When at least one man or woman is seeking or engaged in a marriage to a partner purely for fortune: i.e., the fortune of the partner.
When the fortune comes from elsewhere (e.g., seeker must marry to inherit own family's fortune). This element typically is comedic - particularly when a female gold digger crowd learns about bride bounty, and that leads to a flood de femmes.
When the seeker's schemes are more nefarious than matrimony (e.g., absconding, or supporting a paramour/accomplice).
Max Linder (director/lead/writer)
Pathé (production)
Max flips the bird to his chick, but then flips his wig over a chicken. A darker remake of the 1908 "Troubles of a Grasswidower" - in both lighting and humor - yet even more zany. But here Linder plays against character: although Max is normally a loveable upper class twit, here he is a complete cad from the first scene to the last.
Max Linder (director/lead/writer)
Armand Massard (writer)
Lucy d'Orbel (lead)
Pathé (production)
To wed a rich American, Max must beat competing suitors in sports.
Mack Sennett (director)
Frank D. Williams (cinematographer)
Marie Dressler (lead)
Charles Chaplin (lead)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Mack Swain (lead)
Charles Bennett (lead)
Chester Conklin (lead)
Keystone Cops (lead)
Echo Park (location)
Keystone 6-step Porch (location)
Keystone (production)
Aside from the claims of historical significance and Mabel's masterful mugging, there's not much here other than an unusually long version of the usual Keystone formula of slapstick gags strung together to loosely coincide with a threadbare story. Nice ending though.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Edgar Kennedy (lead)
Joe Bordeaux (lead)
Harold Lloyd (lead)
Keystone (production)
Fatty cross-dresses again, this time as an heiress encountering mashers. Nothing happens. But the sign says “farce comedy”, so it seems I missed out twice.
August Blom (director)
Louis Larsen (cinematographer)
Otto Rung (writer)
Ebba Thomsen (lead)
Olaf Fønss (lead)
Johanne Fritz-Petersen (lead)
Nordisk (production)
Denmark punked out of The Great War, and so missed out on the Great Debut of two of modern technology's Great Weapons of Mass Death and Misery from the air: bombing of cities, and clouds of poison gas. Sniffing out the profit potential from Denmark's movie fans who'd pay to get a taste of that action in their own hoods (safely), Nordisk's exploitation film division went into overdrive and came up with a winner and released it on April Fool's Day. Grounded in an engaging story of class and family struggle with a healthy dose of hiss-worthy villainy, executed with strong performances (aided by authenticity of masses of nonprofessionals), and crowned with credible special effects and stunning cinematography revealed in this excellent restoration, this deserves greater recognition.
Louis Feuillade (director/writer)
Arthur Bernède (writer)
André Glatti (cinematographer)
Léon Klausse (cinematographer)
Édouard Mathé (lead)
Jean Devalde (lead)
Louis Leubas (lead)
Marcel Lévesque (lead)
Musidora (lead)
René Cresté (lead)
Yvette Andréyor (lead)
Gaumont (production)
A caped crusader and his sidekick respond to a distress signal that appears at their tech-equipped cave. Welcome to the cinema of 1917 - where the story began...
Pyotr Chardynin (director/lead)
Vladimir Siversen (cinematographer)
Vera Kholodnaya (lead)
Vitold Polonsky (lead)
Olga Rakhmanova (lead)
Kharitonov (production)
Apparently, an attempt to address class conflict in the standard weepy melodramatic format (complete with violin). While the fragments that remain do not provide a convincing critique (compare with Child of the Big City (1914)), it's still more substantial than other surviving works by this director.
Ernst Lubitsch (director/writer)
Kurt Richter (production-designer)
Theodor Sparkuhl (cinematographer)
Hanns Kräly (writer)
Ossi Oswalda (lead)
Victor Janson (lead)
Julius Falkenstein (lead)
Max Kronert (lead)
PAGU (production)
A grotesque view of the excesses of early 20th century American aristocracy, aptly in accord with the comedic axiom, “A lot is funny, more is funnier, too much is riotously absurd”. The dialogue is not nearly as witty as it seems to want to be, but with visuals like this, who needs words? Parental advisory: includes scenes of gratuitous foxtrot.
Ernst Lubitsch (director/lead/writer)
Kurt Richter (art-director/costume-designer)
Theodor Sparkuhl (cinematographer)
Hanns Kräly (writer)
E.T.A. Hoffmann (author)
A.E. Willner (author)
Ossi Oswalda (lead)
Hermann Thimig (lead)
Victor Janson (lead)
Gerhard Ritterband (lead)
Jakob Tiedtke (lead)
Max Kronert (lead)
PAGU (production)
This is how a fairy tale should be told: lots of laughs, spiced with a few caustic truths, encompassing no moral at all, if you wish. Or, perhaps, a simple moral that is as easy to discard as it is to swallow (Another tale of gender role rejection: is this the sequel to I Dont Want To Be A Man? ). Multiple viewings are rewarding, as nothing is truly background - the gags are everywhere. It's a musical without sound that's an ensemble showcase, where everyone puts in a first-rate comic performance no matter how small the part - even the horses.
head city
has waived all rights to all work here that's not stolen from somewhere else.