Yearly Archives: 2014

Max Linder, the gifted French comedian who may have ranked among the giants of silent film comedy had he not committed suicide, gives a perfect example of his considerable gifts in “Seven Years Bad Luck,” a film from 1921. Linder … Continue reading →

One of the nice things about seeing the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) and the Pordenone (Italy) Silent Film Festival in is that I’ve seen some very funny and interesting Soviet films. The Pordenone festival showed a funny Anna … Continue reading →

Gerhard Lamprecht, prodigious film director and writer who worked from the silent cinema era to the late 1950s, can be compared to Hollywood’s Allan Dwan. Studios regarded Dwan and Lamprecht as sure-fire directors who could produce effective works in any … Continue reading →

So many interesting things happen in Anthony Asquith’s 1928 silent film “Underground,” that it’s difficult to categorize it as anything but quintessentially British. Most of the movie takes place at a London underground tube station, and the two main male … Continue reading →

While watching “The Epic of Everest,” the 1924 silent film about the attempt by George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine to reach the summit of Mount Everest, I became awed by the spectacle of the mountain while wondering about the … Continue reading →

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) screened “The Good Bad Man” at 10 AM on Saturday morning, May 31, 2014. I don’t know why this crowd-pleasing 1916 film featuring the acting talents of Douglas Fairbanks and Bessie Love played … Continue reading →

Director Vasili Zhuravlyov created a fun world that consists of a Soviet space institute and the treacherous valleys of the moon in the 1935 Soviet silent film “Kosmicheskiy Reys: Fantasticheskaya Novella,”  or “Cosmic Voyage.” The film premiered in the United … Continue reading →

Prior to the screening of “Ramona,” a 1928 silent film starring Dolores Del Rio, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra led the large crowd at the Castro Theater in a rendition of the song “Ramona.” The tango-influenced number put everyone … Continue reading →

The great Danish (and Swedish) director, Carl Theodore Dreyer, left a memorable trail of films, including the 1928 masterpiece “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” “Master of the House (1925)” and “Michael (1924).” Rather than clutter his films with elaborate … Continue reading →

With names like “Little Cat” and “Little Monkey,” the characters in the 1934 Chinese silent film “Song of the Fisherman (Yu Quang Qu),” seem destined for a wild and strenuous life. Being born in a poor fishing family in a … Continue reading →