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418,417 | 1,609,079 | 31,013 | 7 | Airborne bildungsroman , but I like it | I'm tempted to make a joke that ' 20 , 000 Men a Year ' is a movie about a woman I dated once . Actually , this is an impressive low-budget film , based on a story treatment by Frank ' Spig ' Wead . ( If anybody knows how Wead got that nickname , please let me know . ) Wead was a career military officer who logged many... |
419,258 | 1,609,079 | 31,039 | 7 | Interesting unusual failure | ' Ambush ' is a semi-noir with some very interesting credits . The script is by S . J . Perelman and his wife Laura , whose screenwriting careers are entirely associated with comedies , yet they acquit themselves respectably in this thick-ear drama which features an uneasy blend of comedy . Kurt Neumann was an extremel... |
418,694 | 1,609,079 | 149,145 | 7 | Excellent , but no masterpiece . | A master recording of this 1973 tele-drama is in the archives at CBS's Television City complex ( where I saw it , thanks to someone who's got more influence at CBS than I'll ever have ) , but they are unlikely to re-release it due to various controversies . That situation is regrettable for two reasons : this is an exc... |
419,405 | 1,609,079 | 19,049 | 7 | Max Schreck gets snatched : cats and burghers but no catburgers . | I saw ' The Battle of the Tertia ' in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy ; the festival screened a print ( with German and French titles ) from the Murnau archive in Wiesbaden , restored on acetate colour stock to reproduce the colour tinting of the original nitrate release print . IMDb's ... |
419,545 | 1,609,079 | 5,928 | 7 | One actress does not equal two boys | I well and truly dislike movies in which adult women perform boys ' roles . I can't understand why so many people are enchanted by the spectacle of middle-aged Mary Martin impersonating Peter Pan . This trend is especially distressing when the actress is ( unlike Mary Martin ) sexually attractive ; trying to suspend di... |
419,191 | 1,609,079 | 26,671 | 7 | Get thee to a Nunnally | ' The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo ' has a good script , mid-level production values and a fine performance by Colin Clive in a villainous role . The great theatre director Joshua Logan was peripherally involved in this film ( without credit ) ; his autobiography ' Josh ' mentions his participation but does no... |
419,547 | 1,609,079 | 31,202 | 7 | Some good gags and funny character animation . | I'm not remotely a fan of Chuck Jones , but this is one of his better efforts . The premise is intriguing : Daffy Duck ( or one of his ancient ancestors ) was alive ' trillions ' of years ago , and crossed paths with a hungry caveman . Casper Caveman has a pet apatosaurus named Fido , who is drawn and animated as one o... |
419,333 | 1,609,079 | 19,110 | 7 | Sawdust triangle for a moonlighting clown | I saw this circus melodrama in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone ; the annual festival has made a welcome return to that town after eight years in nearby Sacile . . . a town no less beautiful , but in Sacile the festival's programme was split between two smaller cinemas at opposite ends of the to... |
418,703 | 1,609,079 | 15,669 | 7 | Pardon me , guv'nor . | Another " lost " film that was merely mislaid . I viewed a print of ' Capital Punishment ' restored by the Library of Congress from several source prints , including a nitrate release print that had been tinted : because this monochrome acetate print did not reproduce the tinting , some subtle grey tones were lost . Wh... |
418,764 | 1,609,079 | 21,296 | 7 | The song of Roland has no Love for Montagu | Pearl White is the best-known silent-serial star , but Ruth Roland deserves to be remembered too . I find the dark-haired Ruth sexier than the fair-haired Pearl , and Ruth Roland's serials tended to be slightly more plausible than Pearl's . Some of Ruth Roland's silent serials even featured the intriguing device of cap... |
418,358 | 1,609,079 | 1,732 | 7 | She guides her boyfriend's dinghy into a snug harbour . | I saw ' The Lighthouse Keeper ' at the Pordenone silent-film festival in Sacile , Italy , in 2006 . The print that was screened for us had a surprise bonus : at some point in its history ( presumably during its original release , while William Howard Taft was President of the U . S . A . ) the starting leader had broke... |
419,299 | 1,609,079 | 24,679 | 7 | Did the Joker follow the Ace of Spades ? | SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD . ' Tomorrow at Seven ' is one of those wildly implausible movies from Hollywood's studio era which still manage to be hugely enjoyable on the strength of sheer audacity and some colourful performances . Here we have that old chestnut : the serial murderer who announces his crimes in advance , in ... |
