Lubin (production)
Intense drama unfolds when wife must choose between the two greatest joys in her life: dancing on stage, and whacking her hubby upside the head. What will she choose: the glamour of stage life, or the fulfillment of pummeling Papa?
Lubin (production)
From Lubin ad:
A young doctor had a love affair with one of the hospital nurses. Through machinations of his father the young doctor is made to believe that the nurse has given him up...
From The Moving Picture World (August 28, 1909) review:
A Lubin which seems to be somewhat uncalled for...The photography is good and to a certain extent the picture may interest those who are thoughtless, but there is a certain degree of delicacy which should be observed about such matters that is plainly violated here. The picture serves no useful purpose. It is not instructive and cannot be called entertaining. The reason for its existence is not plain and the silent drama would be improved if the picture was never shown again.
So here it is, shown again, over 100 years later, still of interest to the thoughtless.
Goof: Though we see the unexpected guest two years after its conception was hinted at, making it at least 15 months old, it appears to be still an infant!
D.W. Griffith (director)
G.W. Bitzer (cinematographer)
Frank E. Woods (writer)
Mary Pickford (lead)
Henry B. Walthall (lead)
Claire McDowell (lead)
Biograph (production)
Prissy voyeur lord of the manor gets the hots watching peasant gal kicking ass and dressing up as a man to flirt with the ladies. Could've been kinky, but instead it's just a freeze-dried Taming of the Shrew.
Gerolamo Lo Savio (director)
William Shakespeare (author)
Ermete Novelli (lead)
Francesca Bertini (lead)
Film d'Arte Italiana (production)
Everybody's favorite Daddy's Girls/riches-to-rags saga, Shakespeare's 150-minute play of over 25,000 words usually filling over 100 pages, is summarized in 14 minutes with pantomime and 8 title cards that are 100% dialogue-free. An interesting experiment that, surprisingly, succeeds in conveying the basic story - though not much Francesca Bertini to see.
August Blom (director)
Lau Lauritzen (writer)
Clara Pontoppidan (lead)
Carlo Wieth (lead)
Zanny Petersen (lead)
Nordisk (production)
Utterly useless upper class twit is rocked out his socks when he's blocked by well-stacked knockers. But after three months of rocking with no sock she gets knocked up (“loved not wisely but too well”), and has to start wearing the biggest hats she can find. And so begins a familiar tale, that goes by many names:
Georges Monca (director)
Paul Ferrier (writer)
Charles Prince (lead)
Mistinguett (lead)
Pâquerette (lead)
Pathé (production)
After his numerous amorous attempts during office hours are rebuffed by the lady doctor, her husband 'seeks amusement elsewhere' - leading to the inevitable submission of the wife, the end of her professional career, and better business for other doctors.
Mack Sennett (director/producer)
Ford Sterling (lead)
Keystone (production)
A parody that's light on comedy, but turns a number of stock devices on their heads in just eight minutes. Unlike the numerous intemperance stories that purport to show “What Drink Did” to “Les Victimes De L'alcoolisme”, i.e. happy families torn into misery, this begins with the alcoholic slacker's family already unhappy, though still intact. In “L'Assommoir” the laundress is first abandoned when her husband runs off with another woman, then rescued by The Good Guy. Here it is The Good Guy, instead of a woman, that is splitting the laundress from her husband - and comically sabotaging a race-to-the-rescue along the way. While other intemperance tales end tragically, here the family's miserable life simply goes on as before - an ending less dramatic, more realistic.
Ashley Miller (director)
Bannister Merwin (writer)
Marc McDermott (lead)
Miriam Nesbitt (lead)
Ethel Browning (lead)
Edison (production)
Story told with only two title cards, instead conveying plot points with newspaper, posters, and signs. Admittedly, the story is about as simple as it gets, turning on a child's prank, which makes it not much more sophisticated than L'Arroseur arrosé (1895). Still, the message is worth pondering: all it takes to be a menace to society is to be labeled as one. But, as a comedy, it could've been a contender in the hands of Max Linder...
Alice Guy-Blaché (director/writer)
Lee Beggs (lead)
Blanche Cornwall (lead)
Solax (production)
While this is usually described as an immigrant's lessons in American treatment of women, it should also be described as an immigrant's lessons in American treatment of immigrants, as he becomes a target for bullying on the streets, in his home, and on his farm, before finally being hauled away and shackled into slavery: "Completely Americanized!". Of even greater concern than the film and its authoritarian message is how rarely this disturbing aspect of the film is noted in modern reviews - which raises the question: over 100 years later, is assimilation by violent force, humiliation, and degradation still the accepted method of "Making An American Citizen"?
