The Wind: Battling the Elements
Lillian Gish. Photo: MGM One of the last masterpieces of the silent era, The Wind is set in a Texan landscape that almost looks like science fiction. But Sweetwater is…
The Big Parade: Love and Chewing Gum
Karl Dane, John Gilbert and Tom O'Brien. Photo: MGM The story of this film begins with the play ”What Price Glory”, which opened on Broadway in 1924. Written by Maxwell…
The Jazz Singer
Jacob Rabinowitz (Al Jolson), the son of a Jewish cantor in a synagogue in Manhattan, doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, but his choice to become a jazz…
The Crowd: One of Many
Photo: MGM When The Jazz Singer premiered in 1927, it changed the history of cinema. But it wasn’t quite overnight. There were plenty of people in Hollywood who found it…
Underworld: In the Dead of Night
Clive Brook and Evelyn Brent. Photo: Paramount In the 1920s, the journalist and author Ben Hecht didn’t care all that much for the movies. Ironic, since his major achievements came…
Passion of Joan of Arc: Saint on Trial
Renée Jeanne Falconetti. Photo: Gaumont After making the film Master of the House in 1925, the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer spent time in France and learned that he was…
Battleship Potemkin: Turning the World Into Bolsheviks
Photo: Mosfilm Battleship Potemkin was released in 1930 in Germany, three years before Adolf Hitler was elected Reich Chancellor. The film was never a huge hit in its native Soviet…
Wings
When the United States enters World War I, two young men (Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen) from the same small town, one rich and the other poor, join the Air…
Nosferatu: Dracula? What Dracula?
Max Schreck. Photo: Image Entertainment If you're looking to create a good tagline for this classic horror movie, it would have to be "Banned in Sweden for 50 years!". The…
The Artist: A Silent Treatment
Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. Photo: Warner Michel Hazanavicius is obviously a man who loves the cinema. French audiences know his OSS 117 films, spoofs of the spy genre, and…