418,905 | 1,609,079 | 3,657 | 7 | Rescued from a paper print . | ' The Bargain ' , a William S . Hart western , is one of the many thousands of silent films which survive only because of the U . S . government's ' paper prints ' law , which seemed rather bizarre at the time , but in hindsight may indicate that the U . S . government know what they're doing after all . I'll describe ... |
418,270 | 1,609,079 | 19,085 | 7 | Good film , but Disney's is better . | Richard Harding Davis , now barely remembered , was a hugely popular author-journalist in the years just after the Great War . A war correspondent , Davis covered many dangerous events and wrote thrillingly about them . When he turned his talents to fiction , he used his long experience as a newspaperman ; Davis's fict... |
419,689 | 1,609,079 | 24,692 | 7 | Does she want ( Hein ) Fries with that ? | ' The Rhineland Dream ' has quite a few merits , not least some beautiful footage of Rhineland scenery . This movie could almost qualify as an example of Germany's ' heimatfilm ' genre . The film begins in America , of all places . ( ' America ' in this case being a backlot at a German film studio . ) Thirty years ago ... |
419,295 | 1,609,079 | 44,370 | 7 | They must have been in Seine . | Of all the major Hollywood studios , Warner Brothers were always the most cheese-paring . All of their musicals - - except the wonderful ' Yankee Doodle Dandy ' and some later adaptations of Broadway musicals - - are marred by extremely low budgets and obvious economy measures . ' April in Paris ' is one of several War... |
418,885 | 1,609,079 | 44,388 | 7 | Eric Blore as a jolly genie | The funniest Bowery Boys movies are the ones with the most wildly implausible plots . Anybody who watches a Bowery Boys movie in expectation of deep thoughts on the human condition is looking in the wrong place . ' Bowery to Bagdad ' has one of the looniest plots in the entire Bowery Boys series . . . and it's possibly... |
418,984 | 1,609,079 | 21,351 | 7 | No mystery , and no logic , but lots of fun | My thanks to Robert Gitt , of the U . C . L . A . Film & Television Archives , who permitted me to see this film shortly after it was restored . ' The Second Floor Mystery ' has an interesting pedigree . While this movie was in production , its two stars - - Loretta Young and Grant Withers - - eloped . Very soon afterw... |
419,276 | 1,609,079 | 21,357 | 7 | Diabetes alert ! | Seven Days ' Leave is based on James M Barrie's play ' The Old Lady Shows Her Medals ' . The title change is interesting , as it moves the play's emphasis from the old-lady character ( Sarah Ann Dowey ) to the soldier ( Private Dowey ) who visits her on his furlough from the trenches . The soldier is played ( very we... |
418,723 | 1,609,079 | 834,926 | 7 | Death looms . | SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . ' Loom ' is a weird little movie . All the characters are stop-motion mannequins - - with some cheating at the beginning and the end - - but there's more weirdness here than there needs to be . Two of the mannequins have blue skin , versus the semi-realistic flesh tones of the others , but there d... |
419,057 | 1,609,079 | 228,913 | 7 | Elevator music . | George Stoll was a long-time utility man in MGM's music department who did a bit of everything : orchestration ( to Oscar-winning success ) , composing ( to much less success ) and even dubbing the singing voices for the male Munchkins . ' Swing Banditry ' was his big attempt at being an on-screen performer . It took m... |
419,452 | 1,609,079 | 270,001 | 7 | Too many Ladislauses ; or , are you being Serbed ? | The movie's title translates as ' Ulrich of Celje and Ladislaus Hunyadi ' . This 13-minute Serbian film was acclaimed as one of the real finds at the 2006 Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , where I saw it . The festival screened a beautiful new 35mm sepia print made via the Desmet method , copied from the origina... |
418,203 | 1,609,079 | 489,755 | 8 | Movie magic revealed ! | For reasons which quite elude me , there are a large number of people who claim to be movie-lovers yet who are actively hostile to the technical aspects of the film-making process . One very respected film critic has repeatedly asserted that the Academy Awards ceremony would be improved by having the " boring " tech aw... |
418,800 | 1,609,079 | 36,919 | 8 | Pretty maids all in a row ? Well , Grace and Marcy , at least . | In Frank Sinatra's first three films , he was purely a speciality act : ostensibly playing himself , he merely shows up to croon a song during a nightclub sequence in somebody else's movie . In his fourth film , the very enjoyable ' Higher and Higher ' , Young Blue Eyes transitions into an acting career by playing an a... |
418,579 | 1,609,079 | 21,978 | 8 | Huston in Lon Chaney-land | ' A House Divided ' is an excellent film from early in the career of underrated director William Wyler . It features a first-rate performance by Walter Huston . ( His son John Huston gets a dialogue credit . ) In 1926 , Walter Huston starred on Broadway in ' Konga ' , a melodrama that became Lon Chaney's silent film ' ... |
