Watching Silent Films

One of the most well-known (dare we say famous!) silent films of all time due to a man dangling from the arm of a clock, Safety Last! anchored Harold Lloyd among the comedic greats of the moving pictures era. 

Lloyd plays a small-town "Boy" trying to make it in the big city, who finds employment as a department-store clerk. He comes up with a wild publicity stunt to draw attention to the store after his roommate's successful c...

The fable-like, poignant story, subtitled A Song of Two Humans, Sunrise is an American silent melodramatic masterpiece by German director F.W. Murnau (In his American film debut) - a beautiful, atmospheric, lyrical and poetic work of art with roots in the German Expressionist movement (from 1914 to 1924). Starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston, the story of corruption and redemption involves a rustic farmer ...

When Letty Mason (Lillian Gish), an impoverished young woman from Virginia, relocates to West Texas, she finds herself unsettled by the ever-present wind and sand. Arriving at her new home at the ranch of her cousin (Edward Earle) she receives a surprisingly cold welcome from his wife (Dorothy Cumming). With tension in the family building and unwanted attention from a trio of suitors, including neighbor Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson)...

As a party of aristocrats gathers at the Vogelöd family manor house for a hunting weekend, the uninvited arrival of Count Oechst (Lothar Mehnert) interrupts their plans. While rumors persist that the urbane and disdainful Oechst may have murdered his own brother (Paul Hartmann), social discomfort increases further when the Baron (Paul Bildt) and Baroness (Olga Tschechowa) arrive, as she is the recently remarried widow of Oechst's b...

Post WW1, F.W. Murnau directs this German-Danish co-production, showcasing some of his best intentions toward future films.  

Der Gang in die Nacht (Journey into the Night) is derived from a screenplay by the Danish scenarist Harriet Bloch. It’s an example of the “nobility film,” a genre cultivated by the Nordisk studio where Bloch worked. In these stories, an upper-class man becomes obsessed with a working-class woman, and sh...

In Robert Wiene's final film entry, Wiene proved that he not only had impeccable taste when it came to creating the rococo ambience of the original opera, but was also perceptively tuned into the ironic element which distinguishes Rosenkavalier as one of the major 20th century operas.

The film is based on the music of Der Rosenkavalier opera by Richard Strauss. It was arranged in an instrumental form to suit the film medium and was...

By the director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, this is the Passion embedded in a contemporary story. 

An anarchist jailed for an attempted assassination is told the Passion story by the prison chaplain, who seeks to convince him that it is better to sacrifice one's own life than take the life of one's enemy. The framing story, taken from a novel, is believed to have been intended to give the Biblical story an anti-Bolshevist ...

For the viewer who has grown accustomed to Douglas Fairbank's and his similar "themes," films dealing with swashbuckling or youth or joy, The Gaucho is a silent film classic that will strip away any misconceptions about what role Fairbanks will play or which type of character is best identified toward his bustling career. 

The Gaucho is unique in both tone and look--a combination of action/adventure with a morality tale featur...

"Crime and Punishment," the original story written in twelve monthly installments during 1866 by Dostoevsky, focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds. H...

The most cherished film by Charlie Chaplin, City Lights is also his ultimate Little Tramp chronicle. The writer-director-star achieved new levels of grace, in both physical comedy and dramatic poignancy, with this silent tale of a lovable vagrant falling for a young blind woman who sells flowers on the street (Virginia Cherrill) and mistakes him for a millionaire. Though this Depression-era smash was made after the advent of sound,...

Robert Wiene's Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire follows-up his massively successful 1919 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, using the same writer, production designer, and cinematographer who had worked on the previous film. 

Genuine (Fern Andra) is not actually a vampire in the film, but rather a vamp (succubus) who uses her powers of seduction to torment and control the men who love her. The plot utilizes the old it was all just ...

The most cherished film by Charlie Chaplin, City Lights is also his ultimate Little Tramp chronicle. The writer-director-star achieved new levels of grace, in both physical comedy and dramatic poignancy, with this silent tale of a lovable vagrant falling for a young blind woman who sells flowers on the street (Virginia Cherrill) and mistakes him for a millionaire. Though this Depression-era smash was made after the advent of sound,...

Part of legendary director Alfred Hitchcock's "9," The Pleasure Garden marks his directorial debut with this British-German wonder. 

For the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock shows in this film many of the talents he would develop eventually, notably a great mastery of image composition and lighting, with a probable influence of German expressionism in his use of shadow and on-location shooting to natural sets to recreate the appr...

With Autumn quickly approaching, WSF takes on another German expressionist silent horror written and directed by Caligari's Robert Wiene.  FURCHT (FEAR) is the tale of Count Greven (Bruno Decarli)'s eventual descent into madness and hysteria with his obsession of collecting one too many of the world's greatest treasures. Lured by rumors of a sacred statue's mystic qualities, Greven's theft from an Indian temple leads to a mast...

We rejoin Diane MacIntyre again this week as we talk about The Thief of Bagdad, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Freely adapted from One Thousand and One Nights, and directed by Raoul Walsh, this American silent swashbuckler film tells the story of a thief who falls in love with the daughter of the Caliph of Baghdad. Featuring Julanne Johnston as the Princess and Anna May Wong as her Mongol Servant, be prepared to have fun and be m...

When corrupt Governor Alvarado (George Periolat) crushes the poor people of Spanish California under his iron heel, wealthy fop Don Diego Vega (Douglas Fairbanks) sheds his silks, dons a mask and cape and becomes the legendary Zorro, defender of the people. Infuriated by Zorro's meddling, Alvarado dispatches his right-hand man, Captain Ramon (Robert McKim), who has a score to settle with Zorro for stealing away the object of his de...

In D.W. Griffith's "Masterpiece," Intolerance intercuts between four separate stories about man's inhumanity to man. In Babylon, pacifist Prince Belshazzar is brought down by warring religious factions. In Judea, the last days of Christ are depicted in the style of a Passion play. In France, Catherine de Medici presides over the slaughter of the Huguenots. And in California, a woman pleads for the life of her husband when he is sen...

In Buster Keaton's last independent film for United Artists before moving on to MGM, this silent comedy is known for what might be considered Keaton's most famous film stunt: The facade of an entire house falling on top of him as he stands in the perfect spot to pass through the open attic window without being flattened.

The story involves the tale of an educated, effeminate, simple-minded son who ultimately is transformed and triu...

The Canfield and McKay families have been feuding for so long, no one remembers the reason the feud started in the first place. 

Twenty years later, Willie McKay (Keaton) receives a letter informing him that his late father's estate is now his. His aunt tells him of the feud, but he decides to return to his Appalachian homestead anyway to claim his inheritance. On the train ride he meets a girl, Virginia (Natalie Talmadge), an...