The Last Laugh: Unchaining a Camera

Photo: UFA In the early 1920s, Alfred Hitchcock was in Berlin together with director Graham Cutts, working on a film called The Blackguard. That’s how the fledgling filmmaker came to…

Greed: All That Glitters

ZaSu Pitts. Photo: MGM Imagine the greatest film in the world, the stuff that becomes legend, especially since only a handful of people ever saw the full version, before the…

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…

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler: Weimar’s Woes

Photo: Universum Film In 1922, two extraordinary films came out of the Weimar Republic. One was an influential horror movie, Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s ”Dracula”. The other one…

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…