418,581 | 1,609,079 | 19,554 | 8 | Neglected Frank Capra classic | ' The Way of the Strong ' is an excellent crime drama from the late silent era , proving that Frank Capra had a firm grasp of the grammar of film techniques before he made his first talkie . The subject matter is also unusual for Capra : this film deals with themes that are more typical for Raoul Walsh or Howard Hawks ... |
418,261 | 1,609,079 | 254,377 | 8 | A brief glimpse of briefs | IMDb's synopsis for ' He Didn't Finish the Story ' is accurate but incomplete . It leaves out the single most important event in the film . . . the event that prompted nickelodeon audiences ( especially men ) to view this short movie over and over . In the very early days of the cinema , movies were so short that a ' c... |
419,441 | 1,609,079 | 75 | 8 | Now , if he'd made her CLOTHES disappear . . . | ' Concealment of a Lady at the House of Robert-Houdin ' is one of the early ' trick ' films of Georges Méliès . In this case , his choice of trick is a questionable one , as here Méliès is merely reproducing ( on film ) a conjuror's illusion which Robert-Houdin and many other magicians had done live in their stage acts... |
419,353 | 1,609,079 | 21,926 | 8 | Karloff on the brink of stardom . | ' Graft ' is a peculiar film . It's a straightforward crime drama , except that the actor in the central role - - Regis Toomey - - plays his character as a comic-relief stumblebum . He plays a reporter named Dustin Hotchkiss , a name that's nearly as funny as " Regis Toomey " . At one point , Hotchkiss sees the D . A .... |
418,606 | 1,609,079 | 21,914 | 8 | It's no ' Metropolis ' , but . . . | ' Metropolis ' is my all-time favourite film , although the performances of its romantic leads ( Brigitte Helm and Gustav Fröhlich ) are hardly the greatest assets in that great movie . Still , I was eager to see them teamed up in ' Gloria ' , partly to find out if the chemistry of their pairing could make the transiti... |
419,690 | 1,609,079 | 26,332 | 8 | Passing the buck before Buchenwald . | This film's title merits some explanation . Technically , the German word for a 50-mark banknote is " Fünfziger " ( mit umlaut ) , but in informal speech this is often rendered as " Fuffziger " ( ohne umlaut ) . Literally , " ein falscher Fuffziger " means " a false ( counterfeit ) 50-mark note " , but in German slang ... |
418,672 | 1,609,079 | 8,930 | 8 | Cherry Blow meets Elmer . | I viewed a print of ' Broadway Love ' at Eastman House in Rochester , NY . By the way , for all you old-movie lovers who wish that more so-called ' lost ' films would become available : there are hundreds ( maybe thousands ) of obscure and not-so-obscure films archived at Eastman House that are not viewable in their pr... |
418,344 | 1,609,079 | 21,879 | 8 | Gnong , gnong , gnong ! | Bert Lahr starred in several musical revues on Broadway , but one of his rare successes in a ' book ' musical ( with a plotline ) was ' Flying High ' , a topical comedy which scored points off the aviation contests and wing-walking stunts that were so popular in America at this time . The plot is some froth about rival... |
418,949 | 1,609,079 | 1,254,804 | 8 | Dance , Gypsy maiden . | Shown in October 2008 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy . They screened a DVD print from the Danish Film Institute . This is one of a series of short films made in Copenhagen by Peter Elfelt ( born Peter Lars Peterson ) as a cinematic record of the principal dances of the Danish Royal Ballet . The fil... |
418,461 | 1,609,079 | 160,606 | 8 | Light-hearted ' trick ' film ; odd ending . | I saw this movie in October 2005 at le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile , Italy . The screening was enhanced by a splendid live-music performance : composed , arranged and performed by Maud Nelissen accompanied by the Sprockets ( an ensemble who specialise in accompanying silent films ) ! Well done , all ! . . . and ... |
419,118 | 1,609,079 | 32,699 | 8 | George Formby's funniest film | In wartime England , the # 1 box-office attraction was George Formby , a chirpy little comedian with a Lancashire accent who sang comic songs while strumming his " banjolele " ( a ukelele-sized banjo ) . His on screen character was a virginal simpleton who always caused disasters ( through his own incompetence ) and th... |
418,836 | 1,609,079 | 2,130 | 8 | Infernal tableaux | WARNING : This review contains explicit language which some people may find offensive . I attended a special screening of " L'Inferno " at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan ; for this screening , the film's intertitles had been removed , and the movie's dialogue and narration were spoken live by the brilliant actors... |
