William S. Hart (director/lead)
Thomas H. Ince (writer)
Richard V. Spencer (author/writer)
Clifford Smith (lead/writer)
Enid Markey (lead)
Luke McVane is some geek that moves so slow you wonder what kind of “horse” this cowboy is really on. Wearing his virginity on his sleeve, he goes starry-eyed over the town floozy when she hoochie coochies for a saloon full of drunken cowboys. When Garcia takes her as private property, Luke remembers Broncho Billy And The Greaser and jumps at his chance to score nookie points. But, unlike Broncho Billy, this square flips his roscoe once too often, so the town figures the strange mad dog needs to be put down, and he ends up a lamster. Suddenly the nerd's looking less hero, more antihero - and this sleepy little flick turns out to be better than expected.
Note:
Reginald Barker (director)
Joseph August (cinematographer)
Thomas H. Ince (writer)
C. Gardner Sullivan (writer)
George Beban (lead)
Clara Williams (lead)
Leo Willis (lead)
When a film opens with someone reading a book titled the same as the film, slowly reading while puffing pipe...you know this film is in no big hurry. But if time is valued, skip to 17:26, where the story actually begins, and nothing will be missed. But it still doesn't move any faster, because this is D..R..A..M..A, where ultra-slow movements are the hallmark of reknown stage professionals. So if time is valued, skip this film entirely and nothing will be missed.
William S. Hart (director/lead)
Robert Doran (cinematographer)
Thomas H. Ince (writer)
Richard V. Spencer (writer)
Leona Hutton (lead)
Hart again plays an outlaw gone soft-headed for a dame - this time, a mere flirty waitress at the OK-but-nothing-special Restaurant, who's somehow rolling in cash of dubiously unexplained source. Other than that hilarious drunken one-two sucker punch, not much here to interest anyone who's not already Hart-core.
William S. Hart (director/lead)
Robert Doran (cinematographer)
J.G. Hawks (writer)
Thomas H. Ince (writer)
Margaret Thompson (lead)
Louise Glaum (lead)
Herschel Mayall (lead)
Keno Bates, Sleazeball, runs a saloon. As every Hart movie has shown, saloon owners are despicable scumbags who run crooked gambling halls. When one of Keno's victims refuses to accept that he'd walked into Keno's trap, he lashes out in armed revenge to retrieve his money - just as the “hero” of Hart's The Silent Man (1917) does. Although both Keno and his henchman were armed, they offered no resistance (which would be considered legitimate self-defense), made no attempt to dissuade the man, and afterwards never notified the law.
Instead Keno Bates, Lyncher and his henchman set out after the money they'd swindled, and the hombre who had the gall to grab it back - despite knowing he was armed and desperate.
When Keno Bates, Murderer eyeballs a snapshot of his victim's sister, he warns his henchman to get ready to take their lying to a whole new level, as Keno Bates, Slimebucket starts scheming how to use the murder he just committed to bust a move on the dead man's sister.
Later, when the sister learns that she has been deceived, she reacts like her brother. First, she lashes out murderously against the innocent messenger - the only honest person in the whole flick, and the one who legitimately pulled a weapon in self-defense.
Then she lashes out in armed revenge against Keno Bates, Sucker, who has fallen for a wild vixen in sheep's clothing, who will bring into his life the hell that he rightly deserves, and the DNA that would eventually result in Norman Bates, Psycho.
Raoul Walsh (director/writer)
Carl Harbaugh (lead/writer)
Owen Frawley Kildare (author)
Rockliffe Fellowes (lead)
Anna Q. Nilsson (lead)
Fox (production)
Long introduction of no relevance, gangs but no crime, DA with no case, ship fire of no consequence, romance but no joy. Still, any flick where all cops are creeps can't be all bad. The filmcraft is impressive, despite the sappy story - as a one-reeler, minus the filler, could've been a killer. Plus, it's rare to see a murderer go unpunished. And this particular restoration is worth watching just for its beautifully sick music.