D.W. Griffith (director)
G.W. Bitzer (cinematographer)
Anita Loos (writer)
Edward Acker (author)
Mae Marsh (lead)
Claire McDowell (lead)
Alfred Paget (lead)
Charles Hill Mailes (lead)
Harry Carey (lead)
Lionel Barrymore (lead)
Biograph (production)
Yet another riff on the invasion-call-rescue theme, but made more interesting because the distress call goes not to a male Master Of The Home, but to the girl in the telephone office who, like The Lonedale Operator, thinks quick to save the day (without even fainting!). Plus 11 more points of interest...
Enrico Guazzoni (director/writer)
Eugenio Bava (cinematographer)
Alessandro Bona (cinematographer)
Henryk Sienkiewicz (author)
Gustavo Serena (lead)
Amleto Novelli (lead)
Società Italiana Cines (production)
Maybe Rome wasn't built in a day, but it only took one night to burn it down (with the help of a few good men with torches), according to this elaborate tale of palace intrigue, divine intervention, and jungle fever in Nero's Rome.
Paul Wegener (director/lead)
Guido Seeber (cinematographer)
Hanns Heinz Ewers (writer)
John Gottowt (lead)
Broke-ass jock goes schizo for a sleazo two-timing upper-class dame, gets stalked by a bitch who's a wall-creeping snitch so he ends up in a ditch - yeah, don't it suck to be a jock.
Victor Sjöström (director)
Henrik Jaenzon (cinematographer)
Nils Krok (author)
Hilda Borgström (lead)
Patiently bear the first 10 minutes that establishes initial familial bliss and the reward is a stark drama of a mother split from her children by the state's response to her poverty and illness. Remarkably, the dramatic excesses of the era are avoided, and no race-to-the-rescue, instead relying on a quasi-documentary exposition paired with artful scene construction. Can't help but wonder if this was what Judith Of Bethulia was so unsuccessfully trying to achieve.
Max Linder (director/lead/writer)
Lucy d'Orbel (lead)
Pathé (production)
In the first act, Max must overcome his shyness to declare his love for a lady doctor. Some funny stuff here. In the second act, he faces numerous obstacles on his wedding night. Not much Max here, just lots of strange medical practices. In the final act, he restores his privileged position of malehood, as in the Alice Guy-Blaché film “The Consequences of Feminism (1906)” - sans the profound irony. But the major shortcoming here is too much angry Max, not enough lovable hapless twit.
Nino Oxilia (director)
Giorgio Ricci (cinematographer)
Guglielmo Zorzi (writer)
Alberto Fassini (author)
Francesca Bertini (lead)
Angelo Gallina (lead)
André Habay (lead)
Fulvia Perini (lead)
Celio (production)
Essentially an aristocratic elaboration of Custody Of The Child (1909), aided by lush visuals, plus the emotional breadth and depth of the star's performance - and the diva dances!
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Josef Swickard (lead)
Phyllis Allen (lead)
Keystone (production)
Modern science has yet to determine the precise sequence of events in the origin of the Loonyverse, but a general consensus has formed around this work. For the first 13 minutes of this remake of Those Country Kids, the humor stays around the level of Lumière's 1895 The Sprayer Sprayed (L'Arroseur arrosé): so slow and painfully corny that the cows protested that the stupidity was beneath their dignity. The only break in the drudgery is a rare glimpse at a dapper Al St. John (minus his clownish rube garb), who was surprisingly handsome beneath the makeup and mugging. But then, by some mysterious comic alchemy, the energy leaps exponentially as soon as Mabel dons a funny hat and cheerfully tosses a suitcase out one window, sending Roscoe crashing through another window, and the two of them steal Al's self-driving and self-willed car - starting a chase that pushes the silliness out of Keystone-realm into Comique-surreal. Clearly, this is such stuff as toons are made on.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Helen Carlyle (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Joe Bordeaux (lead)
Frank Hayes (lead)
Keystone 6-step Porch (location)
Keystone (production)
Little-known Helen Carlyle gives an animated Mabel-style performance in this aptly-titled fast-paced fun April Fool's Day flick, that also features a chase that looks like the inspiration for It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963).
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