418,904 | 1,609,079 | 132,276 | 8 | Startling visual compositions | ' Living Buddhas ' is officially ' lost ' ( who gets to make these decisions , anyway ? ) , but about five and one-half minutes of footage survive in the possession of film collector Henry Nicholella , to whom my thanks for arranging their recent transmission on German television . The surviving fragments ( on which th... |
418,264 | 1,609,079 | 268,604 | 8 | Shut up , Henry : she's NOT perfect ! | Each year since 1973 , the American Film Institute have given their Lifetime Achievement Award to a prominent film star or director . The choice of whom to honour has been motivated by various factors . . . such as whose name will sell the most tickets . The guest of honour must be alive , and must be willing to attend... |
419,319 | 1,609,079 | 28,359 | 8 | High-flying high jinks | The title ' Thirteen Hours by Air ' seems vaguely science-fictionish , because in 1936 it was simply impossible for an airplane to cross the United States in 13 hours . ( Sixteen was more like it . ) But this movie seems to be presenting itself as cutting-edge rather than futuristic . Fred MacMurray , slightly less bla... |
419,632 | 1,609,079 | 251 | 8 | The very first stop-action animation . | I viewed a print of this short film in the archives of the British Film Institute . ' Matches : An Appeal ' is the earliest known example of stop-animation , or indeed any form of movie animation . It is therefore of vital historic importance despite its crudity . The very brief film shows a stick-figure made of matchs... |
419,400 | 1,609,079 | 338,332 | 8 | Hungarian ' West Side Story ' ; quite powerful . | I saw ' The Paul Street Boys ' in October 2007 at the Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone , Italy . An original nitrate print from the archives of the Jugoslovenska Kineteka in Belgrade was copied onto acetate colour stock by the Hungarian National Film Archive to recreate the original film's colour tintings . The print ... |
418,191 | 1,609,079 | 32,796 | 8 | Excellent second feature | ' Millionaires in Prison ' is an excellent example of something that doesn't exist anymore , but which was commonplace in the days of the big Hollywood studios : the second feature . In the 1930s and ' 40s , Americans went to the movies expecting to receive a full evening's worth of entertainment : a double feature plu... |
418,415 | 1,609,079 | 93,558 | 8 | sicko psycho sucko sex . . . I loved it ! | ' Mondo New York ' is sick , twisted , perverted and has absolutely no socially-redeeming value . I loved every second of it ! This movie purports to be a documentary look at some of the strange performance art in New York City's East Village , but ' Mondo New York ' is the cinematic equivalent of those old-time pornog... |
418,521 | 1,609,079 | 17,836 | 8 | Long-lost Laurel & Hardy hilarity | Besides being very funny , the silent film ' Duck Soup ' is a vitally important link in the evolution of Laurel and Hardy as a comedy team . This movie was based on a music-hall sketch written by Stan Laurel's father , Arthur Jefferson , a successful theatre manager in northern England who resented his son's attempts t... |
418,824 | 1,609,079 | 6,182 | 8 | Impressive abridgement . | There is an excellent print of this silent film in the Cineteca del Friuli , Gemona . ' Trilby ' was originally a novel by artist George du Maurier : remarkably , he wrote and illustrated this book after going blind in one eye and losing most of the sight in his other eye . A successful stage version was performed in L... |
418,738 | 1,609,079 | 43,539 | 8 | Low-budget apocalypse . | ' Five ' is the sort of science fiction I enjoy : long on ideas , short on rayguns and F / X . That's very likely why the movie flopped : most filmgoers seem to think that science fiction should have a big special-effects budget and no ideas at all . This Cold War film depicts the fate of five desperate survivors in Ca... |
418,282 | 1,609,079 | 20,092 | 8 | The last scene is magnificent . | Jeanne Eagels is one of those film figures who are notorious rather than famous . She was a beautiful stage actress who scandalised Broadway with her erotic performance as Sadie Thompson , the hooker in Somerset Maugham's " Rain " . Her film career started promisingly , but her drugs addiction became increasingly diffi... |
419,416 | 1,609,079 | 132,687 | 8 | Ladies ' night in a Turkish bath | ' A Bath House Beauty ' is an early and crude Keystone comedy , making better use than usual of Mack Sennett's penchant for filming in real locations . This very funny short is also a splendid showcase for the talents of Roscoe Arbuckle , still developing his craft . Here , Roscoe is a family man at the seaside , lumbe... |
419,035 | 1,609,079 | 553 | 8 | Spooky ending ! | I saw the Library of Congress print of ' The Haunted Hotel ' . Here's an American movie that's clearly inspired by the French ' trick ' films of Georges Melies . But whereas Melies relied on slapstick comedy and pretty girls from the Folies Bergere , this movie is more sombre . After some early camera tricks , it seems... |
