The Smearing of Silent Film Star Mabel Normand
An accomplished silent film star, screenwriter, director, and producer, Mabel Normand’s career ended abruptly and tragically when she was deemed guilty by association.
An accomplished silent film star, screenwriter, director, and producer, Mabel Normand’s career ended abruptly and tragically when she was deemed guilty by association.
Silent films have a way of burrowing their stories into your mind and taking root. With this preview of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2022, let us plant a few seeds.
Silent film star Louise Brooks’ first role was that of a “moll”, an uncredited bit part in the evocatively titled The Street of Forgotten Men.
Eyebrows tilting and nostrils flaring and emanating pheromones of intoxicating effluvia, Foreigners like Valentino’s Sheik had un-American sex all over Hollywood.
WWI was underway when silent film Filibus hit theaters, so this elegant, war-free escapism of immorality among the ruling class may have provided mass therapy.
Silent film star Francis X. Bushman of ‘Ben Hur’ fame overcomes the posthumous oblivion that claims most of the stars who built early cinema.
Edward Everett Horton, a comedic bean pole with a voice you know from cartoons, knew how to make silent film audiences laugh–loudly.
Paul Leni’s silent film Waxworks (1924) is a brilliantly acted, engaging, and exhilarating example of German Expressionism on film.
It's the privilege of satire to apply one's opponents' "logic" towards a reductio ad absurdum, as we see in The City without Jews.
Many formats have come and gone and streaming competes, to a degree, but these best classic films offered on Blu-ray in 2020 prove irresistible.
We're treated to many eye-catching examples of John Ford's talents in Universal's 4K restoration of silent westerns Straight Shooting and Hell Bent, now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.