyone’s minds, and public rhetoric often jousted between talk of warmongers, preparedness, and pacifism.
‘Unearthly Stranger’ Warns: Beware Whom You Marry
Sci-fi movie Unearthly Stranger is wonky, but viewers will enjoy the crackerjack paranoia, terror, and chilling “something is not right” about this marriage moments.
‘House of Dreams’ and the No-Budget Hell of No-Budget Horror
House of Dreams explores the nightmare of creativity one must endure to make a no-budget horror movie.
Silent Film Star Corinne Griffith Brightens the Garden
One of silent film’s most beautiful stars, Corinne Griffith glitters across Lewis Mileston’s deceptive The Garden of Eden.
‘House of Cards’ Is a Faux-Hitchcock Thriller
House of Cards looks like a million francs in Techniscope and Technicolor and plays like a picture Hitchcock forgot to make.
Teo Hernández’s Queer Avant-Garde Films Rewire Your Brain
Watching Teo Hernández’s queer avant-garde films, the source for his ideas about cinema as sex and ritual, all culminating in ecstatic visions, becomes self-evident.
Kinuyo Tanaka’s Films About Women in Japan’s Evolving Postwar Society
Kinuyo Tanaka remains more famous for acting in other directors’ films, but Kinuyo Tanaka Directs demonstrates her command of the qualities needed to marshal major productions under her own baton
Caroline Strubbe’s Trilogy of Forgetting
Director Caroline Strubbe’s “Trying to Forget to Remember” trilogy creates enigmatic space in the viewer’s head, or in the space between our heads and the spaces on screen.
‘The Second Twin’ Ooh-La-Las the 1960s French Murder Mystery
As a whodunit, The Second Twin is a nifty tease whose resolution might surprise you, unless you pull yourself away from the dazzle long enough to analyze the story.
Silent Serial ‘Tih-Minh’ Puts You Under Its Drugged Spell
Louis Feuillade’s dreamlike 12-episode silent film series Tih-Minh should be experienced, like laudanum, in discreet doses that will linger in our brains until the next fix.
‘Hold That Blonde!’ Hilariously Attempts Hysterical Slapstick
If George Marshall’s Hold That Blonde! can’t rise to the brilliance of a Preston Sturges movie, it’s an often-hilarious attempt.