419,112 | 1,609,079 | 27,727 | 8 | A cheesebox on a raft | ' Hearts in Bondage ' is a Civil War drama placing fictional characters at the centre of real events . First , some background : in the first month of the American Civil War ( April 1861 ) , the Confederate navy attacked some Union ships at Gosport shipyard ( near Norfolk , Virginia ) . The Union steam frigate USS Merr... |
418,477 | 1,609,079 | 2,755 | 8 | Izzy Cohen , or izzn't he ? | ' Cohen Saves the Flag ' is a very early Keystone comedy , one of several starring Ford Sterling as a scruffy coward named Izzy Cohen . All of the instalments in the ' Cohen ' series feature some humour based on Jewish stereotypes , which has dated badly ; fortunately , these films also have clever storylines and non-e... |
419,199 | 1,609,079 | 137,200 | 8 | Stark and moody | ' Roses Bloom on the Meadow-Grave ' belongs in the subgroup of movies known as ' Heimatfilm ' , a film genre unique to the German-speaking world . ' Heimat ' is the German word for ' country ' or ' homeland ' . Heimatfilmen take place largely outdoors , emphasising the countryside of Germany , Austria and Switzerland .... |
418,374 | 1,609,079 | 45,283 | 8 | Unique , moody , compelling . | The Finnish film ' White Reindeer ' is marketed in the USA and Britain as a horror movie , but that's not precisely accurate . This is a stark , moody film but not a scary one . It purports to be an authentic Lapp folktale about a woman named Pirita who turns into a white reindeer in order to feed upon men . This story... |
418,709 | 1,609,079 | 25,646 | 8 | Pass the borscht , comrade . | ( My thanks to Steven P Hill , University of Illinois , for helping me sort out the mukluks from the Muscovites in this confusing movie , the credits of which are in a barely legible Cyrillic typeface . The opinions which follow are entirely my own . ) I usually despise Soviet propaganda movies , and that's only partly... |
419,698 | 1,609,079 | 126,879 | 8 | Did Karel Capek see this cartoon ? | Winsor McCay's 1921 cartoon ' Bug Vaudeville ' has almost precisely the same plot and premise as Karel Capek's stage satire ' The Insect Play ' , which was first produced in Czechoslovakia in 1922 . I wonder if Capek saw McCay's cartoon . We have here a series of variety turns by various species of insects and arachnid... |
419,407 | 1,609,079 | 27,838 | 8 | First-rate Formby | ' Keep Your Seats , Please ' is based on the same Russian novel that inspired both Mel Brooks's film ' The Twelve Chairs ' and Fred Allen's most hilarious movie ' It's in the Bag ! ' . The latter was largely written by none other than Alma Reville ( Mrs Alfred Hitchcock ) , who must surely have been familiar with the e... |
419,240 | 1,609,079 | 14,679 | 8 | Sheikh hands with the devil . | There were two different film figures named Rex Ingram : interestingly , the English director Michael Powell worked with both of them . One of the two Rex Ingrams was an African-American actor who appeared in both film versions of ' The Thief of Bagdad ' . The other Rex Ingram was an Irish-born director who set up an i... |
418,589 | 1,609,079 | 230,825 | 8 | First you kill me , then I'll kill you | ' Submit to Me ' , directed and ( supposedly ) written by Richard Kern , is a compendium of the obsessive themes which turn up constantly in his films : transgressive sex , fetishism , violence . I say that this film was ' supposedly ' written by Kern , because his performers appear to be improvising their scenes . Ker... |
418,777 | 1,609,079 | 14,641 | 8 | The heroine's named Mary Darling , but the movie's funny anyway . | I don't much give a Hoot about Gibson , but ' 40-Horse Hawkins ' is a welcome variation of the usual Hoot Gibson formula , giving him more comedy sequences than usual , and taking place mostly away from the prairies and sagebrush . Gibson is here a callow youth who tries holding various jobs , and there's an amusing ru... |
419,016 | 1,609,079 | 252,121 | 8 | Alma Schindler's list is blessedly Lehrer-less | ' Alma : A Show-Biz Comes to Its End ' is a dramatised re-enactment of the life of Alma Schindler ( 1879-1964 ) . And what a life she had ! This Viennese woman of startling beauty must be the all-time champion artistic muse . In her girlhood , she kissed Gustav Klimt . Over the course of her life , she married successi... |
419,481 | 1,609,079 | 7,031 | 8 | Doug Fairbanks unbuckles his swash . | I saw ' Manhattan Madness ' , starring Douglas Fairbanks Snr , in October 2005 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile , Italy ; they screened an Eastman House print , and the screening was made even more enjoyable thanks to a live-music performance by a seven-piece ensemble led by John M Davis , who had painstakingly... |
418,944 | 1,609,079 | 14,621 | 8 | Subtle ? No . Funny ? Yes ! | ' The Woman with Four Faces ' is utterly implausible , but it's enjoyable hokum . Betty Compson stars in a role that gives her plenty of chances to pull the stops out while wearing outrageous disguises . The opening scene finds Liz West ( Compson ) on a ledge , wearing a mask . She's a cat burglar : she bursts into a p... |