Gustavo Serena (director/lead)
Alberto G. Carta (cinematographer)
Renzo Chiosso (writer)
Alexandre Dumas fils (author)
Ennio Morricone (music)
Francesca Bertini (lead)
Caesar (production)
Heartrending story of infantile infatuation and endless messaging among 19th century European bourgeois airheads. Viewers unfamiliar with the novel's story will likely be a bit puzzled by this concise film version, that carefully tiptoes around the central topic: the “scandal”. And nothing on the screen comes close to the intensity of Ennio Morricone's score, currently available om Youtube.
Cecil B. DeMille (director/producer)
Alvin Wyckoff (cinematographer)
Hector Turnbull (author/writer)
Jeanie Macpherson (writer)
Fannie Ward (lead)
Sessue Hayakawa (lead)
Jack Dean (lead)
James Neill (lead)
Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play (production)
Stone-cold yellow man burns hot for white flesh of loose lady. Interracial dating, theft, lies, flesh-peddling, brutal sadism, revenge, blood splatter, lynch mob, and the slickest eyebrow in showbiz - welcome to Pulp Paradise.
Yevgeny Bauer (director/writer)
Boris Zavelev (cinematographer)
Ivan Turgenev (author)
Vera Karalli (lead)
Vitold Polonsky (lead)
Georg Asagaroff (lead)
Olga Rakhmanova (lead)
Khanzhonkov (production)
Stark, gripping, haunting, enigmatic - not your average drive-in flick...Go deeper: see review on Silents, Please!
Charles Swickard (director)
Joseph H. August (cinematographer)
C. Gardner Sullivan (writer)
William S. Hart (lead)
Clara Williams (lead)
Jack Standing (lead)
Alfred Hollingsworth (lead)
Louise Glaum (lead)
Even though this again features Hart as an outlaw gone soft-headed for a dame, it immediately reveals itself as unique because it does not open with Hart's cowboy, and more than ten minutes go by before he finally appears. Instead, the film begins with detailed depiction of the story's primary movers, that the cowboy will find himself forced to deal with. A finely crafted Wild West Sodom and Gomorrah tale - despite its annoying pompous titles and their spoilers.
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.
William S. Hart (director/lead)
Reginald Barker (director)
Joseph August (cinematographer)
C. Gardner Sullivan (writer)
Bessie Love (lead)
Louise Glaum (lead)
Herschel Mayall (lead)
The title raised the excited hope of going beyond the usual stereotyping and slurs, instead delivering an explicit exposition of racial ideology - taking Birth Of A Nation out west. Unfortunately, this is just an incomplete reconstruction of a film considered lost until 2008. The introduction states that this version comes from an Argentine mid-1920s rerelease (dates within the film are given as 1923), with titles that “differ quite a bit from the original”. Most segments have not been digitally restored, and lost segments are replaced by photographs.
The original may have been more directly concerned with racial ideology, but here Cowboy's main conflict is with women: Cowboy is massively Madonna–whore complexed. This is immediately suggested in the very first scene, where Cowboy's sacred love for his distant mother is juxtaposed with images of him petting and kissing his bestial companion. Then after he deludes himself that a sleazy mining camp on the border is his ideal “town inhabited by men of iron heart”, and that his mother would love a girl he met in a bar there, he is of course vamped. But instead of dumping her, he takes her as his whore he loves to hate, as he does a No-More-Mister-Nice-Guy. Finally, he meets The Virgin Mary Jane and he again falls to his delusions as she cons him into believing his White Man's Duty is to give away his riches. He leaves behind his whore to return to his Brotherhood and replay the Heroic Defender role that first got him vamped, before riding off in the sunset to seek his next imagined Madonna to transform into an imagined whore. So goes the life of an iron-hearted Aryan.