418,231 | 1,609,079 | 26,007 | 8 | Flawed but highly enjoyable | ' Wonder Bar ' stars Al Jolson in a film with more plot than usual , and it's one of his best efforts . Jolson's films are notoriously tainted by racist blackface routines : in ' Wonder Bar ' , this material is completely avoided until the very end of the film , when we get a long blackface number called " Goin ' to He... |
418,869 | 1,609,079 | 222,154 | 8 | Which ' Affair ' are we discussing here ? | Here we have a riddle . . . and a perfect example of the difficulties awaiting anyone who would explore the history of silent film . This short comedy - - clearly American , and clearly made before American women got the vote in 1920 - - was screened in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , where... |
419,063 | 1,609,079 | 33,323 | 8 | She pulls on his bellrope . | The joke in this film's title was too subtle for me , but a Yank friend explained it : " All-American " formerly designated a group of male collegiate athletes , and a " Co-Ed " was a female college student . . . so " All-American Co-Ed " is a sexual oxymoron . Here's a musical comedy about transvestism which ( except ... |
419,287 | 1,609,079 | 379,914 | 8 | So beautiful , so young . . . | This documentary begins with the portentous statement that Olive Thomas's ghost haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City , former site of the Ziegfeld Follies . I knew that Olive Thomas died in France ( more about this later ) , so I took the ghost statement as a figure of speech . It turns out that this docum... |
419,018 | 1,609,079 | 14,560 | 8 | What a web sight ! | At a time when every other animation studio seemed to be imitating Disney , the Fleischer brothers ( producer Max , animator Dave ) were consistently turning out clever animation that was technologically innovative and often brilliantly funny . The Fleischer toons typically began and ended with live-action footage , an... |
419,077 | 1,609,079 | 280,490 | 8 | Down Underworld noir thriller | ' The Hard Word ' is an excellent , well-paced Australian movie , straddling the genres of the American noir caper film and the British thick-ear crime drama . Some of the sequences in this movie remind me of scenes in ' The Asphalt Jungle ' , ' The Killing ' , ' La Jetee ' , the Peter Sellers comedy ' Two-Way Stretch ... |
419,346 | 1,609,079 | 212,612 | 8 | He gets rid of his little Willie . | ' Willie's Magic Wand ' is an early ' trick ' film of the sort made famous by French film pioneer Georges Melies . This film isn't by Melies ; in fact , it isn't even French , and ' Willie's Magic Wand ' suffers in comparison to the French trick films of this period . The films by Melies and his French contemporaries t... |
418,867 | 1,609,079 | 351,241 | 8 | Skewed version of penny-dreadful true murder case . | This afternoon at the Barbican , I attended a screening of ' The Life Story of John Lee : The Man They Could Not Hang ' , with excellent live piano accompaniment by John Sweeney , as part of the opening day's programme for the Silent Film & Live Music Series running through June . This fascinating true-crime film was s... |
418,719 | 1,609,079 | 270,652 | 8 | World's first S & M movie ? | I saw this early Italian silent film in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival . . . in Italy , appropriately enough . What a movie ! Why isn't ' Sole ! ' better known ? Apart from its other merits , this may well be the first S & M movie ! It's certainly the earliest movie I've seen which expressly depicts a charact... |
418,979 | 1,609,079 | 128,972 | 8 | No budget , no banjo , but Formby's just fine | By almost any criterion , ' Boots ! Boots ! ' is an incredibly crude and primitive film . It was made in two weeks , on a shoestring budget , in a room above a garage off Regent Street . Although the action takes place in several different rooms of an hotel , the entire film was shot in one room , with the furniture an... |
419,587 | 1,609,079 | 148,436 | 8 | The wenches in the trenches meet the bitches in the ditches . | MGM's war drama ' The Big Parade ' was the single biggest money-maker of Hollywood's silent-film period . ( Actually , ' The Birth of a Nation ' made more money , but the profits were divided among several different distributors . ) Consequently , there were several unrelated movies - - such as ' The Wet Parade ' - - w... |
419,628 | 1,609,079 | 26,053 | 8 | Powerful drama with a few false steps | ' Alias Mary Dow ' has a fascinating premise which seems to unfold by the usual formula , but then surprises us . Sally Eilers gives a standout performance in the lead , effectively playing a dual role . Eilers is Sally Gates , a waitress and dance-hall tootsie who is clearly not above a bit of prostitution , although ... |
419,418 | 1,609,079 | 402,710 | 8 | Not exactly a fairy tale . . . | Hans Christian Andersen was an intensely neurotic man , with many phobias and obsessions . Many people who met him commented about how difficult he was to get along with . Famously , in 1847 Andersen stayed with Charles Dickens's family in London for six weeks ( ! ) , causing problems so obnoxious that Dickens refused ... |
419,507 | 1,609,079 | 10,662 | 8 | Well above D . W . Griffith's usual standard . | I saw DW Griffith's ' Scarlet Days ' in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto film festival in Sacile , Italy . The festival screened a print supplied by the Museum of Modern Art , in New York City . Some words of caution are in order , however . ' Scarlet Days ' was never one of Griffith's more important nor more profitable... |
418,969 | 1,609,079 | 22,207 | 8 | Nearly as funny as ' Rookery Nook ' . | Tom Walls directed and starred in a series of light social comedies written by Ben Travers . These were hugely successful in the 1920s ( and for some years beyond that decade ) , and are collectively known as the Aldwych farces , in honour of the West End theatre that was Walls's and Travers's base camp . The main acti... |
419,449 | 1,609,079 | 416,508 | 8 | I applauded the art direction . | It is a truth universally acknowledged that reviews of Jane Austen movies must begin with the phrase ' It is a truth universally acknowledged . . . ' . I know very little about Jane Austen's life , although I spotted an error in this movie anyway : her deaf-mute older brother George was NOT raised at home with her ( as... |
419,190 | 1,609,079 | 24,308 | 8 | Colman's run-up to ' Zenda ' | ' The Masquerader ' , an obscure drama starring Ronald Colman , is very similar in its premise and subplots to Colman's great vehicle ' The Prisoner of Zenda ' . . . but he did ' The Masquerader ' first . As in ' Zenda ' , Colman plays lookalike cousins who meet after many years of living in two different countries . .... |
419,692 | 1,609,079 | 542,648 | 8 | We're all kept " Hanging " in this suspenseful adaptation . | Climax ! was one of the many anthology television series of the 1950s : supposedly with a narrower focus than most , since it allegedly dealt exclusively in tales of suspense , and was therefore in competition with ' Alfred Hitchcock Presents ' . But ' Climax ! ' did not stay true to its mandate , and had some very n... |
418,570 | 1,609,079 | 10,501 | 8 | Almost as great as Fritz Lang's ' M ' ! | ' Der Mädchenhirt ' was a special ' CineFest Event ' at this year's Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy , where I saw it last month . The festival screened a colour-stock print from Berlin's Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv , which beautifully reproduced the delicate tinting and toning of the original nitrate relea... |
419,436 | 1,609,079 | 22,022 | 8 | Several excellent performances . | It's generally accepted that silent-film star Clara Bow's career was ruined by sound , and she herself even said so , but I'm not so convinced . Before she made her first talkie , her fans were already aware of her prole Brooklyn accent . I think that a more plausible reason for her decline was simply that she was gett... |
419,443 | 1,609,079 | 22,042 | 8 | Wynne Gibson's standout performance . | In several previous IMDb reviews , I've expressed my distaste for Sylvia Sidney's acting . Stop the presses ! I've finally seen her give a good performance , in ' Ladies of the Big House ' . Yes , it's a women's prison movie , and I was pleased that two of the clichés of 1930s women's prison movies were avoided : for o... |
419,066 | 1,609,079 | 315,105 | 8 | How many legs has she got under that skirt ? | I found ' 2a . m . in the Subway ' interesting for two reasons . Firstly , this 1905 movie ( nominally a comedy ) was made less than a year after the opening of the New York City subway , which clearly had already become a source of some amusement and derision . Secondly , this film was shot by G . W . ' Billy ' Bitzer... |
419,355 | 1,609,079 | 286,450 | 8 | Charming stagebound adaptation . | This adaptation of ' Alice in Wonderland ' - - which includes scenes and characters from ' Through the Looking-Glass ' - - was originally transmitted as a ' Hallmark Hall of Fame ' special on 23 October 1955 . I viewed a kinescope of it at the Museum of Television & Radio . This tele-version is actually based on a stag... |
419,071 | 1,609,079 | 208,752 | 8 | ' Au secours ' ? More like ' Aw , suckers ' . . . | Bout-de-Zan ( real name René Poyen ) was one of the very earliest screen comedians to play a recurring character in an ongoing series of short comedies . ( The very first - - although I stand ready to be corrected on this point - - was André Deed , whose screen character was known in Britain as ' Foolshead ' . ) Bout-d... |