Phillips Smalley (director/writer)
Lois Weber (director/writer)
Allen G. Siegler (cinematographer)
Lucy Payton (author)
Franklyn Hall (author)
Tyrone Power Sr. (lead)
Helen Riaume (lead)
Alva D. Blake (lead)
Juan de la Cruz (lead)
Mary MacLaren (lead)
“All intelligent people know that birth control is a subject of serious public interest. Newspapers, magazines and books have treated different phases of this question. Can a subject thus dealt with on the printed page be denied careful dramatization on the motion picture screen?...In producing this picture the intention is to place a serious drama before adult audiences...”
This somber introduction is immediately followed by:
“Behind the great portals of Eternity, the souls of little children waited to be born.”
And on it goes like this, shifting between pretense of weighty social drama and wallowing in cabbage-patch airy-fairy fantasy, linked by hackneyed melodrama and annoying overuse of cross-cutting, while hammering its messages - abortion is murder, humanity's salvation is birth control (for the poor), becoming a submissive baby factory is the duty of every woman (if she's wealthy) - only approaching realism in its wonderfully dark and depressing ending. Movie in a nutshell: Living with a pompous, self-righteous, hypocritical Dickless Attorney leaves wife with no desire to breed more of his kind. There - 65 minutes saved.
Arthur Berthelet (director)
William Postance (director/lead)
H.S. Sheldon (writer)
William Gillette (author/lead)
Arthur Conan Doyle (author)
Ernest Maupain (lead)
Marjorie Kay (lead)
Edward Fielding (lead)
Stewart Robbins (lead)
Grace Reals (lead)
Mario Majeroni (lead)
Essanay (production)
This film exists as supporting evidence for three well-established postulates in film theory:
Giuseppe Giusti (director)
Giacomo Angelini (cinematographer)
Fabienne Fabrèges (lead/writer)
Valeria Creti (lead)
Attilio De Virgiliis (lead)
Bonaventura Ibáñez (lead)
Didaco Chellini (lead)
Corona (production)
No, this work is neither insightful nor masterful: the plot has big holes, the star's efforts at seductiveness are tepid at best (go learn from a diva's virtuoso performance), and the finale drags on too long. But there's enough sadistic pleasure and pussy-whipped masochism, phony protests of “I'm-not-that-kind-of-girl”, self-pity and despair, duplicity, double-crossing, debauchery, winks to the audience, and stylish visuals to satisfy the primal urge for sleazy fun.
Lois Weber (director/lead/writer)
Phillips Smalley (director/lead/writer)
Allen G. Siegler (cinematographer)
James Oppenheim (author)
Maude George (lead)
Film is only partially preserved. What remains are shots that look thoughtfully constructed, weaved together into a film-within-film sermon - that I could not make any sense of. Guess that's the price I pay for flunking Sunday school...
Benjamin Christensen (director/lead/writer)
Johan Ankerstjerne (cinematographer)
Intertitle: "...A new clue...those words had an ominous sound to Mr. Wilken". Then, about 15 seconds later, the next intertitle: "...A new clue...those words seem to burn". And it painfully drags on like this, every scene taking twice the time needed (when half the scenes were not needed at all) in this 100-minute remake of the 6-minute "Physician Of The Castle" (1908), that simply adds 94 minutes of bloated backstory.
William S. Hart (director/lead)
Joseph H. August (cinematographer)
C. Gardner Sullivan (writer)
Margery Wilson (lead)
Robert McKim (lead)
Louise Glaum (lead)
J.P. Lockney (lead)
Well, if yer a-hankerin' to see some good ol' boys havin' theyselves a heap a gunfightin' fun, I reckon thars 'nuff bad-ass shootouts, standoffs, stare-downs, trash-talkin', and greaser-bashin' here to tickle your fancy. But dang it, reading all them titles written in this hokey dime novel hick cowboy lingo leaves a soul plum tuckered out!
head city
has waived all rights to all work here that's not stolen from somewhere else.