419,522 | 1,609,079 | 41,141 | 8 | She shakes her maracas | I'm intrigued by the distinctive film genres which evolve among the world's cultures . Germany developed the ' mountain film ' genre , in which a male hero ( or sometimes two male rivals ) will achieve greater self-knowledge high up in the mountains , in the presence of a beautiful Aryan woman who embodies the earth-sp... |
418,400 | 1,609,079 | 27,247 | 8 | Fast-paced delight | One of the movies I've previously reviewed for IMDb is ' Sleepers West ' , a taut low-budget thriller . ' 36 Hours to Kill ' has a set-up so similar to ' Sleepers West ' that at first I thought they were both based on the same novel . They aren't , and the films go in different directions after that initial set-up . Bo... |
419,674 | 1,609,079 | 331,418 | 8 | Mr Rodgers's neighbourhood | ' America Salutes Richard Rodgers ' is an enjoyable tribute to the work of that composer . One might suppose that the whole point of a special like this is to perform Richard Rodgers's songs , with no excuses necessary . Unfortunately , there's a half-hearted attempt to supply some sort of framework ' story ' by bringi... |
419,232 | 1,609,079 | 148,658 | 8 | Long may they rain | ' The Rainmakers ' is one of the more enjoyable Heckle and Jeckle cartoons . This one intentionally places less emphasis than usual on laughs , and concentrates on telling a story that kids and adults can enjoy . Without lecturing or moralising , this cartoon's enjoyable story also makes a serious point : if you do som... |
419,219 | 1,609,079 | 187,442 | 8 | Mein hairy herr . | ' Ramper , the Beastman ' ( I'm translating this German film's original title ) is a weird film that capers madly in the borderland between science fiction and fantasy . It tries to set up plausible explanations for its events ( science fiction ) but makes them seem magical or metaphysical ( fantasy ) . The role played... |
418,272 | 1,609,079 | 18,535 | 8 | Gondo-leery | ' Venus of Venice ' ( great title ! ) is a slick caper comedy , briskly directed by Marshall ' Mickey ' Neilan at the peak of his powers . The characters are implausible - - and ' Venice ' is clearly a studio set - - but this movie takes place in the same tinselled sham-glam world as Lubitsch's ' Trouble in Paradise ' ... |
418,942 | 1,609,079 | 148,633 | 8 | The bathtub keeps growing | ' The Power of Thought ' is the most imaginative of the Heckle and Jeckle cartoons : not their funniest , but the one that most fully utilises the potential of character animation . . . making this cartoon the Terrytoons equivalent of Bob Clampett's ' The Big Snooze ' . Heckle and Jeckle are lazing about the house one ... |
418,361 | 1,609,079 | 185,416 | 8 | Weak story but very well-made film . | I saw ' The Last Appeal ' at the 2006 Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . This film is notable for its sophisticated use of several different narrative techniques ; unfortunately , it uses those techniques in the service of a story with a fairly obvious ' twist ' ending . John Martin is a handsome young man who ca... |
419,430 | 1,609,079 | 20,793 | 8 | Did Hitchcock steal from this movie ? | I'm extremely impressed with every aspect of ' A Cottage on Dartmoor ' , directed by the underrated Anthony Asquith ( son of the Prime Minister ) . The camera-work features some superb tracking shots , kept perfectly in focus by focus-puller Arthur Woods ( later a brilliant director in his own right , all too briefly b... |
418,604 | 1,609,079 | 67,324 | 8 | See me , feel me , touch me . | ' Land of Silence and the Darkness ' , written and directed by Werner Herzog , is an extraordinary documentary - - remember that word , please - - about Fini Straubinger . As a child in Germany , she suffered a terrible fall which caused a popping sensation in her neck . She was afraid to tell her parents ( I can well ... |
418,745 | 1,609,079 | 192,409 | 8 | Strike a light ! | I saw ' Out Yonder ' at Filmmuseum Vondelpark in April 2005 ; this is one more of the hundreds of films that were ' lost forever ' only because nobody bothered looking for them properly . Fortunately , ' Out Yonder ' is an entertaining film , starring the beautiful Olive Thomas . Her character here ( named Flotsam ! ) ... |
419,594 | 1,609,079 | 16,172 | 8 | He makes his way to the top . | Reginald Denny , born and raised in England , had a hugely successful career in American silent films ( in which his public-school English accent went unheard ) , playing brash young Americans who were firmly in the Harold Lloyd mould . ' Oh , Doctor ! ' brings Denny even farther into Lloyd's territory than usual , wit... |
419,047 | 1,609,079 | 249,852 | 8 | Bert Lahr's fragrant cartoon | Scent of Mystery is notorious as the film that ( literally ) had a smell . Filmed in Smell-O-Vision , it bombarded the audience with aromas . Concealed dispensers sprayed the cinema with concentrated essence , on cue , then sprayed a neutraliser to remove the scent before the next spray was dispensed . As with 3-D mo... |
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